Hazel & Wren Staff Shelfie: Wren

Editor’s Note: Dear readers – today, we take a break from the normally scheduled What We’re Reading reviews to share with you another one of our shelfies. Aaron shared his last week here, and we’ll have more shelfies from other staff coming up in the next few weeks. Read on, into our dear, writerly souls.

My shelfie is a work in progress, since I moved earlier this summer and still am getting settled. I purged a lot of books, too, that will go into the little free library I am planning to build for our new house. So, these shelves are a little lighter.

The first bookshelf is one that you see immediately upon entering the house, so I filled it with my favorites, to greet me after a long day.

These two shelves house some of my favorite fiction (and some nonfiction).  A few favorites: Kira Henehan’s Orion You Came and You Took All My Marbles; anything by Toni Morrison; Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding; and much more.

The above shelf is one of my most used. It houses my favorite poetry collections, which heavily leans towards contemporary poets. Some highlights: multiple books by my soul twin Dorianne Laux, Ted Kooser, DA Powell, and so much more. A tiny crate/makeshift shelf that I forgot to take a picture of sits nearby and holds my letterpress poetry chapbooks. These books hold a special place in my heart, as I helped print/bind many of them on various stages during my apprenticeship with Red Dragonfly Press.

I have my literary education shelves in that entryway bookshelf, too. These are full collections, anthologies, and classics that I either read in undergrad or in my beginning adventures into literature to immerse myself in the classical foundation. While I have since drifted towards more contemporary tastes, many of these still hold a special place in my heart. One such favorite is Emily Dickinson, who was my first favorite poet in middle school. I even went so far as to paint lines of her poetry on my bedroom walls, once Hazel had moved out of our shared room for college. I’ve since found many other poets that I love, but dear Emily will always have a place on my shelves.

Upstairs I have this bookshelf, which houses a shelf and a half of Hazel & Wren review copies, many of which I have ended up reviewing. I love that via publishers sending me unsolicited review copies, I’ve discovered so many new writers that excite me.

Below that are more books, mostly fiction. My passion is poetry but its also my magnifying glass and fiction is my escape. I’m often surprised to see how much shelf real estate is devoted to fiction.

With these shelfies, I confess to you my love of the physical book — although I’m sure that comes as a surprise to no one. I just got married and am still riding the emotional high, so get prepared for some warm fuzzies: Many of these books hold sentimental value and I can’t bear to part with them. Even though every time I move, I groan when lugging all of my book boxes, it is worth it to me to have these friends, teachers, escapists, reflectors, adventurers, and powerful observers on my shelves. The emotional and physical heft of one of these books in hand is a magic that this luddite will never abandon.

What does your shelfie confess about you?