I'm listening to John Cale's "Hallelujah", though the CD will have moved on to the next song before I finish this sentence. The CD is a mix of songs I plucked from CDs I brought home from the library. It's sure nice to snag the one song I like from an album.

This is only the second CD I've burned. My first was mainly selected from the sampler CDs that came with CMJ New Music Magazine. It's sure nice to have every song a winner. No more tolerating songs because I can't be bothered to go to the CD player and hit the skip forward button. The songs I like I like better when they're surrounded by other songs that please me. Seems logical that one would like the good songs more if they were surrounded by songs one disliked, the liked song seeming that much better judged by its company. It doesn't seem to work that way for me.

For several years I've been doing essentially the same thing with poetry. As I read a book of poems I keep a stack of placemarks handy. If I read a poem I want to read again I pop in the placemark. I revisit the poem, rereading it until I decide whether I'm done, ready to let it go, or I'm not and I want that poem to be around. It's then I hand copy the poem onto binder paper and add it to a collection that's probably hundreds of pages. There have been a couple occasions I've changed my mind about a poem, upon coming across it in this personal anthology found it unbearable. Mostly I honor what captured me at the time I copied the poem originally. I date each poem when I copy it. I want to be able to look back to 1994 and see what I was reading, what I needed then. My tastes have evolved some but I like the poems I copied out ten years ago, 15 years ago, though I've read them a zillion times. Those couple occasions where I changed my mind radically enough to dread coming across a particular poem I have allowed myself to remove it. Over 15 years I can only recall doing that two times. Pretty good.

I 'spect I'll continue to like these mix CDs as the years go by. "Ra Ti Ra Ti Ra Ti Ray" sings Eddy Grant and his back-up singers.

I began copying out poems to take care of some problems I had with reading poems. I didn't like most of them. When someone would ask me who my favorite poets were I didn't have much of an answer. Even the poets whose work impressed me -- William Carlos Williams, Robert Frost, Walt Whitman -- wrote poems that annoyed me. And annoyance would too often be my main memory. If I were going to know which poets were the poets (of the hundreds cramming the shelves) to whom I wanted to return I had to have a clue. What better than the poem?

I had figure out some things right at the first. Was I copying out my favorites? Or was I copying out poems I admired, wanted to learn from, great poems? And was I copying the poems out by hand or was I typing them or photocopying them? I did all three but settled rather quickly on copying stuff out by hand. Part of it was the added affection I had for a poem when I saw it in my own handwriting. Suddenly that poem really was mine. I had written it. I had a new permission to use the poem in my own writing. When the poem was typed or photocopied it retained a foreign feel. Yes, this meant that long poems really had to prove themselves. If I were going to cramp up my hand transferring them from the source to my own anthology I was going to have to agree with every word. This is easier in a short poem. The longest piece I've yet copied is Lewis Carroll's "Hunting of the Snark". It took a few sessions of copying to get it all. But it was a kick. I didn't regret the decision at any point. I've not copied a large percentage of the poems I've read. 1%? And this is from published books. Not saying the other 99% was wasted time. I do enjoy reading poems, even many of those I know from the first line aren't going to go through my ballpoint. Because I don't copy out great poems or poems I admire. I copy out poems I personally connect to. I've come very close to copying out poems that blew me away but that, ultimately, I didn't look forward to reading again. Usually the subject matter isn't the big thing. But I must say poems that bear down on cruelty and violence have to have a real undercurrent of compassion to be keepers. My criteria were I editing a magazine or anthology would be different. I'd be more open to the poems that do things that startle, the ones that show amazing craft or try things one seldom sees. The personal anthology is where I come to share good company. It's not a collection of poems that prove anything to anybody. Except to me. And what do they prove to me again and again? That there are poems that work, that are wonderful, that are places I can go to and stay. After I've forced myself through the latest Best American Poetry and despair for there being anything worth reading I can retire to the anodyne. By no means are the poems always about cozy comfort. ... But the next thing is to talk about some of the poems I've saved in this anthology, isn't it?