But the new covers were to be entirely different. Whereas with the old ones I used a linoleum print of an anatomically correct heart and plenty of red-paint-gore, the new ones were to be kind of elegant and antiquey looking. My original plan of covering white cardstock with a gold-patterned vellum for the front cover didn't pan out because the vellum is too stiff and brittle to fold over the card, and if you try to glue it, it just soaks the vellum and the card, and bubbles. Ew.
So I settled for making the covers of red cardstock with large stickers made of the gold vellum set squarely on. I ran my trusty sticker machine out of sticker material last night, working through the permutations of this, though, so I will be out and about looking for more sticker stuff this weekend.
I may yet wind up with something completely different, however . . . that's just the way I work. Alack.
posted by Reen |
posted by Reen |
Last night's dream: in charge of maintenance and repair on a portion of the Yellow Brick Road.
posted by Reen |
I felt pretty crummy yesterday. I was supposed to go out with my friend Jeff for his birthday, but the crumminess intervened. But at least my feverish, nauseated state produced an odd dream about him . . .
Jeff's Ornithological Adventure
On Eccentric Trillionnaire
Treasurehunt Mountain,
Master Liu's Band of Robins
Will TEST YOUR FAITH, Jeff.
Right after they test
my singing (uniformly bad),
they'll string you by your arms
across two mountain cliffs,
while the rest of us admire
the view and the Robins (six
college girls in canary
suits and yellow tights)
giggle through their work.
posted by Reen |
My new favorite fact about myself: "Humans have 46 chromosomes, peas have 14, and Maureen has 7!"
My new favorite saying garnered from a true-life medical show on Discovery Health: "You're higher than a Georgia pine!"
My new favorite Google search term that got a Japanese person to this blog: "Emu pea three!"
!!!
posted by Reen |
posted by Reen |
In Evening Air
1
A dark theme keeps me here,
Though summer blazes in the vireo's eye.
Who would be half possessed
By his own nakedness?
Waking's my care --
I'll make a broken music, or I'll die.
2
Ye littles, lie more close!
Make me, O Lord, a last, a simple thing
Time cannot overwhelm.
Once I transcended time :
A bud broke to a rose,
And I rose from a last diminishing.
3
I look down the far light
And I behold the dark side of a tree
Far down a billowing plain,
And when I look again,
It's lost upon the night --
Night I embrace, a dear proximity.
4
I stand by a low fire
Counting the wisps of flame, and I watch how
Light shifts upon the wall.
I bid stillness be still.
I see, in evening air,
How slowly dark comes down on what we do.
posted by Reen |
I had planned to attend In Your Ear today . . . Catherine Daly and Leslie Bumstead were scheduled to read. But when it came time to venture out, I found I was suffering from a severe lack of willpower. DC's weather these past two days has been extremely windy, so much so that random passersby appear to be doing mime acts instead of just walking. I spent all of yesterday out and about in the wind, and I just couldn't face it again today.
Lots of new books in the pile:
John Ashbery -- Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Samuel Beckett -- Poems in English
Gregory Corso -- The Vestal Lady on Brattle
James Dickey -- Buckdancer's Choice
T.S. Eliot -- Four Quartets
David Kirby -- The Ha Ha
Denise Levertov -- The Jacob's Ladder
Nathaniel Mackey -- Whatsaid Serif
William Meredith -- The Open Sea
George Oppen -- Collected Poems
Lee Ann Roripaugh -- Beyond Heart Mountain
Ann Sexton -- The Death Notebooks
John Yau -- Ing Grish
In addition to which, books comprising lectures and inverviews with W.H. Auden, Jack Spicer, and "Six San Francisco Poets," among them Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen.
I finished handbinding a book! Actually, I never finished the first one. After covering the boards, I realized I hadn't been all that careful about measuring and attaching them, with the result that the book is kind of wonky and won't stand up straight, as the spine and covers are all out of alignment. So I started over, and in the second book, made some refinements: end papers, three tapes instead of two, trimmed pages. I just finished it this afternoon, and it looks pretty good. I give it an A-. There are a couple of small aesthetic concerns, but they're minor, and the book is completely even. Hooray!
I'm going to try to get some poems out to magazines with the rest of the long weekend, but in reality, I'll probably just end up editing and writing. I hate sending poems out. I get enough paperwork at the office.
posted by Reen |
