How Do I Love Thee? (Sonnet 43)
How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning 1806 –1861
I love thee to the depth and breadth and height
My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight
For the ends of being and ideal grace.
I love thee to the level of every day’s
Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.
I love thee freely, as men strive for right.
I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.
I love thee with the passion put to use
In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.
I love thee with a love I seemed to lose
With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath,
Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose,
I shall but love thee better after death.
This may seem dangerously weird of me to say, but I could almost direct that entire poem to my relationship with books. (The ‘after death’ part might be overdoing it, and I’m not really into lost saints.)
Books are among the loves of my life. When I was little, they were a super-significant source of entertainment and escape. We were late to acquire a TV, and even once we had one, its use was seriously rationed, its location itself – in the former coal storage room – discouraging. My sibs were a lot older, and had their own lives. The street we lived on had more babies and infants than kids around my age. So I took advantage of the public library, just a few blocks away, along with the contents of the many shelves in our house, and occasional gifts from my grandmothers and parents. I could hole up under a lightbulb and read the hours away. I’d hide under the covers with a book and a flashlight after bedtime. The stories I was reading and the information I was gathering enlivened my waking and dreaming hours, every day. I read voraciously, unquestioningly, thirstily, with little thought to the authors or their circumstances, much less how their books came to be published and distributed. Those levels of awareness developed over time.
Once the classroom teachers expected us to regurgitate book reports on a regular basis, my unthinking enjoyment had to change. Now I had to introduce new analytical processes, alongside my love of character and setting and narrative. My fifth-grade teacher memorably demanded ‘the gist’ of each book’s story, requiring more of an overview than I had thought necessary. I adjusted – and savored even more the books that I read strictly for pleasure. The magic of words on a page, transporting me to someone else’s imagined or reported world, in another time, place, and culture – that was the best thing ever. I didn’t need to remember all the details for later reference. What mattered most was the immersion: dissociation at its best. I was uncritically indulging in showers and rivers and oceans of words.
High school brought longer-form papers, based on multiple books, and the dreaded outlines. (I’m a pantser to this day.) Footnotes. Index cards. Through it all, I sustained a love of reading, sighing with relief each time the heavy lifting of term-paper generation had ended and I could return to the uncritical inhalation of books.
Life sped up with college. Thereafter, my love affair with books alternated with other kinds of love affairs – plus work and assorted adult responsibilities.
Fast forward to my life now. Working less, with fewer responsibilities and the love life of an immune-compromised old person during a pandemic, books and I are hot and heavy once more. I binge without shame.
And when I write my own sentences, I breathe a prayer of gratitude to all the writers of all the books. Couldn’t do this without you. Mwahhh!
Image by un-perfekt from Pixabay
— A M Carley writes fiction and nonfiction, and is a founding member of BACCA. Through Anne Carley Creative she provides creative coaching and full-service editing to writers and other creative people. Decks of her 52 FLOAT Cards for Writers are available on Amazon. Anne’s writer handbook, FLOAT • Becoming Unstuck for Writers, is available for purchase from central Virginia booksellers, at Bookshop.org, and on Amazon. She’s querying her first novel, and writing her second.
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