Category: Poetry

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

The world is round,
and time is fleet
And my purpose is not
what it ought to be.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

I lie down weeping
among the weeds
and hug the world
until it stings.

The image in the first spread would not fit, so I had to cut out one child. I added her to the second spread.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

High and far,
from a distant star,
In its hurrying race
through unknown space,
those little troubles
and little needs,
are overcome
and swallowed by the sea.

I have been a terrible bad blogger, but I have been working on things. Arty things, even. I just haven’t been very motivated to scan them, so that I could share. And then when I did get motivated, I was a dork and scanned them at the default dpi, which was crappy, crappy, crappy, and I was too lazy to redo them. Today I shall do better, though!

These are more reworkings of Ella Wheeler Wilcox’s poems. God, but she was an infuriatingly merry ray of sunshine. I think I would have had to smack her, if I’d’ve known her.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

There are sometimes
two straight roads
One over,
one under the hill.
Terrible thoughts
and fierce desires
long to follow
my own
wild will.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

This August day we two alone,
Dream of a night forever flown.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

I learned the uselessness
of woe.
It carried me back
to the day that is flown
I curse it then
and sigh for wings,
dragged down earthward
by little things.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

O strange engine
of steel and steam,
Awake and rise
Cast off thy dream
O restless engine
o blood and bone,
hurry on
and hurrying, go

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

If I could dwell there,
ever more alone,
Forgetting
forgotten
unknown
where the hands that destroy
the ghost of a Joy,
Reach forth
and clasp my own.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

So soon, so soon,
the changes came
On that same river,
not the same,
Bearing our joys
and bringing our woes
We know we dream
we dream we know.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

There’s the ghost of a Hope
in the grave between
Close to the border-land of woe,
Guard above us
while we sleep
When all the hidden
things are known.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

That underlying
hidden half
like some
grieving
mocking-bird,
alone in darkness
now come home.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

Dreams to dreams,
shorn of leaves
drawing near the sun
through and through
the shadows shoot
And stars drop,
one by one.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

The birds that were banished,
follow and vanish
in a seething vapor sea.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

Great planets that are watching haughty
treading the safe and infinite morn
I thought the three
a curious dream
No darkness, no graves, no grieving,
In a land beyond sight or conceiving,
safe from the strengthening storm.

I rang in the new year with paper boats and altered poems. I’m not happy with the little ridge under the paper on the last one. It’s the knot and tail ends of threads from the button I sewed onto the third collage (backing pages). But that aside, I’m really happy with how the last one turned out. The background image is an extreme close-up photograph of an eye, from a medical text. The “dome” is the cornea, and the “sea” is the lens. The three “planets” are vintage snaps from my button cache.

collage and altered poem in handmade book
3 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches

That underlying, hidden half
Like some grieving mocking-bird,
Alone in darkness
Now come home.

I made a new book a couple of nights ago and started working in it today. This time around I’m taking the text from a collection of Ella Wheeler Wilcox‘s godawful twee poems.