Easons Book Store

30 Replies

Easons Book Store

Just after graduating from university
with a degree and no job
I had time on my hands
so I would take the 46A bus into the centre of Dublin
and read poetry in Easons Books Store.
Why poetry?
Well, it’s hard to browse a whole novel.
It was there I learnt ironic distance
from TS Eliot and Roger Mc Gough,
It was there that I learnt from Sylvia Plath
that rhyming doesn’t have to be doggerel
It was there I learnt from Robert Lowell
writing about the woe that is in marriage
that a poem could be a novel
that a poem could cover the same subject matter
as Updike, Bellow, Roth, Heller
that poems
don’t have to be about peat bogs and Celtic mist
and that all good poems contain lines
that snag on the brain
like wool on a barbed wire fence
and all for the price of the bus fare there and back.

Taking part in Open Link over at dverse.

This poem was inspired by a prompt over at Desperate Poets, where the incomparable Brendan asks us to “consider what influenced you as a poet and what you have done with those influences as you have grown and developed in your work. What bid you fly, where have you flown and what are you still looking for?”

If you haven’t done so already, check out Brendan’s blog, he puts out one prompt a week and they are always intriguing and inspirational.

The picture above shows that I did eventually buy some books!

30 thoughts on “Easons Book Store”

  1. Sherry Marr's avatarSherry Marr

    I love this so much! “that poems
    don’t have to be about peat bogs and Celtic mist
    and that all good poems contain lines
    that snag on the brain
    like wool on a barbed wire fence…”
    Wonderful!

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  5. Rajani Radhakrishnan's avatarRajani Radhakrishnan

    Love this…all of it… and I know exactly what you mean because I learnt so much reading James Kavanaugh sitting in the poetry aisle of a borders book store… as for those lines that snag on the brain…stuff of life!!

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  6. brendan563's avatarbrendan563

    Probably why I took to poetry early on to – shorter and cheaper. Both winning arguments for a young man’s literary appetites. A lively lovely feather from the beginning.

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  7. fireblossom32's avatarfireblossom32

    Bravo! Excellent! You just captured my young adulthood in a nutshell. Nice to know that there are more of us out there.

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  10. Woih's avatarWoih

    I like the, “snag on the brain.” There is one poem from years ago I read with “crossing into sunlight” was the closing line. it’s stuck with me for about 12 years now. A good snag.

    Liked by 1 person

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  11. kim881's avatarkim881

    I love your choice of books, Jim! There’s nothing I like more than rooting through books in a book shop – and the possibility of reading in the shop is even more tantalising. I think I might have been to Easons back in the eighties. I also remember learning that ‘rhyming doesn’t have to be doggerel’ and that poems ‘don’t have to be about peat bogs and Celtic mist’, although they are wonderful subjects for a poem. But then Heaney showed us that there is a different way to write about peat bogs! I love those lines:
    ‘…all good poems contain lines
    that snag on the brain
    like wool on a barbed wire fence’.

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  14. lillian's avatarlillian

    Oh I SO enjoyed this! Most especially these words:
    “that a poem could be a novel”
    and
    “all good poems contain lines
    that snag on the brain
    like wool on a barbed wire fence”
    There’s a wonderful poetry book shop in Cambridge, MA, just across the river from me in Boston. You’ve reminded me, I should stop over there again soon .

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  15. merrildsmith's avatarmerrildsmith

    I like the memory of this bookstore and the learning.
    Like others, I enjoyed
    “and that all good poems contain lines
    that snag on the brain
    like wool on a barbed wire fence”

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