In a “one of these days we’ll have to move” mood recently, I began sorting through some folders of old poems.

I found early drafts of poems which ended up in Made and Remade, some of which I didn’t recognize until I looked up the final version.

Some of the poems in Made and Remade originally appeared in Ascent, the book I and four colleagues put together as “Five Southwestern Women Poets”  (Both of these books can be obtained from me through contact on this blog, by the way).

One poem in Ascent did not make it into the later book.  It says more about me than was fitting for the material in the book, the writing of William Paley..  It was fun to find the poem again.  It was even more fun to tighten it up – my sense of craft is stronger now than it was when this was first published.

Here’s a poet’s self-image:

Booklover

First editions, clean and jacketed?
I prefer those lived with,
lived in, a note card
slipped between pages.

I see myself in a used bookstore,
on a back shelf, loose cover,
yellow pages, among books not
classified: is it history, is it

romance, is it worth the paper
it’s printed on? The bookseller
does not come to dust.

I lean against another
volume, convinced there are
worse ends than this.