I Want to Read!

I've been publishing posts about my glorious, curious, so strange, very odd day on Thursday, September 3, and I’m up to the most staggering event of the day, presented in Episode 1, Scene 4 of my sensational saga, “I Want to Read! (Dickinson).”
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I mentioned in Episode 1, Scene 1, my find of The Poetry Book (HERE) with its scandalous “excerpts” from “Because I could not stop for Death” (I mean seriously – who ever heard of such tomfoolery).  Next, in Scene 2, I shed light on a monumental blunder by the editors for Simon & Shuster’s World’s Great Letters (HERE). In Episode 3, I shared some pleasant finds in Jane Donahue Eberwein’s A Dickinson Encyclopedia (HERE).  At this point in my matters of examination and my making of mischief, I stepped to the library’s online card catalog as I had yet to spy any complete volumes of Dickinson’s poetry.  Where could they be hiding?  I observed none in the 811s.  Perhaps they were all checked out?

I typed “Dickinson” into the search field and began perusing the entries.  Page by page I inspected the titles.  Hmm…perhaps I missed them, the “complete” volumes.  Back to page one I renewed my examination, a slower, more assiduous study of the records.  My heart rate hastened.  My breathing heavied.* My equilibrium unequaled.**  

The catalog showed four copies of Thomas Johnson’s 1960 volume of The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson – one each in four of the EIGHT branch locations. However, there were ZERO copies of R. W. Franklin’s The Poems of Emily Dickinson and ZERO copies of Cristanne Miller’s Emily Dickinson’s Poems As She Preserved Them.  ZERO!   Zip. Nada. Zilch.***

At this point, I became very lightheaded and shaky.  I’m not sure exactly what happened next.  I think I might have blacked out, collapsed to the floor, and juddered**** – and I think two quick-to-respond reference librarians rushed to my buckled frame and slapped my face and threw ice water upon me.  OR – and again, I cannot recall specifically what happened – I think that I might have wobbled over to the reference desk in a state of confused cognizance, drifting in and out of cognizantial***** awareness.

All I remember is that when I regained some semblance of perception, I was standing before two reference librarians, and one smiled at me through the fog and said, “May I help you?”

“Yes…” I wheezed – trying to pull in enough oxygen to allow me to speak.  “Yes, you can.”

I explained that I publish daily posts about Emily Dickinson, that I stop into libraries and bookstores to see what Dickinson that have one hand, that I was checking the online catalog, and that…. Well, you know the rest.

Both women were very cordial and very helpful – and sufficiently alarmed.  They provided me with the name of the Collections Managers and gave me her business card.  One recommended that I email her.

I said, “I’ll do one better.  I’ll buy the books and donate them to you.”

They both advised that I email her first anyway – and I did.  Who knows what sticky red tape I might have to…unstick?  Untape?  Unadhere?******  I wasn’t sure if paperback copies would be okay or if they required hardback, or some sort of “library bound” books. I am currently waiting her reply. 

* Yes, I used “heavied” as a verb.  Is "heavy" a verb?   Well, Merriam-Webster showed a "past-tense" of the word (below left), but had it listed only a an adjective, an adverb, and a noun (below right). 

The OED does classify "heavy" as a verb.  I used the term according to their fourth definition, "To become heavy through weariness or grief."  However, with their examples of usage for definitions 1, 2, 3, and 4, none is listed beyond 1581, and most are from the 1300s or earlier.  For the fifth definition, a colloquial term from Australia and New Zealand, usage emerged in the early 1970s. 

** Hmm…why isn’t “equilibrium” spelled “equalibrium”?

*** Wouldn’t Zip, Nada, and Zilch make cute names for a trio of kittens?

**** Isn’t “judder” a great word?

***** I am cognizant of the fact that I made up the word “cognizantial.”

****** Is “unadhered” a word?  Evidently not.  However, "unadherent" is.  Hmm...but I'm beginning to think the word was used once and only once, by one Robert Bentley Todd in his Cyclopaedia of Anatomy and Physiology. 

Well, hey -- if any of you OED lexicographers (is that the correct term for a dictionaryologist) happen to be reading this post -- I coined the term "cognizantial," and I've used it here in this post. Please add the term to your abecedarium. Thank you.