The Poetry of Bookmarks

by

Laine Farley

And you read your emily dickinson,
And I my robert frost,
And we note our place with bookmarkers
That measure what we’ve lost.
     Paul Simon, The Dangling Conversation

Paul Simon’s lyrics may be one of the best known lines of poetry referring to bookmarks, but I have found at least fifty other poems that use bookmarks either literally or figuratively; eleven of them have “bookmark” or a variation in the title. Such well-known poets as Charles Bukowski, Ted Hughes, Maxine Kumin and Robert Nye along with lesser lights have used the bookmark in metaphors and similes, most often to suggest remembrance or marking something of significance. Some of the intriguing lines include “its bookmark beak buried in down . . .”  from the poem “A few of the many numbered birds of the state of Oaxaca” and “The jogger in the Rastafarian sweats / runs past/the mechanic reading Marx on lunch break / with a sprout sandwich for a bookmark . . .” from the poem “Here in Berkeley.”

They may be wistful: “Like bookmarks in a story to be continued, / I leave behind my hunger for a different life . . .” from the poem “Retirement.” They can even be sinister as in “When he stopped she closed on him like a book on a bookmark . . .” from Ted Hughes’ poem “Crow and Mama.”

One of my favorite lines was written by my good friend, Donald Britton (who deserved to be famous) was part of “Capital Life,” published in Sun and Moon (1979):

States of being and aspiring to the condition
Of a bookmark, dividing the known
From the unknown, neutral with respect to each?

Some of the more interesting physical items appearing as bookmarks in poetry include a tongue depressor, strands of long hair, a draft card, leaves from different trees left in Marxist classics, a thin shell found in a Communist manifesto, the parson’s glasses inside the “big book,” a strip of elastic underwear stashed in Proust, and a Durex hiding in Milton.

The verses range from the trivial to the poignant. For the former, there is a contest sponsored by the Spectator on verse mottoes for household objects which produced:

Between these pages here I lie
Marking that you’ve read thus far:
We know our places, you and I,
For where I am is where you are.

A Robert Frost poem called “Maple” represents the poignant with a story about a young woman who tries to understand the meaning of her unusual name, given to her by her dying mother and apparently inspired by a maple leaf left as a bookmark in a Bible. I was led to this poem because it is quoted in the Oxford English Dictionary’s entry for bookmark. It didn’t provide the name of the poem, but fortunately I was able to use a concordance to Frost’s poetry to locate it.

Her mother's bedroom was her father's still,
Where she could watch her mother's picture fading.
Once she found for a bookmark in the Bible
A maple leaf she thought must have been laid
In wait for her there. She read every word
Of the two pages it was pressed between,
As if it was her mother speaking to her.
But forgot to put the leaf back in closing
And lost the place never to read again.
She was sure, though, there had been nothing in it.

My personal collection includes a few bookmarks with poems on them, sometimes just to accompany an illustration, or as in the example below, to promote a book of poetry. The Emily Dickinson bookmark contains a poem about a book but the illustration includes a bookmark. I wonder if this sparest of poets ever called upon the bookmark in her poetry. The bookmark, like a poem, can convey much meaning in a small space.


Laine Farley is a digital librarian who misses being around the look, feel and smell of real books. Her collection of over 3,000 bookmarks began with a serendipitous find while reviewing books donated to the library. Fortunately, her complementary collection of articles and books about bookmarks provides an excuse for her to get back to libraries and try her hand at writing about bookmarks. Contact Laine.