THE EX-NAPKIN HOLDER

I believe this "vintage" metal chair was intended to be a napkin holder.  But I brought it home for SitWithMoi coz I like it:

To be a poet is also to decontextualize.  I'm sure this chair will hold a mini-book as well as it would capture a rolled napkin within the round metal catch on its back.


[Prov.: Pier 1 Imports. Size: 4" height x 2" seat diameter]

STITCH ALONG WITH MOI!

And another chair from the "Ebay 30" acquisition is a sewing chair!  I love it for reminding me of moi Mama.  And because I often think that, as a poet, I don't write words so much as stitch them together ...

Welcome, Little Sewing Chair!  Whenever I see you, I think of Mom stitching many a hem for me.  As she was doing in this photo ... before I interrupted her to inflict one of moi books on her:

[Prov.: "Ebay 30." Size: 8" height, 3.5" width, 3" depth]

JOY: A GLOBAL PRIORITY, Vol. I by E.R. TABIOS

I do lists.  I've done tons of poetry projects revolving around The List (especially since the list-as-autobiography is a long-held concern)  So it seems inevitable that, somehow, I'd create a mini-book -- and, as it turns out, it will be a series -- revolving around the list. 

There's a particular type of list that interests me.  It's a list of mundane stuff that ends up being more than the sum of its parts, that ends up not being mundane.  It's a list that effects something that transcends its (lowly) material.  I'm in the midst of preparing right now for a year-long list project; I won't go into details of that yet, but just note it to say that lists are on -- and always on -- moi mind. 

So, my latest mini-book to discuss is the 2.25" x 2" Volume I of JOY, A GLOBAL PRIORITY -- a visual listing of the postage and other postal materials that brought me mails containing joy. (I don't always succeed but I always hope that joy is a focus of my work.) I enjoyed making the first book so much I decided to create a series around the concept. 

Volume I's impetus was three sources.  First, there was one of the holiday cards I'd saved for its useful cover card-stock:

I also decided to throw in at random a sticker floating around the studio (cough) which I long suspected would be useful for something related to mini-books.  I didn't know, at the beginning of making Volume I, how it would play a role.  But I like throwing in as many "random" elements as possible in creating.  So, I tossed it into the mix:

For interior content, I chose to use what I could from five mailed envelopes that brought me joy:

I ended up with a front and back cover as follows:

The message above is self-explanatory.  I believe joy to be a priority for the world.  But the front cover itself is not as obvious joy often requires effort, work.  So, by looking only at the front cover, I wanted the reader to not immediately know what is being posited as a priority for the world .

You'd open the front cover to see

Note above the repetition of the themes by utilizing the postal notations of "priority mail" and "For domestic and international mail."  Part of what I'd cut out from the same postal receipt was the section that stated "To" with a space for the recipient.  I turned that into the next page's dedication page ... and I confess it amused me to dedicate this mini-book to Moi!

You then turn the page to the first of the five pieces of mail that brought joy to Moi.  Throughout the book, I always glued in the stamps on the right-hand page.  Each stamp is faced by a reference to the sender and the mail's contents.  So the first mail is from Leny Strobel and it brought Moi joy for delivering two blank mini-books inspired by SitWithMoi (I later filled in/fleshed out one of the mini-books with THE WHISPERS OF SHE WHO CALLED ME HERE by Leny M. Strobel).

You turn the page to the next contribution, mail that brought "Happy New Year" wishes from some friends:

You turn the page to the next contribution, mail that brought an order for a book published by moi teeny press, Meritage Press, accompanied by a check!

You turn the page to the next contribution, mail that brought an invitation for an Easter lunch (this Sunday):

You turn the page to the next contribution, mail that brought the first mini-book by an e-peep, Tom Beckett's THE CHAIRMAN SPEAKS:

Last but not least, you turn the page to the next contribution, mail that brought an art monograph on Max Gimblett's latest exhibition.  I love this monograph -- not only are Max's paintings superb but the monograph contains one of the best monograph essays I've read in years, written by another artist Matt Jones. 

And, and, and!  The monograph essay features an epigraph of a quote I've actually been looking for (as I plan to use it as a monograph for my poetry collection forthcoming in 2014) -- a quote from Michelangelo, to wit:

Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.

So the above mail also was useful to me in helping cut down on the research time my forthcoming book requires.  I am appreciative for any type of help in living my life!  Moreoever, you may have noticed that the color of the interior pages is yellow-gold.  I chose the color since gold symbolizes enlightenment (recall what I said earlier about the sum of mundane details being more than mundane, i.e. uncovering insight) and perhaps discovering that long-searched-for Michelangelo quote is the resulting insight.  Also, I only had yellow paper around the studio at the time ...

Entonces, joyfully Moi asks: "Where shall we shelve Volume I of JOY: A GLOBAL PRIORITY?"  Well, I am opting to shelve it on this warm teak bench because the structure of the bench (i.e., the bench as a shelf) will be useful for holding a series of mini-books, which I am hoping for JOY.  Indeed, I am hoping for the sources of joy to be ... infinite ...

PICASSO by DAVID HOCKNEY

I don't know why I've been so cursory in my attention to the small (generally 3" x 4") books put out by Hanuman Books.  On the few occasions that I've read books from these series, I've felt nothing less than awe.  Like, the 1990 PICASSO by David Hockney -- it is magnificent. 

On Picasso, Hockney has a beautiful mind!  Here are two favorite excerpts from this 2.75" x 4" book:

If we saw a dark void between ourselves and the world we would not put a foot forward. Essentially Cubism breaks down that obstructing wall, it breaks the window. Cezanne's cafe table is brought right up to your waist. You are more present in the work and the work in you. Cubism is about our bodily presence in the world.  It's about the world, yes, but ultimately about where we are in it. It's about the kind of perception a human being can have in the midst of living.

And also:  

Why would perspective occur in fifteenth century Italy but not be used by the Chinese, by the Persians, by the Indians, who were all very observant about nature and yet never used one-point perspective? The main image that was needed in the fifteenth century by the power that be -- the Church -- was a picture of the crucifixion to show the suffering of Christ for mankind. The earlier way it was done, by Giotto in the chapel in Padua, was to show it in a sequence. You follow a story in pictures where Christ carries the cross up the hill, stumbles for the first time, etc. But a crucifixion is an unusual form of execution because it contains no action You are literally nailed to a flat surface and you die, theoretically, because you cannot move. It is a slow expiration where the moment of life/moment of death would not be clear. It is not like being beheaded or having an arrow shot through your heart. Thus, because there was no action involved there would have been a special interest in making the picture with one-point perspective, where time has stopped and space is fixed. The game of fixing space results in a kind of solidity of feeling in the body.

The photograph is the ultimate perspective picture. The viewer is outside the picture and there is a vanishing point, and the vanishing point can theoretically be called infinity. If the infinite were God, the viewer and the infinite could have no connection whatsoever, and never can have any connection, so I assume that is the God that died at the end of the nineteenth century. When you reverse perspective, which is what Picasso did with Cubism, the viewer can see all sides of an object, has movement in space, and is everywhere at the same time. Infinity is therefor everywhere, including within the viewer. That actually sounds better to me, theologically.

I'm a big fan of cubism, which was a major influence on my first U.S.-published book, REPRODUCTIONS OF THE EMPTY FLAGPOLE (many of the poems were later re-printed in my Selected Prose Poems collection, THE THORN ROSARY). My version of cubism for this collection of prose poems was writing poems where the paragraphs could be re-ordered than from the orders presented in the book.  Thus, I had to tinker with the language to make them sufficiently abstract so that they'd still generate sense in new orders.

So where shall we "shelve" then this lucid, visionary book?  Well, but of course: on the chair meant to hold ... light!

Anyway, I have two other Hanuman Books that soon shall join SitWithMoi's "Books on Chairs" collection.  I really should look for more ...

"A WORD USED FOR CLARIFICATION IS FULL OF AMBIGUITY"

Dears, let’s recall innovative poet and engineer S.S. Prasad or “Mr. Chairssssssss…” or “Chairss” for short since, as he sagaciously notes, a millipede missing one leg is still a millipede (keep reading to understand!).  My first post about Chairss was quite popular, not to mention educational.  And now here’s his latest “Letter to Moi Us”:

Dear Eileen,

We stopped our conversation at gender in language in the last mail. I was thinking further about ‘cloud’ of meaning and ambiguity in words, and misnomers. The word ‘chair’ is called ‘nattrkali’ in Tamil: nal- four, kal- leg, the suffix ‘li’ rounding the reference to the object as the one with four legs. A noun that could have referred to anything with four legs, but precisely means a chair:  A word used for clarification is full of ambiguity.

Our chairs have grown in number, and we are having a conference at sit-with-moi.

I went upstairs to the canteen in my office, as I do every morning, and looked at the arrangement of chairs. They were as usual, inverted and placed upon tables for 4:  an arrangement of 4 chairs upside down on each table.  Workers were slowly getting them ready for business, taking them down and turning them up around the tables. You can imagine a flower with thousand petals blooming.

How do we deal with CHAIRS? They are too many, and ‘CHHHHHHHHHHHHH……..AIR’ becomes a cumbersome representation. We don’t want to count the number of legs of a millipede to declare it a millipede. A millipede with one leg minus is still called a millipede, isn’t it? Under no conditions will an octopus become a septapus.

Chairs: 

[Do click on image to enlarge.]

I’m typing down two poems by Arun Kolatkar to understand chairs and chirality better.

A LOW TEMPLE

A low temple keeps its gods in the dark.

You lend a matchbox to the priest.

One by one the gods come to light.

Amused bronze. Smiling stone. Unsurprised.

For a moment the length of a matchstick.

gesture after gesture revives and dies.

Stance after lost stance is found

and lost again.

Who was that, you ask.

The eight arm goddess, the priest replies.

A sceptic match coughs.

You can count.

But she has eighteen, you protest.

All the same she is still an eight arm goddess to the priest.

You come out in the sun and light a charminar.

Children play on the back of the twenty foot tortoise.

THE PATTERN

a checkerboard pattern

some old men must have drawn

yesterday

with a piece of chalk

on the back of the twenty foot

tortoise

smudges under the bare feet

and gets fainter all the time as

the children run

(Pages 17, 18 from ‘Jejuri’ by Arun Kolatkar, Pras Prakashan, Fifth edition, 2001)

Kolatkar intrigues me with his use of the plural form. He emphasizes that form by repetition of a grammatical rule: eight arm goddess, eighteen arm goddess, and twenty foot tortoise.

  

A key to the poem is the word, ‘charminar’.

charminar = char + minar ; ‘char’ meaning four in Hindi, and minar meaning minar in any language. The four minars don’t have anything to do with buildings but a brand of cigarette.

Notice how Kolatkar points to the transmission of language through generations (old men/ children).  The origin fades, and ambiguous marks of chalk remain on the floor to make meaning from.

So while Kolakar enjoys himself at Wayside Inn sitting on his chair, let me sit with vous.

Chairs

-chairss

**

Dear Chairss,

Thanks for writing, Senor Chairss.  I really like these poems you cite by Arun Kolatkar -- so thanks, too, for introducing (to Moi) this fine poet.  It's funny how, in the 11th line of the poem "A Low Temple," I first read "A sceptic match" as "Ascetic match"...

And your letter, too, reminds me how so many chairs exist that are not based on having a four-leg structure, even as I believe we conventionally think of chairs as having such four legs.  The great Finnish American designer Eero Saarinen of course railed against "the slum of legs," thus creating his famous "Pedestal Chair."

I'm also reminded of the Ryoan-ji zen garden in Kyoto to which I was introduced by another poet, Arthur Sze -- how, from all angles, one can never see all of its 15 stones (it is thought one must attain enlightenment to see the 15th stone).  One stone is always missing but its existence is never denied.

Well, of course your subject at hand is poetry -- "A word used for clarification is full of ambiguity."

Do keep writing us from India whenever you can.  It's lovely to pull up an e-chair with you and fortify the tea (hah).

Cheers,

Moi

Ryoan-ji

THE ARTIST'S STUDIO

One of the side-benefits of Moi Fondness for this "Books on Chairs" project is how it allows me to pretend I'm also a visual artist.  This is no small thing.  The problem with being a poet is that your raw material, visually and physically, is boring.  It's words.  It's the invisible stuff within your mind (and soul, if you wanna go there).  But if you did a movie on a poet's life, you'd see that poet mostly writing on a desk or laptop, gazing into space, or doing research in books, or more common nowadays, just widening said poet's ass by spending hours in front of a computer screen.  Boring.  Sure, the stuff of life which can be exciting -- your judo practice, your nature hikes, your marches to and occupation of Washington, etc. -- are also part of the raw material of poetry.  But you still can't get away from how a poet's life includes much writing on a desk or laptop, gazing into space....do let me not continue: I'm boring moiself.  See?

But, as a sudden mini-book artist(!), I can have an artist's studio!  See, this is why I envy visual artists.  They could be doing nothing but gazing into the innards of their mind -- and thus look like they're just gazing into space -- but if they're in their studio, their lives still look exciting!  Because look around their studio!  They're surrounded by art-works, finished and/or in-progress.  They're surrounded by paint- (or plaster- or whatever-)splattered floors and walls. The only thing that gets splattered on my poet's desk is the oatmeal heaved up at some horrid poetic line. (Well, not really, but you get my drift.)  Even a visual artist's failure looks more exciting than a poet's failure -- that scrunched up or torn up piece of paper is a snooze compared to, say, a broken canvas flung at the walls by a frustrated artist (though the artist I have in mind but whose name I can't recall later would take a second look at her broken canvases, like what she sees, and then actually get an exhibit of her ... broken canvases suddenly become art). 

The detritus from a visual artist's process?  Way more exciting than a poet's.  I recall another artist whose name I can't remember (crap: moi mind is going ...) who kept tossing in a studio corner the masses of used up blue tapings that he used to help grid out straight lines on his canvases.  He then had the (successful) idea of also exhibiting what had become a large, blue ball of tape in the center of a gallery, surrounded by his paintings on the walls.  What a hoot.  What would a poet use with printed drafts of a poem (if they're even printed anymore and what evaporates obviously is even more boring visually than a crumpled up piece of paper)?  Well, perhaps 1% or .0000001% of poets can archive those drafts in some university library collection.  More often than not, they're recycled. 

Anyway, all this is why I digress from our usual programming to show you my artist's studio!  I ask my visual artist friends not to laugh or snort at Moi.  And of course it's a mini-studio because the subject at hand here is the mini-book!  So, first, this was my "studio" when I first began tinkering with mini-books:

If the above looks like a dining table to you, yes, it is my dining table.  It's cleaned up (haha) at the moment with just a smallish pile at foreground of image (ignore the geometry books on the background; they're my son's).  Before I got my studio, the whole table was taken over with various materials from my attempts to make my mini-books, which inconvenienced the rest of the family and especially Artemis the cat who likes to sun herself on the blue tablecloth.  Fortunately, I got an inheritance from Mom ... which became my artist's studio -- ta-dah:

Shall we take a tour?  Of course we must!  The first drawer below, then, shows finished mini-books I've made or received from e-readers (thank you and pls keep sending them!).  These are mini-books about which I've yet to write a blog post and, thus, are waiting to be shelved on mini-chairs:

The next drawer shows material more readied to be of use, like potential mini-book covers:

The next drawer contains mostly stuff from moi daily life -- and mostly snailmail -- that can be recycled into mini-book materials such as covers and illustrations. These include this past Holiday's greeting cards.  But as you can see, it's almost impossible now for me to throw away an art exhibition announcement as the illustrated art and card stock are so perfect for mini-book covers:

The next drawer is for miscellaneous stuff that are or may be useful:

And the last drawer contains fabric scraps I discovered while cleaning Mom's room.  I suspect they will be of use sooner or later.  I've already made a chaise lounge pad from the black fabric imprinted with roses.  I've also used a scrap from the same fabric for another mini book I edited for Susan Yount, MESSAGE MASSAGE, which will be the subject of a future post.

For now, these stacked drawers will do. But I suspect I might have to expand my studio -- one of the interesting results of looking at the world as a visual artist using found material for her mini-books is that, suddenly, you don't leap to trash or recyle many things.  You are always looking at stuff wondering if you can use them, somehow, for a future mini-book.  I like that effect, to wit, if image is of profound interest, suddenly so many things that I might have deemed before as mere trash become a source of possibility.  I believe that goes along with refusing to look at the world on only a utilitarian basis.  That's a perspective, of course, that is like Poetry: it can apply to ... everything.

I hope you have enjoyed this tour of my mini-mind, um, mini-studio.

LAVENDER by COI

I'm really overcome and overdoing it, moithinks.  But what's a poet without obsession, eh?  Which is to say, I go around my day and whether or not I want to I often end up making a mini-book.  I look at things and think consciously or subconsciously (or unconsciously), Is that fodder for a mini-book?

And so I was dusting the bookshelves (dusting? not!) the other day and came across a business card for the restaurant Coi. I assume I kept this card as, yes, I have never forgotten this pre-Great Recession (sigh) meal I had at this stunning venue. That meal is one of the best top five restaurant meals I've ever experienced in my life.  I hope it's still as good as it was years ago as one can dream, including, one can hope to return there.

As I recalled my memorable experience at Coi, my fingers tinkered with the card and I realized that, when folded, the card was sized appropriately for SitWithMoi!  As a closed book, it'd be 2" x 1.75".

So, of course, I made a book and this below is the front cover.  Yes, it uses peach rather than lavender ink despite the title, LAVENDER.  Because a poem, youse see, should try to avoid being predictable.  (And, besides, I didn't have a pen with lavender or purple ink.)

You'd open the book to see its copyright line (haha) facing this fetching image of dining utensils:

You turn the page to the following poem:

 You perfumed  my

wrists lavender

then served a

"Lavender Trio"

for dessert--

I imbibed.

Years later, I

am still Lavender. 

When you close the book, you may notice the back cover, itself an art work like the meal that swallowed me at Coi: the art of White-on-White.  Anyway...

So, where shall we "shelve" this book about an enchantingly complex meal?  Well, on Mary Scheller's diner booth of course!  Of course, because a poet, too, should deal in paradox (Here, it keeps company with another mini-book, WHAT REINDEER THINK!):

And, hey.  This is the internet.  If some 1% member or foodie or whatever would like to send me a coupon for a free meal at Coi's, ... GalateaTen@aol.com

I'm hungry now ...

 

 

 

THE BLUE CHAIR CHARMS

The first time I saw this painted chair, I found it charming:

The Etsy shopkeeper says she found it “broken and sad at a rummage sale. I brought it home, treated it with some glue and paint, and it is now standing proudly.”   She did a great paint job – here’s the back of the chair

But I was shocked when it first arrived in the house.  I had ordered it because it was described as being 6.75” tall.  That was apparently a typo – look at it sit cozily on the Strombecker-ish chair I’d ordered from the same store:

I immediately emailed the shopkeeper to return it.  In the hour it took for her to respond, though, the Blue Chair charmed its way into  moi heart:

So what the heck.  I welcomed her into my home and SitWithMoi. Poetry teaches: sometimes, you just gotta go with the flow…

[Prov.: The Blue Daizy. Size: 3 ¾” height x 1 ¾” width  x 1 ½” depth.]

A CRAFTSMAN’S VISION AND STRUGGLE

I’ve never met him but now his life is part of my memories—this craftsman somewhere in North Carolina who, over the years, worked on woodcraft, including making miniatures of … other miniatures!  That is, my latest chair acquisition is this craftsman’s attempt to replicate one of the rockers put out in the 1950s by Strombecker, a children’s toy manufacturer for much of the 20^th century.  The Etsy seller told me this chair was purchased from an antique dealer who, in turn, purchased it from the wood craftsman in Asheville, NC: “The craftsman was closing his shop, and this was in a basket of goods that he'd put into a storage locker. That basket was full of different items that he had tried to replicate, but he never offered them for sale. Supposedly the items were all over 25 years old.”

This chair intrigued me for several reasons.  First, it seems not all that was in the basket was a success—but this chair is a convincing replica.  I liked the idea of giving a home to a successful work by someone who put in years working at his craft.  Another reason had to do with the influence of Tom Pfannerstill, an artist who’s blessed my home with two works:

Tom Pfannerstill picks up debris which he brings back to his studio.  Then he makes replicas of them.  The replicas are astounding – in the case of the works in my home, he carved wood into the shape of the trash and then painted them.  I never fail to be amazed at how he was able—through paint on wood—to capture the faux plastic surface of a milk cartoon, as well as the sheen of plastic in the candy box.  Anyway, if you click on the link (beginning this paragraph), Mr. Pfannerstill says something about the effect of his art on others—an effect I would hope for my poems to have on their readers: “The fact that this work can slightly alter a person’s perceptions, even if only for a short time, ‘open their eyes’ or make them view their reality in a slightly different way, is a very important aspect of what I do.”

Indeed, the whole world of miniatures can sort of make a person look at the world differently, doesn’t it?  Scale matters, and the viewing of something that can be held on, say, the palm of one’s hand can effect interesting shifts in vision.  So, all those thoughts were murkily brewing in moi mind as I looked at this craftsman’s attempt to replicate a child’s toy.  I like that this piece makes me think about certain things … things that relate to what I’m trying to do in poetry.  Here it is, modest and unassuming and yet with a presence:

If you Google images of Strombecker dollhouse furniture, you will no doubt come across this rocker's image.  Now that I’ve seen the craftsman's chair, I can see the presence of the hand – it’s well-made but not perfect. But its imperfection only makes it true-r: it’s a chair imbued with the artist’s struggle to manifest reality from vision.  Such is not an easy task but it’s so worthwhile, which is why plenty of sages observe that it’s the journey, not the destination, that counts.

[Prov.: The Blue Daizy. Size: 7”” tall, 4” across the seat, 3 ½” deep]

NOTA BENE by E.R. TABIOS

So I have two strips of paper left-over from the SFSU Poetry Center flyer that I cut up to make SELECTED BOOK COVERS by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen.  I saved them because they are large enough to provide, ta-dah, book covers to new mini-books.

Well, I decided to use one for such a mini-book that I entitled NOTA BENE.  "Nota bene", of course, tells one to "note well" ... and what I wanted to note (to possible readers) was something that's long irritated me on a low-grade level: my "Eileen Tabios" Facebook page. If you click on the link, you'll see that I'm not active on it, though I will respond if somebody stumbles across it and makes a comment. I didn't set up that page -- I think the FB "Bots" did it by doing minor culling through the internet to create one for Moi.  Needless to say, the more "members" viz FB pages exist, the higher presumably the valuation for FB's worth -- how come the Securities Exchange Commission didn't look into this FB practice before it allowed its (overvalued-haha) initial public offering?!  Someone should do a class action suit on behalf of enforced members like Moi to get a share of the IPO funds -- what $5 billion? -- raised!  

Anyway, getting back to mini-books so as to erase moi irritation (there: evaporated!) I did also notice that the flyer's strip of paper is too flimsy to act as a book cover, so I wanted to strengthen it by pasting another strip of paper on its "verso" (interior) side. For that purpose, I decided to recycle a draft homework by my son when he was studying Africa partly by learning its geography.  I liked the idea of using a map, as I wished the poem to give a truer reflection of "Eileen Tabios" than is provided by Facebook.

After I pasted on the strip of paper, I still felt the book needed some firmer backing.  So I decided to cut a strip from a holiday card which had a pale blue color that I felt went well with the colors on the cover.  I finally did take down the display of holiday cards, but had saved several that I thought might help create future mini books.

And so we come to my new book, NOTA BENE. Here is the front cover, with design but of course by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen:

You open the book to the title page and the interior cover presenting a map. 

You turn the page to see the title of the poem, "On Booking My Face."

You turn the page to the poem's text, two hay(na)ku tercets:

If you can't read my handwriting and/or the image, here's the poem's text:

Robots

created my

Facebook identity. But

"Eileen

Tabios" craves

understanding, not publicity.

You turn the page to a "Note" that says, "The last line paraphrases [art critic] Harold Rosenberg's statement on what is needed by American vanguard art, noted in his essay "The American Action Painters."

The inclusion of the poem's last line, and subsequent "Note," arose from the coincidence that, while creating this mini-book, a print-out of the art critic's essay happened to be nearby on the table where I was working (and which I recommend reading):

If one thinks about it, I might not have written the poem the way I did if the print-out didn't happen to be lurking nearby.  Improv -- a way to create poems outside the limits of one's imagination!  Anyway, returning to the mini-book, you then turn the page to the last page and inside back cover:

You might observe that the map seems upside down.  That was deliberate because I wanted to give a sense of a "map" without it necessarily being an African map.  It's the same effect that Jukka's book covers can effect: that the images are of letters and/or words, but they're abstract (thus, not identifiable as specific letters/words).    

Entonces!  I hope all of that warranted the use of one of the two remaining book covers by Jukka-Pekka Kervinen!  Now, where shall we "shelve" this book by the prolific Moi?  Ah, how's about on the Mary Scheller couch to keep company with Tom Beckett's Steps: A Notebook!

Understanding, not publicity -- that's also often misunderstood in the poetry world ... but that's a different story for another day ...