Bookmash: The Holy Door

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[click to enlarge]

Black hole, the long falling
Darkness peering, portable darkness –
Tidal dreams, grotesque dreams,
The holy door on Green Dolphin street.

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Featured authors and editors: Charles Burns, Keith Ridgway, Alice Blanchard, Aleister Crowley and Scott Michaelsen, Eugene Percival and Wayne Harlow, Natsuo Kirino, Carl Jung, Frank O’Connor, and Sebastian Faulks. With thanks to Nina Katchadourian for the idea.

[bookmash archive]

Book spine mashups

There was a minor book avalanche here last weekend. I removed one from its tower, which toppled unstoppably against its neighbour, and so on, with results that need hardly be described at length. Luckily there were no casualties: no toes crushed or book spines broken, just a torn cover getting torn some more. I took the hint and arranged them more stably. (And yes, I need a new bookshelf, or a dozen.)

It prompted me to carry out a plan that had just taken seed. A little earlier I had come across Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project and immediately wanted to try it. The tangling of titles, the possibilities of ‘found form’ and cut-up wordplay — as a game it was irresistible. I took photos of a few, and have written them as mini-poems for ease of reading and to see how they appear in verse:

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How it is

How it is, the way that I went
Into the wild ancient world
Where the wasteland ends.

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Moondust

Chew on this moondust –
Good enough to eat.

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