A New Blog

It's been several months since I've updated Sips Without Straws, and during that time I was wrestling with deep, existential questions. Why does this blog exist? What is the purpose of it all? At first I enjoyed my hiatus from the blogging world, but it wasn't too long before I started reading blogs again and began to contemplate jumping back into the fray.

My original conception of this space was that it would contain intimate reflections on whatever I had been reading, and therefore wouldn't be of much interest to others. I realize now that I wanted to have one foot in and one foot out of the blogging world. In practice, this balancing act was difficult to achieve, especially when one of the most important functions of blogs is to build connection and community.

So I find that I'd like to start over fresh. I hope that you'll come visit me at Some Little Language. I'll probably be blogging about many of the same things, but hopefully I'll be updating more regularly. I'm also going to relax the restraints about what I CAN blog about, so there will be different kinds of content too. Then after a few months I'll close the door to this space. If you've been reading, thanks. I really appreciate it.

And for the record, those existential questions are unresolved. If I ever do figure them out, I will share the answers on Some Little Language. ¡Hasta Luego!

Meeting Grounds

I should have posted long ago about Midway Journal and the first issue that I participated in as poetry and nonfiction editor. It's been very inspiring to be a part of this journal and I'm excited about some plans we have in the works.

The February issue contains a really cool exquisite-corpse-style drama project as well as killer short stories by Kiki DeLancey, Eileen Russell and Meg Tuite.

I was involved with publishing two essays by Priscilla Kinter as well as poems by Mark DeCarteret, Colleen McCarthy and Gregg Murray. Then I snuck in some art by the inimitable Albie Rock.

It's lovely to watch an issue come together and take shape, to admire its overlaps and juxtapositions.

More Making

A few of the other artists in the MCBA mentorship program and I, along with Richard Stephens, made a collaborative broadside. Richard did the reductive lino cut and the rest of us responded to the image in some way with writing and set our own lead type. Being the only writer, I may have been glutinous by comparison with the amount of words I used... this must be the first time I have EVER been more prolific than anyone else!

Yesterday with Julie Baugnet we made mixed media journals. Mine is VERY sloppy, but it was good to loosen the reins after my experiences with letterpress (where precision is everything) and break out the paint. Here, being the only writer, I was at a disadvantage... but I stumbled along. 

And finally, now that they've been sent out in the mail, I'll post my first independent project. Baby announcements made for my dear friend Molly. Molly referred to her daughter as "the minnow" while she was carrying her and I asked Shawn to do an illustration that took this into account. He NAILED it. Then I began making mistake after mistake that compromised our original design, had to simplify, cried, made errors that compromised my print run, cried, and eventually got them done, just a couple short of how many I had promised. There's a lot more to the story, but I'm trying to put it behind me. What I learned was that I still need a lot of practice with letterpress, and I'm not going to do important projects for other people until I have more experience. But in the end, it turned out okay. And Shawn's fantastic drawing masks any flaws in the printing. I love him for that, among other things.

what is known as heart

Konstantin Levin regarded his brother as a man of great intelligence and education, noble in the highest sense of the word, and endowed with the ability to act for the common good. But, in the depths of his soul, the older he became and the more closely he got to know his brother, the more often it occurred to him that this ability to act for the common good, of which he felt himself completely deprived, was perhaps not a virtue but, on the contrary, a lack of something--not a lack of good, honest and noble desires and tastes, but a lack of life force, of what is known as heart, of that yearning which makes a man choose one out of all the countless paths in life presented to him and desire that one alone. The more he knew his brother, the more he noticed that Sergei Ivanovich and many other workers for the common good had not been brought to this love of the common good by the heart, but had reasoned with their minds that it was good to be concerned with it and were concerned with it only because of that. And Levin was confirmed in this surmise by observing that his brother took questions about the common good and the immortality of the soul no closer to heart than those about a game of chess or the clever construction of a new machine.

cited: Tolstoy, Leo. Anna Karenina. Trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky. London: Penguin Books, 2006. 239.

More Book Arts Explorations

I was thinking about this photo of Molly's, which I absolutely adore, and also children's storybooks when I made this second pressure print. This time was even quicker and more breezy. It's nice to feel hardly invested in the outcome. I'm working on a project now where the stakes are very high. And of course everything is going wrong. But I'm trying my best to roll with the punches.

This is my first broadside, made @ MCBA in Letterpress I. The cassette and candy were drawn by Shawn; I added the tape and cut the image out of a linoleum block. I hope to do more collabs with him soon. It was interesting to be working with my own poem, hearing those sounds in my head.

Handmade paper! This was so much fun. Very little need for precision, lots of playing around.

Close

from Coeur de Lion by Ariana Reines:

The words on a page

In an open book

Looked stupid to 

Me when I was little

Unless I was right up close

To them. They looked

Weak: barely

There.

It made me nervous

That in order

For words on a page

To have power

I had to be close.

I had to be close.

cited: Reines, Ariana. Coeur de Lion. MAL-O-MAR, 2007.

Book Arts Boot Camp

Last Saturday I was at MCBA from 10-4, learning artist's books and binding. I can't believe how many books we made! Pictured here:

• two accordion books, one with a meandering fold (green map)
• a single pamphlet (tan box)
• a double pamphlet (red marble)
• Japanese/stab binding (black w/ red stitching)
• drum leaf binding (black w/ tan spine)