A journey to Spesh

While researching the homes of May Sarton on the Internet, I learned that she wrote a poem called "Because What I Want Most Is Permanence" in the collection Land of Silence. So, I checked Wash U's library catalog to see if we had it. I love my library. Not only do we have a copy in the general stacks, we have, in Special Collections, Howard Nemerov's advanced review copy with his pencilled annotations!

So, guess what I did at lunch today? Even for a librarian, Special Collections is an intimidating place--its own country, with its own laws and regulations. No pens? Check! Hands clean and dry? Check! Prepared to follow all instructions including any involving gloves or unfamiliar tools like book cradles? Check! As a librarian, of course, I know that there will be friendly, helpful people in Special Collections to take care of me and anyone else who walks through the door.

As it turned out, I didn't need gloves but was given a foam book cradle to use with the book. The only other procedure that took me by surprise was that I needed to fill out their request form rather than just hand them the print-out of the catalog page. The request form, of course, included blanks about me as well as the item I requested--I assume that is so they know who handled what if a problem is discovered later.

The annotations consisted mostly of underlines and lines next to particular lines of poems. There was one question mark and one notation at the bottom of "Poets and Rain" that says "I fear it is but the simple truth." The gem ended up being the inside back cover with a kind of index, page numbers of the poems Nemerov wanted to refer to again. Some of these had very short notes including one for "Poets and Rain" that said "(do I dare?)". Wonder what that means. Another note, next to the page number for "Humpty Dumpty" says "best, I think."

So, the next step in this adventure is to figure out if Howard Nemerov ever wrote a review for this book and if he dared.     #

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