New at IWP Books: Phyllis McGinley, 1960, Times Three.

Dirge for an Era

O! do you remember Paper Books
 When paper books were thinner?
It was all so gay
In that far-off day
When you fetched them home
At a quarter a tome
 To dip in after dinner
Or carry to bed in a handy packet,
Bosomy girls on every jacket.
And never a taint of Culture
 Sullied that wholesome air
But only bodies
In Bishop’s studies
 And blood on the bill-of-fare.
As the type grew blurry the plots grew thick.
But what do we get now?
Moby Dick.

Cluttering bookstore counters,
 In stationer’s windows preening,
The Paperbacks
Now offer us facts
On Tillich and Sartre
And abstract artre
 And Life’s essential Meaning,
Confessions by St. Augustine
 Instead of murderous men
Or many a yard
Of Kierkegaard
 And the myriad laws of Zen
Or books about bees and how they hive,
Cheap at a dollar-
Ninety-five.

You pack your trunk and you’re at the station
But what do you find for a journey’s ration?
Books by Aeschylus, books by Chaucer,
Books about atom or flying saucer,
Books of poetry, deep books, choice books,
Pre-Renaissance and neo-Joyce books,
In covers chaste and a prose unlurid.
Books that explore my id and your id,
Never hammock or summer-porch books
But Compass, Evergreen, Anchor, Torch Books,
Books by a thousand stylish names
And everywhere, everywhere, Henry James.

O! do you remember Paper Books
 When paper books were thrilling,
When something to read
Was seldom Gide
Or Proust or Peacock
Or Margaret Mead
 And seldom Lionel Trilling?
Gone is the sleuth that cheered our youth
 And the prose that galloped pure.
The flame of our pleasure burns to ash
Since shops are swept of their darling trash
And all we can buy for petty cash
 Is paper Literature.