Inspired by Brain Pickings’ book spine poetry–a recent tribute to National Poetry Month–I decided to draw from my own bookshelf and try my hand at the form:
The trouble with poetry:
The innocent wit,
The edge of reason,
The fact of a doorframe.
The Trouble with Poetry: and other poems by Billy Collins
The Innocent: A Novel by Ian McEwan
Wit: A Play by Margaret Edson
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems 1950-2001 by Adrienne Rich
For even more interesting results, disorganize your local library a la Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project. The project follows the same process, but takes place in a different library for every entry. Katchadourian sums up its aims:
The project has taken place in many different places over the years, ranging form private homes to specialized public book collections… Taken as a whole, the clusters from each sorting aim to examine that particular library’s focus, idiosyncrasies, and inconsistencies — a cross-section of that library’s holdings.
Look out for more volumes soon. In the meantime, feel free to post links to your own forays into book spine poetry below.