Spine Poems

At heart, I am a curator, revealing stories in art, images, found objects, and book titles, through juxtaposition, bringing together seemingly disparate items, histories and textures, highlighting similarities and differences to explore new forms—stories.

For one, I stack books into poems. Some of these I share with you in this journal, both as photographs and as text. When transcribing a spine poem, I take the liberty of adding line breaks, and playing with punctuation as I please. Other edits are rare, minimal, and always contextual.

I experience these poems often as letters to my self, a window on what is playing in the world or in my life—a reflection. Dear Sir or Madam poses a question. “What do you want?” Well, as curator, I delight in visualizing stories, and finding them where they might not be found, articulating the whole and honoring the particular. Bookstores, friends’ homes, libraries, conferences, and airports all hide secret gardens for me. What seeds can I find there? What flowers can I grow with those? Some take a few minutes to blossom, others a few hours. Some poems present themselves as fully grown, others evolve through grafting and pruning. All honor the book and what it holds. Enjoy!