ends here

It’s okay to stomp on a poem to make it stop.

long and longer still

There are some poems that refuse to be shortened.

big book, big evil

Callimachus is best known today for his verse. He is the author of the elegy to a fellow poet, Heraclitus of Halicarnassus, often anthologized in its translation by William Johnson Cory: ‘They told me, Heraclitus, they told me you were dead.’ A proponent of shorter forms—hymns, elegies, epigrams—he is said to have coined the witticism mega biblion, mega kakon (‘big book, big evil’) to express his disdain for epic poetry. Nevertheless, it is his work not as a poet but as a scholar which will concern us, and here Callimachus was responsible for a very big book indeed, the Pinakes, said to have run to 120 papyrus scrolls.

[…]

Callimachus may have been passed over for the role of Chief Librarian [Library of Alexandria], but, in compiling the Pinakes, it was he who did most of all to preserve the library’s memory. Pinakes simply means ‘Tables’, as in writing boards or ‘tablets’, and the full title of Callimachus’s work was the Tables of Men Illustrious in Every Field of Learning and of Their Writing. It was a catalogue of all the works housed in the great library.

—Dennis Duncan, Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventure from Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age (W. W. Norton, 2021) [31- 32]

special case

Any poem beyond a couple pages in length is a special case of prose.

block off the chip

The book I ordered, a study of the fragment in literature, arrived today. Turns out it’s over four-hundred pages.

nothing worse

Couplet: Is there anything worse / than a novel in verse?

ars longo

Two male poets were comparing the length of their long poems.

older and shorter

Variation on Pascal: If I was older I’d have written you a shorter poem.

where to begin

Knowing there was so much of the poet to read, I found it hard to start.

two thirds done

I thought I wasn’t very far along reading the academic book, then I realized the last third of the book was notes, bibliography and index.

run over

That pang of disappointment felt when you turn a page expecting another poem, only to realize that the one you were reading hasn’t ended.

line breeder

The lines seemed to breed one after another as though endless in their lineage.

preface too much

After his long introduction, I muttered, ‘Methinks thou doth preface too much’.

poet output

The two-volume too much Ammons by half.

pixel count

If the lyric poem is a pinhole camera exposing single images from a life, the biography is a large format pixelated picture, but no matter the page count, a biography is always a life over-simplified.

longer grave

The poet was 5’ 9” tall in his life. I’m told his archive, in the basement of the university library where it’s housed, measures 18 linear feet.

fighting up

That lyric could lick almost any long poem.

measure for measure

Most poems fail based on a simple mixed measurement ratio: the material (subject, idea, story, substance) weighs less than its length in lines.

end in sight

Always a bad sign in reading a book when you find yourself flipping ahead to see how many pages to the end.

far-sighted

He couldn’t write the long poem because he could always see the end from the start.