Guest contributor: Alise Hamilton
A Book Spine Poem
categories: Cocktail Hour / Reading Under the Influence
12 comments
Just the titles, not the authors…
Alise Hamilton is a bookseller at Andover Books in Andover, Massachusetts, and is the events and marketing coordinator for HugoBookstores. In addition, she’s an MFA student at Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, working on a collection of linked stories. In honest fashion, she says: “The book spine poetry I created, but the idea to do it is stolen: http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/04/16/book-spine-poetry-future/ ” This is her first guest post at Bill and Dave’s.Bill and Dave’s invites other larcenous souls to create spine poems for fun and prizes! Winners will get to help staff the Bill and Dave’s table at AWP this year!
Here’s the first entry, from Kristen Keckler:
See comment thread!
Next entry is by Teresa Sundmark:
Teresa Sundmark’s spine-tingling poem.
The Land Remembers
Having Everything Right:
The Woman Warrior
Breaking Clean.
The Difficult Child
Leaving Resurrection.
The Bigness of the World
Tinkers
About this Life.
Ordinary Wolves
Bite Every Sorrow.
Godless,
Lifesaving
Women in their Beds
Tell it Slant.
Alone With All that Could Happen,
Timebends.
Incorrect Distances
Runaway.
You Must Remember This.
(Authors: Ben Logan, Kim R. Stafford, Maxine Hong Kingston, Judy Blunt, Stanley Turecki, M.D., Eva Saulitis, Lori Ostlund, Paul Harding, Barry Lopez, Seth Kantner, Barbara Ras, Dan Barker, Judith Barrington, Gina Berriault, Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola, David Jauss, Arthur Miller, Tracy Philpot, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates)
So I spent a little too much time on this…. Here’s what I’ve got.
The Land Remembers
Having Everything Right:
The Woman Warrior
Breaking Clean.
The Difficult Child
Leaving Resurrection.
The Bigness of the World
Tinkers
About this Life.
Ordinary Wolves
Bite Every Sorrow.
Godless,
Lifesaving
Women in their Beds
Tell it Slant.
Alone With All that Could Happen,
Timebends.
Incorrect Distances
Runaway.
You Must Remember This.
(Authors: Ben Logan, Kim R. Stafford, Maxine Hong Kingston, Judy Blunt, Stanley Turecki, M.D., Eva Saulitis, Lori Ostlund, Paul Harding, Barry Lopez, Seth Kantner, Barbara Ras, Dan Barker, Judith Barrington, Gina Berriault, Brenda Miller & Suzanne Paola, David Jauss, Arthur Miller, Tracy Philpot, Alice Munro, Joyce Carol Oates)
I have a photo too, but I’m not sure how to post it.
Wow, awesome, Teresa. Yeah, I spent way too much time on mine, too. (I did two others I didn’t really like before I came up with “Later, at the bar.”) My favorite lines are “Ordinary Wolves / Bite Every Sorrow.” Glad you were able to work Tinkers in!
Yes, Tinkers was too good of a verb to pass up! Thanks for noticing the Ordinary Wolves / Bite Every Sorrow…. those two were just meant to go together. Yours is great too. Those titles fit together beautifully. One fun thing about this is realizing how many awesome titles there are out there.
ps. You could load the photo to the main “Bill and Dave’s” FB page. Or email it to Bill, & he might be able to load it.
Yes! I would love to see this book poem tower!
Yes, it was quite a tower! There’s something to be said for brevity with this exercise.
Lovely! I’ll email to get your photo!
Wow! I am absolutely enamored by this idea, such brilliance! 😀
…and they are super fun to create. Much more fun than actually organizing ones books, I must say!
Thanks for this, Alise! I will be doing a “found poem” sort of exercise with my poetry students this fall and will definitely try this with them. Here’s a spine poem I found on my shelves:
later, at the bar
where you’ll find me
sailing alone around the room
smashed
seeing stars
comfortable with uncertainty
the kiss
tumble home
(Authors, line by line: Rebecca Barry, Ann Beattie, Koren Zailckas, Diana Hammond, Pema Chodron, Kathryn Harrison, Amy Hempel)
Oops, left out Billy Collins, line 3.
Beautiful! (You had me at Amy Hempel!)