Elsewhere: What is your book cover trying to tell us

Gary Sullivan has spent the last few days looking at poetry book design on his blog Elsewhere, examining some of the cliches and conventions of covers. Something for DIYers to consider, since many of us do the designing ourselves.

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6

A few related posts on other blogs:

K. Silem Mohammad at Lime Tree

Elisa Gabbert at Pshares

Peter Davis at Hitler's Mustache & again (NB: I love Peter's cover, as well as the book it wraps.)

Clay Banes at Eyeball Hatred

François Luong at Voices in the Utter Dark

I'm sure I've missed some? And check out this cool assembly of small press book covers pulled together by C. E. Putnam (from which the image above is clipped, gracias).

In addition to a bunch of the same things mentioned by these folks--especially the Big Game stuff, Katie Degentesh's The Anger Scale from Combo Books, James Meetze's designs for Tougher Disguises--here are a few covers I think work particularly well:



That's Johannes Göransson's A new quarantine will take my place, from Apostrophe. (NB: Dear Apostrophers, that link to JG's book page is broken! working now.) At their book table at AWP, I immediately gravitated toward this anti-design cover. The bold, flat ground with tiny abstract-looking black graphics is compelling, and interesting because it fails to observe any of the rules. Soon you realize the abstract markings on the front cover are actually the negative spaces which would be enclosed by the letters of the title, if the title were not the same color as the ground, i.e. invisible. The title does appear conventionally on the spine, and in mirror image on the back. You can also see (via that link above) that this second book from Apostrophe bears some visual relation to their first book, Catherine Meng's Tonight's the Night. Both books feature the title in/around the center of the book on a solid ground, with the author's name at the bottom. So there's some coherence, without them being identical. More on this idea below. (Also, the ghosting/repetition of Meng's title has a kind of tremelo or reverb effect that's interesting in light of the book's Neil Young connection, but that's a bonus for people who already know that.)

I'm already revealing a personal preference, no? A bold, flat, graphic style--a little pop, a lot mid-century mod, a palette of primaries or brights, "clean" designs with lots of space. (Well, that's one kind of thing I like.) Another example: I've always really liked the look of Toner by Ron Silliman. Annoyingly, there's not a single jpg of it anywhere on the internet. (WTF?!) It's a flat red-orange ground with TONER in yellow about a third of the way down, a pyramid of yellow dots (like a rack of billiard balls, but just 6 in a 1, 2, 3 formation) and his name in yellow below. The back is flat yellow with red-orange type. (Potes & Poets.)

Update: Ron comments to offer this jpg (thanks!), says he designed this one himself (cool), and explains that what I called billiard balls is the low-toner symbol from some copy machines. (Never seen that myself--the copiers I've wrestled just say it in lame prose. Heh.)



These next two are by Jeff Clark, a.k.a. Quemadura, already mentioned several times in the posts and comment streams above.



(So, yeah, I'm a fan, as I'm sure I've mentioned here or on my main blog before. I think Quemadura designs sometimes overuse italics tho. And Clark has a distinctive style--maybe too distinctive? His designs are recognizably his, sometimes to the point of distracting from the press branding or inherent book identity--the book sometimes feels more like a Jeff Clark product than that of the press or the author. Am I making sense? There's no denying that the books are beautifully done, and individually they are knockouts.)

Anyway, what I like about these John Clare books is first that they work well together as a set (though they are sold separately). The paperback design (I haven't actually seen in person the hardcover shown here) takes the classic "portrait painting of a dead author" convention and infuses it with with contemporary feeling, by using halftone screening and clever cropping. At the spine, the portrait wraps and continues without the screening (so as it appears on the hardcover) after a "violator" bar containing the spine copy. I don't have a shot, but that puts a seductive slice of the poet's face on the spine--most of an eye, his handsome nose and slightly parted lips. Spines are usually so spare--mainly because poetry books are so thin. On the back, a bare hint of hair, facial contour and half an eye peeks in from the edge. Even though the portrait itself is very lovely, the usual treatment of slapping it centered on the cover would have placed this paperback square in boring dead-author territory. This would be hard to repeat, however. Or rather, too easy to repeat.

Which brings me to my next point. I go back and forth on the "series design" idea for much the same reason I sometimes find the Quemadura "house style" a little distracting. The uniformity of the City Lights pocket books, the textured & uncoated Black Sparrow covers, or the New Direction B&W covers work as a branding device for sure--very effective. The templates are hot, but the resulting coherence tends to overemphasize the press identity rather than say anything about the books/authors themselves, to my mind. This is less important with reprints than with first editions--so for the Penguin Classics or Everyman's Library, etc.--this kind of thing seems fine. It also works fine for Vintage (under the direction of Chip Kidd?) on their Black Lizard crime novel series and other stuff like the Philip K. Dick catalog. One of my favorite series: these old-school Penguins, yum.

I can think of at least one instance where the poet & poems come through, being supported rather than muted by a series design. David Trinidad's books from Turtle Point: Hand Over Heart, Answer Song, Plasticville, etc. They share certain elements--poppy colors, stripes, an op-art kind of flatness. Unfortunately I can't find a pic of Hand Over Heart or find my copy in this mess right now--but it's black with a hot pink heart and some stripes if I remember correctly. Even his new book, The Late Show incorporates some stripes, while moving away from the flat graphics to a sketchier, warmer style:


My favorite book designer is Charlie Orr. Of course, he's one of my very best friends and a huge influence on my own design sensibility, so I'm plenty biased! I should post a bunch of Charlie's designs, but it will have to wait for another post. I've dawdled here long enough today.





What are your favorites?

New at Big Game!

Tiny as ever and back after some time in hibernation: TINYSIDES!

Featuring work by:
Sam Amadon
Carrie Jerrell
Jess Rowan
Erin M. Bertram
Betsy Fagin

A really great article on some DIYers in DC!

From the Washington City Paper:

Bots? Yes. God? Probably not. “I have a real love of post-New York School poetry,” says [Maureen] Thorson [of Big Game Books]. “I like things with a sense of humor, especially if it has robots in it. I’m a real sucker for robots and pseudo-post-Eastern European realism and stuff.” Don’t bother with John Ashbery impressions, though. “If I want to read John Ashbery, I can read John Ashbery,” she says. “He already exists. I also shy away from the religious stuff, unless it’s very odd.”

[...] “It’s just me running the press, so I try to let people know there’s not some objective panel of experts,” says Thorson. “Whether you get a book or not is whether or not I like it enough to make five little copies with my own little hands. If I take it, that’s a fun thing for you. If I don’t, I’m just one person, and I’m going to have my own weird quirks and tastes.”

In addition to Reen of Big Game, Michael Gushue of Vrzhu Press, Rod Smith of Edge Books, and Reb Livingston of No Tell Books also tell it like it is, invoke Papa Walt, pass the bullshit test, & explain the many fulfilling reasons why they DIY.

Good stuff! Go, y'all! Link.

Summer reading, DIY style

New from Dusie Press, Logan Ryan Smith's The Singers! Kevin Killian gushes, "Music and its family of allied arts reigns high in the world Logan Ryan Smith has carved for his Singers. Dance and ritual act as counterforces to the martial law the poem has been written under, in this time of Iraq incursion that touches every aspect of our lives. Smith sends out these poems like bulletins to his heroes, his confreres, his girlfriends, his dead; in the serial form pioneered by Jack Spicer, John Ashbery, Robin Blaser, and Larry Kearney, the tropes rumble like card tricks—Spicer’s forests, diamonds, Giants and knights advance and retreat across a musical chessboard. If there was no one else writing poetry in all of the Bay Area, we would still be 'covered'; with Logan Ryan Smith at bat we’ll see angels in the outfield." Enough said. Order here for $13.00 plus s&h. (6x9, 104 pp., perfect bound.)


And speaking of Dusie, the Dusie Kollective chaps have started arriving. Participating poets (of which I am one this year) are making handmade copies of their chaps to swap among themselves, and PDF/electronic versions to be posted in the forthcoming summer issue of Dusie. So far, they've all been impressive, and there are several new-to-me poets in the group. I'm looking forward to receiving the rest. And gee, I should really finish mine and start stapling! Anyway, keep your eyes here for the PDF armory show. I believe it'll be posted in late June.


As of yesterday, Maureen Thorson's Big Game Books has unleashed another set of tiny yet powerful poetry in the form known as tinysides. "Tinysides 31-35: Games We Play to Win: The seventh installment of the tinysides series shows the value of luck and persistence. Our authors play their games to win. First up, and with aces in the hole, Jenna Cardinale brings us tales of infinitive advantage, and the pleasure of reversals. Next up to bat, Jordan Stempleman celebrates the strength of muscle and the unnerving statistical powers of monkeys, shipwrecks and healing. Ivy Alvarez follows coyly behind, with a basketful of solutions to life's most intractable problem -- itself. Lars Palm knows that even in the midst of life, there are Spanish pop songs, and the fun of phonemes. Finally, Michael Comstock brings up the rear, and wants you to know why he likes you. He really does. Really. As usual, Tinysides are the cheapest form of poem around. A buck a pop, or all five for a mere $4.50. (S&H runs you about $1.00)." These little goodies go fast, so don't delay. Order here.


Looky there: Amy King was recently elected Poet Laureate...of the Blogosphere. Even more importantly, she's got a new book out, which I haven't yet picked up. Let this note serve as my reminder and yours too. Says Linh Dinh, "These poems are meditative, subtle and deeply human, but beneath their cool, often gorgeous surfaces are darker currents, 'holes firing lyrics, free range.' Amy King 'pimps the abyss,' and she's not joking. Better kiss your 'trucker state' goodbye." Well all right. ISBN:1-934289-33-7, 7 x1o, 87 pp., perfect bound. $16. Available from Blaze-VOX here.


This one's been out a while, but somehow I missed it until yesterday, despite its author being a coeditor here, ahem! Sandra Simonds' The Humble Travelogues of Mr. Ian Worthington, Written from Land & Sea can be obtained from Mark Lamoureux's Cy Gist Press for $6 here. (16 pp. Saddle-stapled.)


Bill Allegrezza of Cracked Slab Books announces the release of The City Visible: Chicago Poetry for the New Century. "It's an anthology of some of the best innovative poetry being written currently in Chicago. Peter Gizzi says of it, 'When Carl Sandburg asked in his Chicago Poems, close to a hundred years ago, for 'a voice to speak to me in the day end, / A hand to touch me in the dark room / Breaking the long loneliness,' little did he know his city would be so fully and livingly answered and so honored. Chicago is again transformed by poetry. Here in these myriad acts of imagination, the poets of The City Visible give to it again, in Shakespeare's terms, 'local habitation and a name.'" ISBN: 0-9786440-1-8. Perfect bound. 254 pp. Edited by W. Allegrezza & R. Bianchi. $22.95. Order directly from the press, or look for it at Amazon & SPD (coming soon).


The first issue of Andrew Lundwall's new e-zine, Seconds, is now online, featuring work by poets Mathias Svalina, Eileen Tabios, Scott Keeney, Alexander Jorgensen, Sheila Murphy, Tomaž Šalamun, and Andrew Demcak.


Also, I've added Wintered Press, edited by Rachel Moritz and Sun Yung Shin in Minneapolis, to the sidebar links. Check out the blog for here for their catalog and mailorder info.


Last and least, I forgot to (duh) mention here the article I wrote for the Poetry Foundation website on how blogs have changed poetry publishing. Peruse it here.


[I still have a few more things to add to this, believe it or not. Check back this afternoon!]

Villanelles Are Retarded: new from Big Game Books!

What's that sound? That mad buzz, that rapid-fire stapling, that whistling needle, that flashing X-acto? Was it wearing a hand-printed tee shirt? A straw cowboy hat? You, my friend, have just been buzz-dived by a red-headed poetical blur known as Maureen Thorson, speedy creator of chapbooks, tinysides, stuffed animals, bookmarks, Clip-Art collages, drunken sailor poems, & repeated collaborative sillinesses. Hurry, hit the PayPal button. She's fast!

Thorson recently combined forces with the infamous Texan poet Shafer Hall in an exercise of formal ridiculousness. It's called Villanelles Are Retarded, and it's now available from Big Game Books for $6.00, including US shipping.

I got my copy yesterday, packed in a protective sleeve with a sobering (but not too sobering) warning label. I carefully slid the little book from its wrapping and turned to the informative (if somewhat retarded) introduction by one Jennifer El Knox:

"The villanelle was invented by retard François Villon in France in the early 1400s, as period now known as 'L'Age d'Or des Crétins.' It is assumed he derived the form from a peasant dance performed on the first day of April in which the stupidest child in the village would jump back and forth over a rope on the ground until he or she passed out. The priest would then scrawl RETARD across the unconscious child's head with a Sharpie."

El Knox's introduction further claims that Thorson, who works in a law office by day, "is paid peanuts to read enormous three-ringed binders overflowing with documents that are so mind-bogglingly boring they have been known to throw lawyers twice her size into Rip Van Winkle comas," and Thorson's accomplice Shafer Hall (who for reason or reasons unknown habitually lies "under a pile of 2-liter Mountain Dew bottles on the floor of his dark, fecund apartment" in Brooklyn) collaboratively created the villanelles included herein line by line over the communication technology known as e-mail. "Now that's retarded," Knox concludes. Well, we'll just see about that, I'll admit I scoffed.

But, Reader, no sooner did I turn to the first poem than I too became convinced. Witness "You're Bored, We're Hot":

Summer on the Swanee. It's a hundred degrees
And confusing for all of the whiskey and blonde chicks.
At this lowly meridian, we space out under the trees.

I'll spend most of my time down beneath my knees,
Looking for bottles to pass all this time in the sticks.
Summer on the Swanee. It's a hundred degrees

And I'd rather be naked as hell but for all the fleas,
Singing love songs to the forest's myriad ticks,
To whose lowly harmony we space out under the trees.

If you're as hot as I am, you're sweating seas,
And a little distraction is what our situation predicts.
Summer on the Swanee. It's a hundred degrees

Above zero; insects hum a humid reprise
And I am willing, as always, to take multiple licks,
A lowly harmony spacing out under the trees

As some equatorial virus turns us dead over easy.
We'll go out in style--tragically beautiful, completely transfixed
As we space out harmoniously under the trees:
Summer on the Swanee, one hundred degrees.

I mean, really! Who else but poets as retarded as the retarded form they repeatedly torture nearly two dozen times would rhyme degrees and reprise, or allow ticks to follow so soon on the tiny heels of fleas? In a stupor that can only be described as retarded, I made my way through the subsequent pieces, each more blatantly absurd than the last--"Disturbing Ringtones," "Telescopes, 80% Off," "Betsy Pickle," "Want to Get Huge?" and "Visit New Jersey," among others equally dull-witted. Some of these poems were almost definitely written under the influence of retardation. In the end, I put down the little book with a relieved sigh. Thank goodness most poetry is not like this! How lucky we are that these retarded poets with their retarded obsession are only two of a kind!

Get yours here. (& I mean it, you better act quick.)

Summer downtime = very busy DIYers. Awesome.

Effing Press has just released Is It the King? by Farid Matuk

5 x 7.5
48 pages
saddle-stitched
cover art and design by Jared Faulkner
bound in assorted endpapers
$7.00

Get it here.







Introducing the Onion Union, a new online journal edited by Marcus McCann.

The Onion Union pledge: We recognize a liberating promise in the unmooring of poetry and economics. Poets have gained unparalleled freedom to produce their work unapologetically, free from the external pressures facing artists working in other mediums. On the internet, poets have the unprecedented ability to reproduce and distribute their own work. And, most importantly, poetry's readers have an enormous amount of choice about what they read, unfiltered by traditional industry constraints. We will sever the last ties between poetry and economics, which are imaginary rather than material anyway. We will celebrate a post-capitalist poetics. Self-publishing is a revolutionary anarchic act. The poems are free.

The first issue features poetry by Mark Young, William Piety, Sawako Nakayasu, Liam Wilkinson, Lina Ramona Vitkauskas, Eileen Tabios, Eric Lehman & Caleb Puckett.

Check it out.


Brian Howe's chapbook Guitar Smash is out too.

GUITAR SMASH, the debut poetry chapbook by Brian Howe.

GUITAR SMASH is what happens when you force-feed language to technology until it vomits!
It’s c r a z y …

GUITAR SMASH is available by way of purchase, trade, bully tactics, flattery, comp.
Contact Brian for details.

(By the time I got around to this announcement, copies are already scarce. But Brian notes on his blog, the chap is also available as a free PDF here.)


Logan Ryan Smith reviews Parad e R ain by Michael Koshkin

After Johnson wrote, or etched out his radi os, one might wonder why anyone else would want to do erasures ever again, as it is a capsulation of an idiosyncratic and clever idea. As well, the idea of creating poems from erasures seems almost endless--where would it ever stop? Could one create a whole literary "career" out of erasures? If not, why not? If so, how? Yet, erasures seem to be a form of translation, and also a way to create a whole new poem. And again, one might ask why someone would write another erasure from Milton's trilogy after Johnson tackled Paradise Lost. The answer to that is: Because Michael Koshkin can, and did. The differences between radi os and parad e r ain are remarkable. It's interesting to see how an erasure done in the 70s and one done in the 2000s of similar source material can be so different.

Read the rest here.

Then visit Big Game Books to get your copy.


New! Beat Roots by Anne Waldman, with illustrations by George Schneeman, from Hot Whiskey Press

Speaking of Michael Koshkin, he and his Hot Whiskey partner Jennifer Rogers have just published Beat Roots with a letterpressed cover and Japanese stab binding.

The 250 copies are going fast--the first 10 signed copies were snapped up immediately.

Click and ye shall receive.


And finally, CAConrad's Mooncalf Press offers a new chap by Frank Sherlock

Frank Sherlock's poem from the Poetry, Politics, Proximity: Third Annual Kerry Sherin Wright Prize event at Kelly Writers House on April 27 is now available in chapbook form: Spring Diet of Flowers at Night with cover art by Jonathan Allen.

There should be infinite
meaning in
the blandness of a shot
victim in an unfamiliar
neighborhood but

prospects of imagined life
are tied to clean logic

Diagetic background
music has been used to
steer me into attempting
an architectural line

Copies are available at Robin's Bookstore in Philly (108 S. 13th Street), or to order contact Mooncalf Press at CAConrad13 [at] aol [dot] com.

Roundup: New DIY books, chaps & zines

Foursquare 1.1 is now available!
From editor/publisher Jessica Smith:

FOURSQUARE 1.1 will begin mailing Monday. You can buy a subscription here, or if you're not sure you want to invest the $12, you can buy a single copy of issue 1.1 at Etsy for $4. 1.1 includes work by Elizabeth Treadwell, Shanna Compton [ahem], K. Lorraine Graham, and Linda V. Russo. Cover collage by Elena Siff. FOURSQUARE will feature 4 different female poets every month. The broadzine comes enclosed in an embroidered fabric envelope; my mom and dad helped with this part. I hope to feature female artists who make and design their own fabrics by using their work for the envelopes instead of mass-produced fabrics, but for that to happen I'll need more subscriptions.

Forthcoming FOURSQUAREs will feature work by Juliana Spahr, Maureen Thorson, Brenda Iijima, Jenny Boully, Michelle Detorie, Chris Turnbull, Claire Webb, & T.A. Noonan, with covers handpainted by Chelsea Warren and silkscreened fabrics by other women artists.


Free poetry--for FREE!--from Bill Allegrezza & Dusie

William Allegrezza's Ishmael Among the Bushes is available from Dusie as a free PDF, or you can write to Bill to see if he has any printed copies left. Bill's also got a new book called In the Weaver's Valley, just out from Blue Lion Books. It's POD and available via Cafe Press here. (Blue Lion Books is new to me, & it seems they specialize in poetry weighing in at 200 pp. plus. Check out the rest of their chunky offerings here.)


Kenning Editions recently released their first perfect-bound book!

Jesse Seldess's Who Opens was designed by Jeff Clark (a.k.a. Quemadura) & is now available from SPD. Editor/publisher Patrick Durgin has put his Kenning poetry newsletter aside to make way for more books, chapbooks, broadsides & other poetikal ephemera. Here's a review of Who Opens at the A Tonalist blog, & Chicago Postmodern Poetry offers this interview with the author.


The fruits of NaPoWriMo are juicy & variously colored!

Maureen Thorson (our fearless NaPoWriMo leader) collected one poem each from several April participants for this handbound chapbook, which was distributed gratis to the poets as a keepsake for our strenuous poetic strivings in Spring 2006. Rock. (Not sure if extras are available, but you might try Reen at Big Game Books to see.)


Joshua Corey's Compostition Marble from Pavement Saw Press

Originally titled Composition Marble, a felicitous error redubbed this new book to the author's liking. Though the chap's not yet available through the Pavement Saw online store, it should show up there any day now, so keep yer peepers peeled.


Am I missing something?

I don't doubt it. You energetic kids are a challenge to keep up with. Shoot me an email, & as always, I'm happy to post links to reviews, interviews, articles, site, catalogs, etc., or hey, why not send me an original review of something you've read lately?

& speaking of Big Game Books...

...Maureen Thorson's own The Spectacle of Meat [above, center] has been reviewed in this month's "Crucial Rooster" column at the Happy Booker by Reb Livingston. Check it.

Then go see Maureen for a copy, if there are any left. They are gorgeous...and FREE.

New from Big Game: Parad e R ain by Michael Koskin

A parade of Parad e R ain on publisher Maureen Thorson's livingroom rug.

Big Game Books is very proud to present Michael Koshkin's Parad e R ain, a meditation on the joyfulness of the flesh, with detours on the delights of "my happy bottom" and the headwear favored by danger itself. Five bucks gets you all the rain a body could want.

You may recognize the name Michael Koshkin. That's cuz he's one of the dynamic DIY duo behind Hot Whiskey Press.

Here is an excerpt. (PDF file)

March your mousie over here to get yer very own.

Announcing Big Game Books!

Maureen Thorson has been publishing her own chapbooks under her Hermosa Neutron imprint for the last couple of years (and I'm lucky to have collected them all so far!), but she's expanding her operation to include books by other writers. Hooray!

Sez Maureen: "Big Game Books is an itty teeny tiny press dedicated to poems, poetry, and poeting. We also like handmade things and playing with glue and needles. [...] I've been publishing tiny editions of chapbooks of my own work for a while now, and I think it's time to expand. Bigger editions, other names, the whole poetic kit-n-caboodle! The whole song-and-dance! The whole enormous-n-gooey enchilada. Smell the poems! Delish!

Current projects include a handbound hardcover edition of The Secret History, by Procopius of Caesarea, (whom Maureen dubs "the Grampa Simpson of Byzantium") and Villanelles are Retarded, by Shafer Hall and Maureen Thorson.

Check out Big Game Books and visit the site often. Small print-runs require quick clicking!