“The week underway: celebrating
Books, libraries, tomes; elevating
The frigates poetic.
Next few posts’ aesthetic:
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”
The 10 April 2024 Twitter limerick began a new set of themed posts, as the week of the total solar eclipse was also National Library Week 2024! This first poem simply introduced the week-in-progress, while each of the next three posts summarized a specific story.
“The week underway: celebrating /
Books, libraries, tomes…”
The first two lines of the limerick shifted focus to National Library Week and noted that it was already underway. The motto for this year’s event was “Ready, Set, Library.”
“[E]levating / The frigates poetic…”
The third line referenced Emily Dickinson’s much more memorable celebration of the “books, libraries, tomes” alluded to previously: “There is no Frigate like a Book / To take us Lands away.” (I am sure I am one of many who encountered that particular term for the first time in her poem, reinforcing her verse’s overall theme.)
This in turn reminded me of one of the previous spring’s posts, which had highlighted a comparable quote by Anna Quindlen: “Books are the plan, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
“Next few posts’ aesthetic: /
Some classics, verse-commemorating.”
“Pro-book” is not a particularly surprising or novel (ha) stance to take, but I will always welcome the opportunity to deliberately revisit some favorite stories in this space, and the subsequent three Twitter poems were fun to write. I similarly look forward to writing in more detail about them here, this month.
The last two lines set up the goals for the rest of the week, in which the poems would aim to “verse-commemorate” some of my favorite classic books from years past.
Chemphasis 