Thought for the Day: A novel that is 350 pages is 350 pages; a poetry collection that is 77 pages is not 77 pages.
Why? Because, with the poetry book, when you like a couple of lines, you stop and reread those couple of lines.
Why? Because, with a poetry book, when you like a poem, you stop and reread that poem, sometimes three or four times, to fully savor its secrets.
Why? Because, with a poetry book, when you like the whole shebang, you do not lament coming to the end, you immediately restart to enjoy the book all over again. There is no ending to ruin. There are no spoilers to hamper you.
Thus, when I reread a 77 pager by turning from page 77 back to page 1, it becomes a 154 pager. Add to that the pages I reread the first time (and I’ve lost track) and you see that even the number 154 is wrong.
Conclusion: When it’s good, a poetry collection’s pagination is superfluous. Maybe it will help you find certain poems, if that be your wish. But really, with poetry being as rich and dense as it is, there’s no need for such niceties as page numbers.
Good poetry keeps giving. Like a yeast bread newly covered after kneading, it grows and expands because it is alive. Its brevity, then, is ironic. Deliciously so.
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4 thoughts on “The Irony of Pagination in Poetry Books”
Hmmm… I’d never thought about it that way. However, I often reread lines or whole paragraphs or sections of other books, too — nonfiction more often than fiction, but often fiction as well.
Before I read your post, I thought (from the title) that it might have to do with the mechanics of pagination — perhaps including formatting of ebooks. In a paper book, I’d really like every poem to begin on the recto. But many of my poems are less than a page long, so I sort of have to use the left-hand pages. I do try to begin any poem that will exceed one page on the recto. I really dislike the looks of a poem that begins on the verso and continues on the recto. Niggling, I know.
Curious that nonfiction stops you more than fiction. I read both gangbusters, as a rule, though some novels are “poetic” for sure. Still, not the same as poetry books. And oddly, I prefer 2-page poems that start on the verso so I can see it all at once. Interesting.
Right you are and thus I put a number only on the first page of each poem. Those are the ones on the contents page I don’t like poems with no title or just a number as my mental filing system doesn’t work well that way.
At least books don’t put any “orphans ” on their pages. Single lines.