On the Printing of Poetry

Posted on June 4, 2003 in Book of Days Writing

Note: This is part of a series based on exercises from A Writer’s Book of Days. It’s something of a rebellion against the Friday Five and similar tupperware content memes.

Today’s topic: What are you looking for?

Three years from now, I want to be seeing my name somewhere. The best way is on thick paper printed off hard type set by hand. I love the ever so slight crookedness of the letters, the identations, and the fuzziness of the paper grains. There, clear as a neon light, my name: Joel Sax, the seven lovely letters, pressed and inked on a page with torn edges.

The pages have to have torn edges if it is my poetry. I might even like to set the type and press the sheets myself. Prose needs certain margins. A story must have a beginning, a middle and an end, but a poem must outlast the reading. It must be allowed to have no boundary, to be free to escape the page. I want my poems to be like that: hard print on pages that fade into the emptiness that surrounds them. A line in a poem shouldn’t end when you say it. The meter and the sound should be such that it keeps carrying on in your head, like a song.

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Want to participate? First either get yourself a copy of A Writer’s Book of Days by Judy Reeves or read these guidelines. Then either check in to see what the prompt for the day is or read along in the book.

Tomorrow’ topic/prompt: Write about small regrets.