Phillip Lopate

>Margin Comments: Books do furnish a house

Posted on September 30, 2010. Filed under: bookcultures, Margin Comments, Phillip Lopate, TriQuarterly Review |

Tri-Quarterly Review talks with Phillip Lopate about his bookshelves.

This is my nest, my aerie. And it is like a kind of a tree house in the sense that I’m on a third floor and I look out on these trees across the way and surrounded by books, which is the way I like it. They say books do furnish a house, and that’s been my experience, certainly.

I would rather buy a book than borrow it from the library. I mark it up. And I used to get into arguments with my wife. She’s a painter and a graphic designer, and she would say, “We don’t have any room for paintings, for artworks. These books are taking over, you know?” But I tried to argue that this was my livelihood, this was a working library. These are not passively sitting there. These are books that I use again and again.

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