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Silent Cal's revenge
15 September 2004 11:56 amI'm fond of marginalia in used books — comments and annotations and arguments from previous owners. All the reasons described in 84 Charing Cross Road.
I also collect old poetry anthologies. Editors a century ago had a very different sense of what was important and good and likely to last, of the 50 years previous to them, than we do today. They tended to stuff in gobs of poets I've never heard of outside of these anthologies. Some of it is, indeed, lost gems. A lot is, well, banal and uninteresting.
Best of all are old textbook anthologies with student notes. I looove finding these. Such this one, currently kept in my office for de-stressing breaks: The College Book of Verse, copyright 1927, used by Maude Muller Morgan (probably within a decade of its publication) as her notebook, taking down marginal lecture notes in pencil. This book is a treasure mine of mostly obvious and occasionally astute observations, as well as the occasional head-scratcher.
Which brings me to my question: Does anyone have any idea why someone would write "think of Calvin Cooledge (sic)" next to the first dozen lines of Frost's "Mending Wall"? Because I've no clue.
---L.
I also collect old poetry anthologies. Editors a century ago had a very different sense of what was important and good and likely to last, of the 50 years previous to them, than we do today. They tended to stuff in gobs of poets I've never heard of outside of these anthologies. Some of it is, indeed, lost gems. A lot is, well, banal and uninteresting.
Best of all are old textbook anthologies with student notes. I looove finding these. Such this one, currently kept in my office for de-stressing breaks: The College Book of Verse, copyright 1927, used by Maude Muller Morgan (probably within a decade of its publication) as her notebook, taking down marginal lecture notes in pencil. This book is a treasure mine of mostly obvious and occasionally astute observations, as well as the occasional head-scratcher.
Which brings me to my question: Does anyone have any idea why someone would write "think of Calvin Cooledge (sic)" next to the first dozen lines of Frost's "Mending Wall"? Because I've no clue.
---L.