If nobody bought poetry I would not have a job.

And I would not have a 7ft bookcase filled to overflowing with the stuff.

Update: Photos, as requested by Ivy. (Actually, didn't somebody else recently propose everybody post bookcase photos?) These are snaps from my ancient Kodak digital, infinitely shitty compared to the Canon, which I have purposely neglected to mention was lost/stolen in a flu-haze deplaning incident back in September. But it's being replaced. What was my point? Oh, yes...the poetry!



The poetry shelf is the one on the far left,. As you can hardly make out because this damn photo is so crappy, it is actually 2, sometimes three deep, both vertically and horizontally. So if properly shelved, this would be more like three cases.



Top shelf: Highlights from shelf one include the New York School majors, Wallace Steven's entirety, and some random recent browsing in front.



Second shelf: Lots of standard poetry collections on this shelf, stacked horizontally in front of the entirety of Pound, Bishop, Neruda, and Charles Wright, actually, plus assorted. I note a stray BAP in the rightmost column and a children's novel in the leftmost. Hmm.



Third shelf: Yikes. What a mess. This shelf is hardcovers in the back--rare first edition of Delmore Schwartz's In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and ditto Robinson Jeffers' Medea, the entirity of James Merrill (got the omnibuses and gave away the older paperbacks), and a bunch of collecteds. The bio of Edna St. Vincent Millay. A tarot deck. And that box in the front is my chapbook collection--most of it. (Ivy--yours is right smack center, and that's Aaron Tieger & Mark Lamoureux beside you!) Two dead cell phones I keep meaning to donate and a stack of random paperbacks.



Fourth shelf: Oh lord. It just gets worse from here. This shelf is all double-deep horizontals. Mostly hardcovers in the back, paperbacks up front. No wonder I can never find anything.



Fifth shelf: Highlights include the Oulipians, John Cage, Shannon Holman's MFA thesis, a double-deep horizontal stack of random paperbacks.



Sixth shelf: The bottom shelf is supposed to be for anthologies, but since I pull those out so much it's often a catchall. All the BAPs live here, except the one I'm missing: 1995. Also random paperbacks in front, plus an antique Mark Twain I really need to send back to my mom. Whoops--also some comics in that plastic envelope.



On top: The literary journals that are not on the desk, on the floor, or under the bed live on top of the poetry case and have spilled over into top-of-the-fiction-cases territory.

The poetry case is one of three bookcases in my office. There is another one in the bedroom, and about four cases' in Shawn's office awaiting the new bookcases. And a cookbook case in the kitchen. And yes, they are all this bad. We are impossible. And possibly crazy. As my father-figure says, "Y'all got shit everwhare!"

UPDATE: Yes--the someone who asked was Zachary Schomburg. And he and Tony Robinson have posted photos of their top shelves [and they are linked at right]. Why not post yours too! I'm with Zachary--it's the first thing I want to see when I go to someone's house. Right before the pet(s) and kid(s).