Skin-Deep

Nov 20 2012

Sometimes, the cover does.

Lined-up, spine-to-spine

they hint

at secret lives

foment desire

spin their lies,

the calligrapher’s shameless art

of suggestion.

Social climbers all,

they clamour for the top shelf

strive for my affection,

the foreplay

of bed-time reading.

Then, utterly spent

sprawl upon the bedside table

in satisfied sleep.

We all know

red books are over-sexed.

Blue ones penny-pinch, are heretics

and brown covers slow,

the stupidest.

That black’s

obsessed with death,

shades of grey

unself-aware,

and strutting white

illicit dares,

the hypocrisy, and swagger, of power

uncontested.

But just as we are skin-deep, and tribal

dust covers

conceal surprises,

virgin bindings, long untouched

their inner lives

still uncorrupt.

An insignificant object

containing multitudes.

Many have gone unread.

Admired, like a trophy wife

in whose reflection I bask.

Because sometimes

their mere existence

is all I need,

that all this wisdom

has been inscribed

and simple possession

makes it mine.

That truth, like beauty

is merchandise.

At random, I crack a spine,

tease back

the creamy vellum.

Feel the weight

of virgin paper,

as I surrender

and she is taken.

And come to see

how foolish I was

to have been so colour blind.

To have believed

their mean self-serving tales.

This poem is based on the simple conceit of the  book cover as metaphor for stereotyping, tribalism, racism.

There is also a strong sexual innuendo running through it. I can’t be sure whether this works, or seems contrived and laboured. (All I now is that it was fun to write!)

The 4th stanza, as well, interrupts the flow of the main theme, going off on a tangent about unread books, and about how our bookshelves are constructed by us – or read by others – to reflect us: our sensibility, erudition, class. Perhaps, in a age of e-books, this is already passé. Although I’ve heard of interior decorators ordering books by the pound, and arranging them by the aesthetics of their colourful spines, facing out and artfully aligned.

At least the final stanza brings the poem back to its theme; to this idea of skin-deep and unfair ethnic stereotypes. And perhaps hints at a kind of transgressive love story – like Romeo and Juliet – violating clan or race or religion. 

The inspiration for this piece came form the book section of the Saturday Globe and Mail (Nov 17, 2012). Here’s how it was introduced:

Want to build the best li­brary ever? Take a page from the project that asked Mal­colm Glad­well, Junot Diaz and other cul­tural heavy­weights to dish on the tomes that in­spired them

What’s in our li­braries says a lot about who we are. Jane Mount asked some 100 writ­ers, artists, food­ies and film-mak­ers to de­scribe the books that in­spire them. Then she painted the spines, asked her sub­jects to com­ment and put the re­sults in a book called My Ideal Books. The ex­am­ples be­low are just part of a ros­ter that in­cludes Dave Eg­gers, Patti Smith, Alice Waters and Michael Chabon.

Malcolm Gladwell’s contribution included this observation (amusingly self-incriminating, and therefore brave) which is what set me off.

I’m in the mid­dle of writ­ing my new book, which is about power. I’m very in­ter­ested in the strate­gies we use to keep peo­ple who are pow­er­less in check. And the ways in which the pow­er­less fight back. So I started read­ing about crime. I’ve prob­a­bly ac­quired 150 books for this project. I haven’t read all of them, and I won’t. Some of them I’ll just look at. But that’s the fun part. It’s an ex­cuse to go on Ama­zon. The prob­lem is, of course, that even­tu­ally you have to stop your­self. Other­wise you’ll col­lect books for­ever. But these books are mark­ers for the ideas that I’m in­ter­ested in. That’s why it’s so im­por­tant to have phys­i­cal books. When I see my book­shelf ex­pand­ing, it gives me the il­lu­sion that my brain is ex­pand­ing, too.