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[click to enlarge]
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The Shining Levels
The shining levels carry me down
On beauty, style, borrowed finery –
The decay of the angel, the golden ass,
The distant past another roadside attraction.
*
Thanks to the authors: John Wyatt, M.J. Hyland, Zadie Smith, Joseph M. Williams, Paula Fox, Yukio Mishima, Apuleius, William Trevor, and Tom Robbins; and to Nina Katchadourian for the idea.
More book spine poems in the archive, along with links to other people’s. Feel free to join in.
Sentence first 
I love this idea (and your whole blog actually, which I’ve only discovered recently). Here’s my first go, and I’m going to get some of my students to have a go too!
Elsewhere, in a strange room,
You against me.
Breath
Everything is illuminated.
With thanks to Gabrielle Zevin, Damon Galgut, Jenny Downham, Tim Winton and Jonathan Safran Foer.
Thanks,
Sarah
Thanks, Sarah, and welcome to Sentence first. I like your inaugural bookmash. The form works even better with photos, I find, though it takes a bit more time to set it up. I hope your students enjoy it too – it’s fun and a good exercise!
Love it! Great blog
Wonderful!
Margaret, Natalie: Thank you! I’m always tempted to do more, but most of my books are in storage.
I like the idea of this – Must take a look at some shelves! mind you I don’t expect anything to come together the way yours did.
Laura: Do, have a browse! You might be surprised at what materialises.
[…] first came across this idea on Stan Carey’s blog Sentence First . I liked it so much that I decided to have a go myself. So here it is: my very first book-spine […]
Stan, here’s my Friday the 13th bookmash offering. I feel the luck of the Irish is on my side, even though some folk still believe that the conjunction of a Friday and the 13th day of the month can have potentially dire consequences.
Here she goes.
_________________
“Under a Wild Sky”
Under a wild sky
Little green empress orchid
Radiance from the waters
Surfacing animals…
You will NEVER forget.
_________________
Authors, as follows, in order of stacking… top-to-bottom: William Souder, Walter Mosley, Anchee Min, Sylvia Ardyn Boone, Margaret
Atwood, and Reader’s Digest (a compendium of animal-themed short pieces).
As will be revealed w/ my accompanying graphic which will hopefully be posted later, the reader will soon see that Mosley’s book is titled “Little Green”, and Atwood’s, “Surfacing”. For narrative flow I kind of melded one title into another along the way.
Stan, I’ll email you my mashed ‘stack’ photo, shortly.
Thanks again for this always fun opportunity to get creative w/ book titles.
Good one, Alex! Here it is:
[…] Jenny Pitman, Phil Rickman, Peter F. Hamilton. And once again to Stan Carey for the initial […]