Sides that are Tiny in Nature

Ooooh, my goodness. When my thick envelope arrived from Big Game Books, I had no idea what I was in for: 5 magnificent tinysides, the first in a cavalcade of a series from one Maureen Thorton, resident book-binder and awl-victim of Capitol Hill. They are handmade! They are 4-color gorgeous! They are only $4.50!

They are already sold out. Begin your envy.

"butterflies" by Jessica Smith (pictured above) has the most substance per square inch. Each poem sprawls and loops across the square pages. The immediacy of the butterflies in the natural landscape intersects with a hinted-at emotional landscape of the speaker, who revisits and reconnects wordings in gestures of reconciling the two. My eyes enjoyed roaming these poems.

Mark Lamoureux's "Acheron Census" features this lovely small lyric:

Jaffrey, NH

They walked there,
together,

from Noone Falls Mill.

#

Each of the short poems has the title of a town, tweaking the "Census" theme.

"The Archivist's Log of Interpersonal Experiments," by Stephanie Anderson, takes the prize for best cover (clean lines in pine green and ruddy orange), and consists of 26 four-line sections, interrogating actions described in the (alphabetically sequenced) titles: Handling the Juggler, Bickering with the Kiln-Stoker, Kissing the Literalist, Riding Sidecar with the Motorcyclist, etc.

In other news, the latest first-book interview at Kate Greenstreet's site is none other than...Frannie Lindsay. Worlds collide! Go check it out.

And, exactly one week from today I will be taking it off at Burlesque Poetry Hour.

Also, a trip to Baltimore left me obsessed with moving to Tindeco Wharf (waterfront, right between Fells Point and Canton). Anyone up there want to hire a poet? It's a restless time of year.