It occurred to me recently that the titles of the books being recommended to me by Amazon* would, if put together, make some poems. Some very bad poems.
Looking for Jake, Monsieur
Stay up with me while mortals sleep,
the night guest, the enchanted
Journey to the end of the night
under the wide and starry sky
My struggle, the sojourn
This dark road to mercy —
the wind is not a river
Wrong Person
You should have known the woman who lost her soul
The headmaster’s wife, clever girl,
Claire of the sea light
a permanent member of the family
Starting over after her, into the wilderness,
the summer guest, the enchanted wanderer
Mother, mother, motherland,
a land more kind than home,
what she left behind before we met
Making Love, Leaving Atlanta
Invisible monsters for sale by owner
subtle bodies, strange bodies, fakes,
the returned, the accursed, the never list,
tinderbox, tumbledown,
the bookstore, the museum of extraordinary things
After I’m gone, someone —
boy, snow, bird — the pretty one
Look at the birdie
The pieces we keep; all our names:
The Silkworm, The Bird Skinner, Whale Man
A circle of wives among others
the world doesn’t end
The Atlas
The way the world works, there are little kingdoms:
the lowland, the village on horseback,
the good house, a place in the country
Sketches from a hunter’s album, the outlaw album
the scent of pine, quiet dell, lost lake, apple tree yard
At the bottom of everything, the deepest secret
the empty chair, the end of the point,
the edge of normal, the explanation for everything
The splendid things we planned
Lookaway, lookaway
The Secret History of Las Vegas
The laughter of strangers, the player of games,
a sport and a pastime, the end of free love,
the English girl, the husband’s secret,
the rainbow stories, white girls smothered in hugs
Reticence, indiscretion, submergence, damage control,
The anatomy of melancholy, the melancholy of resistance
Autobiography of a corpse, the autobiography of us
The weight of blood, burial rights
Benediction burning bright
The guts, the quorum, the southern cross
My loose thread
Light and dark, one plus one, Gemini
*These titles come from the first 200 or so books listed in the “Recommended for You” page for my Amazon account, under the category of Literature and Fiction. Titles have been combined in some cases but no words have been added, removed or transposed. (If they had been, the poem might not be so terrible.) Some titles were so context-specific it did not make sense to use them.
