This is the cover of my latest chapbook.
Considering that Beta Blog was initiated earlier this year with a chapbook of poems from Texas, this bookends the year of 2006 for me rather succinctly. Guess I did get a few things done this year. While the Texas book covers 1993-2003, the work contained herein is from 2005. I mentioned it here casually and now it's an actuality.
BiRDSEED is culled from observations, unfinished poems, scribbled notes, shopping lists, overheard dialogue, and other small bits recorded in the calendar year of 2005, whether it be in Brooklyn, Costa Rica, Austria, or Texas. Back when I still had a caged bird singing, papers left lying around my room would accrue strewn birdseed on their surface and so that image informs the lines, words, and the pages themselves. The work is both scattered and compact. Anything can be a cage, be it a bedroom or a subway car or a helicopter or the body itself. Or as I joked to one friend about the work within: hard to crack, easy to swallow.
After the arduous task of editing and laying out the Texas book (ten years to craft, two years to tweak and fuss over, dozens of drafts, plus six months to ink, fold, and sew), BiRDSEED was intended to be a breezy affair. Less suffering oover the lines, things left as is. Of course, laying out the artwork this go-around proved insurmountable, so all praises due to Brooklyn's patron saint of the cover arts. Once again, every copy is individually handmade and wholly unique, from cover to stitching to the surprises contained within each book. Drop a line if you wish to peck at this.
