Thursday, May 10, 2012

In Case of Fire

(crit, please)

In case of fire, what to do for books:
Look first to mice and sneaky mites that must,
like fire, feed on paper; to ash, dust.
Do not let books pile up in foreign nooks
and crannies, bone-dry. Back up your e-books,
Kindled, Googled, Nooked. Press save a lot. Lust
for literature serves the household trust.
Love books, and feel how books love back, for books
both embrace and cradle. Beware despots.
Memorize. Read aloud walking around.
To flout censors and other dumbass clots,
whence obscurity, build way underground
an archive, fire-proofed, humidified,
and stock the prize of tyranny defied.

Arlene

4 comments:

  1. Arlene,
    A sonnet .. rhymes, scansion and all! Very nice work.
    Totally original, these suggestions on how to save your books from fire... and not only accidental fire, but book-burning by despots too... even to the extent of backing up your ebooks :-0
    Press save a lot :-) made me smile.

    Sorella

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  2. Thanks, Sorella. The e-book, Kindle, save are all recent updates to a sonnet sequence that had become way out of date.

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  3. Hi Arlene,

    Sorry for being slow on the uptake--I kind of conked out in the middle of Sevens; no fault of yours. You've got some neat sonics going on here--mice/mites/must; nook/Google/Nook.

    It feels a bit to me like the idea doesn't want to be a sonnet in IP--it feels a little uncomfortably jammed, with an extra modifier here and a slightly line break on "must" there. (Or to phrase that in a more positive way: I am curious about what the idea would sound like expressed in other forms.)

    It's a lovely thought, at any rate.

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  4. Thanks...I'm beginning to think I should try everything in other forms...:)

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