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Fortune box | |
| I made 50 of these for my reading on 12 November 2005, and I gave out about 40 at the reading. The rest I gave to friends while I was in Buffalo. |
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Contents | |
| When you hold it upside down and dump it out, this is what you find inside: a white rolled-up paper, a pink square of paper, a lavender square of paper, a white square of paper, sawdust, snappers, and a fortune cookie. |
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The Fortune Cookie | |
| It's a plain old normal fortune cookie. |
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Scroll - Ourobouros | |
| Ginny and I spent a few hours dripping wax onto all of these and talking about Shakespeare. Luckily Ginny's a bit of a pyro and didn't have any significant nerve damage from all the hot wax that got dripped on her. |
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Ourobouros | |
| When you unroll "Ourobouros" it's a visual/handwriting poem about dragons. You can read the whole poem in the teeny tiny print at the top of the page, but you'll need a magnifying glass. |
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Index - front and back | |
| jessica smith • ruthless grip • washington, d.c. • 12 november 2005 • contents • handheld • fireworks • fortune cookie • ouroboros • open work • fortune-teller • format • poem-objects in a tiny white chinese take-out box • text set in big caslon • thanks • lorraine graham • kaplan harris • m magnus • calligraphy advisor • lorraine graham |
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Index - inside | |
| • poetics • a group of poetic objects created for a singular reading at a specific spatio-temporal location • intended as investigations of touch, gesture, gift-giving, memory, poetry as dictation (instruction) & craft, startle response & extempora-neous audience collaboration • thematically organized around exchange (gift, communication, handoff, touch), fortune (luck, time, futuricity, chance), amer- ican assimilation of “chinese” culture (china to americans: fireworks, take-out, fortune cookies), & containment (boxes, holding, “ruthless grip”) • |
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Snappers | |
| I had planned to throw these during the reading, but the reading was in an a paper-art gallery and that seemed like asking for trouble. When everyone got outside we started throwing them. Fireworks are illegal in DC but these are not; nonetheless passerby seemed pretty anxious about their proximity to small exploding objects. |
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Handheld handled | |
| I wanted this to look like some kind of confection. The paper is really pretty (it's called "sorbet"), it's dark chocolate brown on one side and lavender on the other. |
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Handheld open | |
| Handheld folds out like name 8/9 does, it's a variation on an accordion fold. |
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Handheld spread out | |
| If you open this as an image in a new window you might be able to read it. It's no big loss if you can't. With this poem I was experimenting to see exactly how short I could make a poem, and have it still be a poem (have meaning, description, alliteration or rhyme, even meter.) |
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Open Work | |
| This little pink square folds open in an unusual way. I read it aloud with Lorraine Graham and we chose different paths through it. |
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Open Work open - 1 | |
| You can read it in whatever order you want, although you will find that you're drawn to certain patterns and phrases. It's not all random; I plan out the likelihood of the paths you'll take by formatting it in a certain way. |
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Open Work open - 2 | |
| Pull down a flap and more words appear... |
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Open Work open - 3 | |
| Now it's getting crazy-- |
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Open Work - 4 | |
| Almost finished... |
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Open Work - 5 | |
| Whew. This poem was about sex. |
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Open Work - back | |
| This is what Open Work looks like from the back when you've opened it up |
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Me, reading | |
| "Pink" was my theme for the night. I never have a proper place to wear this dress. |