Ok, so last Saturday, the numbers were good, better than some previous years I was told, but unfortunately I didn't get any pictures on my own camera of the mobs. I was introducing people at the door and getting them to know the exhibit. A number of people were the authors and publishers looking specifically to see if their book(s) made it to the shelf. With only a couple mishaps, the day was a success. Here's a (blurry) picture of the higher-ups standing at the tables before opening.
The one farthest to the right is Lee, and next to her, Michael. You can also see some platters in the foreground, fruit and cheese. We had 6 total and used up 5. I brought the remaining one home to the ravenous college campus dwellers. There's still cheese in my fridge.
This weekend I got a better chance to relax and read some of the material. I began with Rachael Zucker's book, which I was to read this week anyway for my class. I found her at first to be fragmentary, banal at times, blinded, and blunt. As I moved through the book, I gained more of a grasp of what the point was. The last section, the Autographies, basically mock everything you might notice about the book previously, with sentences like (and I paraphrase), are you, reader, trying to figure out if I cheated on my husband?, why did I choose to relate the womb to a tree in the poem on page x?, sometimes my metaphors are gruesome, oh well. This self-mockery does make valid the rest of the book and the intentions Zucker had for its form and accessibility, but in doing so, it almost seems like an exhaustive disclaimer, though worded really well. As such, these poems ended up being the best, least scathing or cliché pieces of the book.
The other big piece of news is: Lux's new book is out! I spent all Saturday (when I found it on the shelf under Houghton Mifflin) reading and absorbing selections from the latest in the best. I just have to share:
Apology to My Neighbors for Beheading Their Duck
First, it was an accident: I did not mean
to sever his head. A book, or a being superior
or Superior, did not command it thus.
He'd gotten into the little yard we share.
He stood as still as if he were made of cement,
which, in fact, he was. Nevertheless, he was not meant
to lose his head. So that I could lop it off,
a text was not interpreted, though he was
a heterodux duck-- he wore a little blue hat.
This color is proscribed for a duck's hat.
Otherwise: white duck, orange feet and beak.
A decent duck, a cause-no-trouble duck.
He weighed a hundred pounds, weighted down
your car to get him here to his new home.
Without his head, he weighs five pounds less.
Without his head, broken at the neck,
he's a less impressive duck,
but still I had no right to take it.
It belonged to him,
and he needed it, his head,
as we, as all creatures, do,
despite the swamp, the sump, thriving inside it.
He did not belong to me,
nor was he of my family.
When I dropped a bag (rather than carry it
down to the barrels beside the duck) of trash
from my fourth-floor back porch,
that's what did it, clipped it clean off,
for which I offer apologies and cash,
but I must reiterate: a book
did not tell me I had the right to do so,
nor did I hear a voice,
a promise, from a pearly place.
I did it dumb and owe you fifty bucks!
an artistic shot of the empty bookcases. we did the job in less than an hour.
these are the boxes we put them in. stages:
one of the more popular books in the showcase.
