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Cover | |
| I made this in 2001 in time for the award reading for the SUNY Buffalo Undergraduate Poetry Prize, which is given out in April. I initially sketched "pillow-book" with Robin Brox in mind, but I ended up imagining a different, softer kind of sex in order to make the cloth book. I had seen Peter Greenaway's film earlier that year. |
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Open page | |
| The book folds out like a felt picture-book I had when I was little. The children's "book" didn't have any words, but was felt with jungle animals in pockets. You could take the jungle animals out of the pockets (the pockets were shaped like rocks, trees, caves, etc.) and snap them onto other places in the book. This is the first page. |
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"Unclothe" | |
| Unite/untie/unclothe it. This looks sort of like the poem I made for the Elevator Postcard Project. I was apparently interested in stretchy letters (the "n" here). |
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"Heartfelt" | |
| I was obsessed with valentines then (as now). This is a variation on the "heartfelt" concrete poem I also made in Spring 2001. I liked that you could touch the heart-shaped poem and it felt soft. |
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"Laid" | |
| I was definitely thinking of the James song. For some reason I was interested in how the word "lei" and the word "laid" might go together. I think I just thought that it sounded pretty, rings of flowers and sex. The ambiguity of the second cursive loop allows it to be read as "lei" or "lai(d)" and the availability of both readings is enforced by the flowery parentheses. |
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"Fret/puncture/tie/bind" | |
| All nice things that one can do with bound bodies or with thread (as in sewing/embroidering). |
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Open page 2 | |
| There are three sets of facing pages in all, but the photo of the first page was too blurry to put online. Each page is inset with a green felt pocket, and the white page poems are inserted into the green pockets. |
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"Sleepy eyes" | |
| I know I was imagining the drawn-on eyes of my favorite ragdoll from when I was a child (appropriately, her name was "Best Baby"). Her eyes often washed out in the wash and I would have to ask Mom to redraw them. I don't know why there's an asterisk but I'm sure I had a reason for putting it there. |
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"Sweet Dreams" | |
| This has three readings: "sweet dreams" (blue), "wet dreams" (pink) and a third, which is in white stitching and may or may not include the moon (as a "C"), which I can't read. If you figure out what it says, email me. |