NO LIFE BUT THIS: A Novel of Emily Warren Roebling is available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.


It is biographical fiction based on the life of Emily Warren Roebling considered to be the first female field engineer and highly instrumental in the building of the Brooklyn Bridge.


http://atbosh.com/authors/diane-vogel-ferri/

Monday, August 17, 2009

A Room Full of Books


I am in the center
of a circumference of books,
and it occurs to me that
in all my living spaces I have
evolved a room such as this.

Like a literary brick layer,
book by book, shelf by shelf,
a small city of manuscripts grows.
They are life-long denizens,
ever-present, standing ingloriously

like straight-stemmed
multicolored Easter lilies
with silent trumpet mouths
waiting to be opened, to teach,
to comfort, to be re-read after

their long involuntary rest.
I dust and lovingly polish their spines.
I rearrange them in my personal hierarchies.
I lionize their centrality in my life
and acknowledge

that nothing electronic
can ever replace
the invitation to come in
when I stand in the doorway
of my room full of books.

5 comments:

Kat Mortensen said...

Nice poem, Diane. I do (and have done) the same thing. I feel exactly the same way: nothing can replace a book in your hands and cracking it open for the first time (or once again).

Kat

Moohaa said...

This has to be one of my all time favorites of your poetry. As I sit here surrounded by my own circumference of books. I will never purchase an E book... nothing can replace paper, spines and the delicious smell of a book!

Moohaa said...

re: my post. I don't know if I will ever trust a church again. I am only going to strive to love God as much as I can. That's all I can do. (hugs)

Jan said...

I am also surrounded by books, more in piles than a "circumference." Still, I love this poem and your descriptions inherent.

Ruth Hull Chatlien said...

Oh, I agree.