Author Archive:
What is it with poetry book covers? They’re so often boring or ugly. I think a major reason for the ugly ones is simply that small presses can’t afford to hire a proper designer. And there’s an understandable concern about overinterpreting the poetry itself. Also, there’s a general idea that the cover must be staid in order to convey the seriousness of the book’s contents. But so many poetry books seem to be saying glumly, “Oh, don’t mind me, I’m poetry. You’re probably not going to like me unless you already know me. I don’t blame you. I’m kind of boring.”
Come on, poetry books! Don’t be so modest. You’re too beautiful to sit around in that frumpy old bathrobe. Here are a few looks you could try on!
Christine Hume, Shot; Counterpath Press, 2009
Susan Briscoe, The Crow’s Vow; Signal, 2010
Alex Lemon, Fancy Beasts; Milkweed Editions, 2010; Cover and interior design by Christian Fuenfhausen
C.K. Williams, Wait; Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010
Gillian Conoley, The Plot Genie; Omnidawn Publishing, 2009
Kim Addonizio, Lucifer at the Starlite; W.W. Norton & Company, 2009
Norwegian artist Gardar Eide Einarsson’s new show at Team Gallery in New York consists of a series of large black-and-white paintings based on appropriated images. One source image, it turns out, is a book design by Peter Mendelsund, a fact that did not go unnoticed by Mendelsund himself. He wrote about it on his blog Jacket Mechanical, pointing out that the image is not, as the gallery’s statement says, in the public domain.
Mendelsund’s not alone. Last year Einarsson showed a set of similar paintings that appropriate Camus book covers designed by Helen Yentus:
Finally, a book cover that does justice to the work of Margaret Atwood! Beautiful. Too bad for us Americans that it’s the U.K. edition (here’s the U.S. hardcover: http://www.yearoftheflood.com/us/). There’s also a lovely special slipcase edition (right).
The U.K. paperback that comes out later this year is also striking. It’s one of a series of Atwood cover designs by Nathan Burton (the Caustic Cover Critic has a post about the designs on his blog).
Over the past six months or so, I’ve read a number of e-books on my iPod Touch, trying out Stanza, Kindle for iPhone, and eReader. At this point the various annoyances (text that’s laid out with big distracting spaces between words, typos, boring covers, wading through the copyright info—and sometimes the “about the author” cover text—to get to the first pages of the book itself) are starting to outweigh the convenience of acquiring a new book immediately, portability, and reading in the dark. And the novelty of playing with a new toy has worn off for me.
The Sundance Film Festival opens this weekend with the premiere of the Allen Ginsberg biopic “Howl,” starring James Franco (angelheaded hipster du jour). Here’s a clip of Franco’s Ginsberg reciting the end of “Howl for Carl Solomon.” Just for fun, below that is John Turturro reciting the whole durn thing (from the Beat documentary “The Source”).
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