...simply the prettiest poetry books...St Martin's Press Hardcovers...17mar14...

There's nothing better than the right book to fit the context of its content.  When the overall shape, cover type, slip type, paper weight, font, color, heft come together - it is a delight to the senses.  As with any book, they have the power to transform the ordinary to a time where the memento is within your grasp.  Its smell and its feel can bring one back to a sunny day spent at the beach where the companion was only you and the author.

A problem for e-readers is that the physical aspects of the books are gone: they have been assimilated into the size and heft of your e-book reader, whatever form that happens to be.  They never change.  Worst of all, the words may very well scale according to the changes in the resolution of the screen.  [Yes, there is an obvious reason for this and a definite power in having that ability, but I make the argument that the book is just as powerful to tell the story when it is fixed.]

A book is private.  It is property.  You feel it within the confines of what is around you.  It is interplay.  Light hits each book differently.  It interacts with your unique physicality.  A phone or a tablet simply don't do that.  They server their purpose in a pinch, but the experience of the read is drastically altered.  And the smell!

Had I known that the Brownings had an apartment next to the
Spanish Steps, I would have scrutinized this much
more closely while there.  Apparently you can
rent out several different 'literary' apartments all around Rome.

St. Martin's Press created a series of poetry encapsulating the author's best work in a format that is a delight to touch.  It is not perfect, mind you, but, for the sub-$10 price, these are within anyone's grasp to collect and enjoy.

Although they are not pocket books in the explicit sense, they are true to the form of memento books - compact, not at all unwieldy, light enough that you scarcely know it is there.  They (roughly) follow the UK's traditional Duke format of 7.5 x 5.3.  The rectangular feel is just enough to get the sense of a traditional format of length along the sides, perfect for the scarce illustrations and the formatting of the poetry.


And the placement of the poetry is where these shine.  It is if, almost lovingly, the printer carefully placed the words on the page in such a way that the author would have easily approved.  There are compilation series that are atrocious (I just bought one on my Christmas geek haul, the Haiku one), where there was more interest in the pictures loosely associated with the theme and not the gist of the content itself.  But, with these, they are framed appropriately for each page.

Of course the content is sublime.  These are the best of the best collections you could ask for.  It is not a difficult 'right' gift for anyone who likes to dip their toes into poetry or even general reading.  They look amazing on one's book shelf.

Available at Walmart, Amazon and Barnes and Noble.