A Cold Spring

In my collection development class the other night, we had a guest speaker - a librarian from Lesley University. There's no other way to put it--she was awesome. She was informed, informative, funny, and very practical. There's this man in the class who's always going on long, self-important ramblings about the nature of the historical object and how we should save everything because it might be important or relevant to someone in some capacity somewhere, someday. And she answered his questions and eye-rolling calmly and intelligently, explaining that reference books from the 1980s need to be weeded--as do many other books that aren't relevant to the needs of the population your library is serving. Sometimes books (and other resources) become irrelevant over time, and so you weed them. You don't have to pitch them in the trash; you can find new homes for them. But this, to me, is the key to so much in library science/school: the user/patron/whatever you want to call her is why we're there, why we're gathering and organizing information and providing reference to it. (S.R. Ranganathan - one of the deities in the librarian pantheon - knew this. I really want to read his autobiography, A Librarian Looks Back.)

Anyway, those are my thoughts on that subject. I think Lesley would be a really interesting place to work, and the librarian who spoke to us has worked her way into my own personal librarian pantheon. I hope you'll stay tuned to A Room Full of Books the next couple of weeks, because it's too late in the evening now to write about Library of Congress Subject Headings and the fun to be had with them, and the messing to be done with them. That will be coming soon.

Now for some poetry. It is National Poetry Month. I've been thinking about this poem a lot lately, partly because it's so literally apt; it's supposed to snow here in Boston tomorrow. But I love it for many reasons. "The violet was flawed on the lawn," for example, is one of my favorite lines of poetry of all time. And I hope you stay with it until the fireflies at the end, because that part is so utterly lovely. Well, here you go. Any typos are mine and not Miss Bishop's.


A Cold Spring by Elizabeth Bishop

for Jane Dewey, Maryland

Nothing is so beautiful as spring. -Hopkins

A cold spring:
the violet was flawed on the lawn.
For two weeks or more the trees hesitated;
the little leaves waited,
carefully indicating their characteristics.
Finally a grave green dust
settled over your big and aimless hills.
One day, in a chill white blast of sunshine,
on the side of one a calf was born.
The mother stopped lowing
and took a long time eating the after-birth,
a wretched flag,
but the calf got up promptly
and seemed inclined to feel gay.

The next day
was much warmer.
Greenish-white dogwood infiltrated the wood,
each petal burned, apparently, by a cigarette-butt;
and the blurred redbud stood
beside it, motionless, but almost more
like movement than any placeable color.
Four deer practised leaping over your fences.
The infant oak-leaves swumng through the sober oak.
Song-sparrows were wound up for the sumer,
and in the maple the complementary cardinal
cracked a whip, and the sleeper awoke,
stretching miles of green limbs from the south.
In his cap the lilacs whitened,
then one day they fell like snow.
Now, in the evening,
a new moon comes.
The hills grow softer. Tufts of long grass show
where each cow-flop lies.
The bull-frogs are sounding,
slack strings plucked by heavy thumbs.
Beneath the light, against your white front door,
the smallest moths, like Chinese fans,
flatten themselves, silver and silver-gilt
over pale yellow, orange, or gray.
Now, from the thick grass, the fireflies
begin to rise:
up, then down, then up again:
lit on the ascending flight,
drifting simultaneously to the same height,
--exactly like the bubbles in champagne.
--Later on they rise much higher.
And your shadowy pastures will be able to offer
these particular glowing tributes
every evening now throughout the summer.


from The Complete Poems 1927-1979, by Elizabeth Bishop. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983.