Poem About Reading

Here is a second guest-poem by Patrick Bizzaro, this one concerning reading (among other things):

LIKE A READER
aaaaaaa for Dave Bartholomae

I love to open a book
some previous owner
has marked and folded,
a book that turns
magically
to a page read
more often than others,
to a margin
filled with pencil prints,
checked lines,
paragraphs in brackets.

And I love the reader
I do not know
who argues with the author,
corrects him,
circles typos,
accuses the author
of plagiarism or at best
of dialog with some other writer.

I love it best
when that reader assumes
a reference to someone
who lived after
the author, someone, perhaps,
the author created,
like a character outside the book,
like a reader.

Patrick Bizzaro

Copyright 2008 by Patrick Bizzaro