Shroud of the Gnome

The Chicopee Public Library withdrew Shroud of the Gnome, a poetry collection by James Tate, from its catalog. It is currently unclear as to when this happened, but the bar code is slashed out with a permanent marker and its checkout card remains eerily empty. No one ever checked it out. Now, i’m not sure how common it is for a book to have never been checked out of a library — but it seems pretty dramatic.

Shroud of the Gnome was released by The Ecco Press in 1997. What a year that was. I still remember it. Life was slower, maybe a bit more colorful and vibrant, things were felt a bit more than they are now. People bumped into each other doing things. They left their houses and loved harder. Passing pleasantries over digital devices was a practice in its infancy and the Flyers got swept by the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup final.

29 years is a long time for a book to sit in solitary. I feel for it. Not to project human emotions on to an inanimate object. But still, no one, or no thing deserves to be neglected for that long.

I finished the collection this morning. It opened up to me, and I gave it all I had. To the folks in beautiful Chicopee, Massachusetts. Sorry. You had your chance. You really don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.