As a third-semester student in an MFA program, I have spent the last few months in the local library poring over books and rifling through periodicals. The librarians there have grown accustomed to seeing me untidily sprawled in the aisles or else haunting the study carrels for hours on end. In addition to writing a paper, I’ve devoured numerous books on the matter of craft and diligently read the work of poets that I’ve found useful to my paper topic. In a funny way, I’ve had a good time. I was genuinely interested in the topic of my paper, and I enjoyed the poets I was reading. Overall, it was nice to feel that I was making some headway on something useful.
The day after I turned in my paper I went to the library once again. After plucking my scribbled sticky notes from the pages of several books and dropping the heavy volumes in the return box, I turned my attention to a matter I had anticipated for weeks: the gathering of as many frivolous, unwholesome books as possible. I got together a pile of about fifteen books that I had been burning to read during all the weeks I was pegging away at my paper. Some of these were books that I had read and loved in childhood, but others were by authors and poets that I had discovered in recent years. A couple were random impulses chosen either for their beautiful cover art or an interesting description decorating the book jacket. But all were books that I would have classified firmly as “pleasure” reading. These, I was sure, would never become source material for any great academic papers. I took the books home with me and I have been reading happily for about a week.
As I read, however, I became aware of a curious phenomenon. All at once, book-related habits from childhood were reappearing. They accompanied me to the supermarket in my purse, snoozed under my pillow at night, and beckoned to me appealingly from the dinner table. When I read the books I had loved as a child, I found myself perking up at passages I had always loved, finishing sentences in my mind before the pages had even turned. Reading through the old books and the new, I was reminded of why I had wanted to devote my life to writing to begin with and the power of a book to sweep you off of your feet with the beauty of its language and the charm of its characters. Although it was a completely unintended result, I found myself scribbling down more and more ideas for poems or stories as my pile of books dwindled.
Although my studies have been important to me, and I have read many fine pieces of literature over the past eight or nine years, I can no longer feel that there is any type of reading that is entirely frivolous or unwholesome. The most unassuming little book might speak volumes to you as a writer, and might influence some great change in your work. As writers, we must always be open to the work of others, and must constantly reevaluate what influences are helping us most in our writing lives.