small poems in small booklets

February 5, 2007 12:46 PM

POEMS-FOR-ALL "Small poems in small booklets half the size of a business card. A project of the 24th street irregular press, which cranks them out to be taken by the handful and scattered like seeds by those who want to see poetry grow in a barren cultural landscape." (via Ward 6)
posted by otio (21 comments total)

Not terribly impressed by the samples on offer, but I like the idea and the cover art is great.
posted by otio at 12:47 PM on February 5, 2007

Well-intentioned litter.
posted by amro at 1:06 PM on February 5, 2007

I also quite like the idea. Neat-O!
posted by dobbs at 1:18 PM on February 5, 2007

pre-tent-ious
posted by keswick at 2:10 PM on February 5, 2007

So here I was preparing to be unimpressed by the samples, and I was pleasantly surprised to see my hero Kenneth Patchen looking back at me.

I love the design of these a lot. I think a lot of tiny presses are plagued either by completely incompetent design or by the desire to look like McSweeney's. This is neither.
posted by roll truck roll at 2:18 PM on February 5, 2007

Neat idea, but I don't like the thought of "scattering them like seeds" unless the "scattering" means they'll land on a table or something. Otherwise, it's just turning good poems into trash because nobody's going to pick them up and read them.

I mean, the 3-second Rule would be *way* expired by then, anyway.
posted by katillathehun at 3:22 PM on February 5, 2007

10 seconds!
posted by papakwanz at 3:24 PM on February 5, 2007 [1 favorite]

Hey, Ward Six is a pretty interesting lit blog. Thanks for that one. More [via], please!
posted by mediareport at 3:42 PM on February 5, 2007

Ah, sonofabitch! I'd been meaning to post this for some months months -- Richard is a former coworker of mine. The books themselves are interesting little works of art and well worth sending him a SASE for some copies. Its a wonderful medium for spreading a single, short poem. If it cheers you up, know that they are teensy books created by a mountain of a man (that's Richard on the right with Trekkies 2 star Captain Jerk).

Despite his artist's statement and creative vision of poems spread virally amongst strangers, I've yet to see any in the wild.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:06 PM on February 5, 2007

(or even this mountain) effing html
posted by Ogre Lawless at 4:07 PM on February 5, 2007

I got one of these books years ago and had long forgotten about it, but the one I got was from the publisher and I talked to him for a while about the project. He told me how to scam a color copier and just seemed like a really fantastic guy genuinely interested in making poetry accessable.

Thanks for the link.
posted by serazin at 6:52 PM on February 5, 2007

I'm fascinated by small ANYTHING--
itsy-bitsy picture-books that were Cracker-Jack prizes,
"travel-size" blow-dryers,
MINI cars,
iPod Nanos,
Rhode Island.
Is there a term for this?
Should I move to Japan?
posted by Dizzy at 8:17 PM on February 5, 2007

Way to save the world. I'm sure this will do a whole lot of people a lot of good.
posted by Sukiari at 8:43 PM on February 5, 2007

Right. Cuz poetry never did anyone a lick of good, ever.

Yeesh. Yet another one from the "I'm too cool for your posts" brigade. They're not trying to save the world, jerk; they're trying to sprinkle their bit of it with small, easily carried volumes of poetry. And succeeding nicely, looks like.
posted by mediareport at 9:32 PM on February 5, 2007

The furtive distribution thing's a little evangelical, but overall, cool idea, blessedly attractive design. Anyone else thinking of submitting a poem to this? Sukiari, with your permission I'd like to incorporate your comment into a poem and send it in.
posted by sleevener at 9:41 PM on February 5, 2007

sleevener, I tried to submit one from my online project but the form didn't work. It opened my email and pasted only a portion of my letter in. Weird.
posted by dobbs at 10:09 PM on February 5, 2007

This kind of thing is great; it's a nice idea and, really, utterly harmless. Finding one of these would drop a little serendipity into my day. I'm going to send off for some - my city would be a good place to leave a few here and there.
posted by Miko at 5:56 AM on February 6, 2007

Yes, Dizzy.
Whatever you call that obsession, it's in the water, here.
posted by squasha at 9:59 AM on February 6, 2007

mediareport, Ward Six is very cool and is coauthored by a youngish novelist I like very much, J. Robert Lennon. Everybody I've given The Funnies to read has liked it.
posted by otio at 11:56 AM on February 6, 2007

"Nanophilia"?
"Teensy-ism"?
"Mini-mania"?
"Lilyputionistic"?
posted by Dizzy at 7:25 PM on February 6, 2007

My Grandfather called it The Scalping Knife...

I could Never under-
stand why he was always combing

Its long and Many Colored hair


Is what killed my appreciation for most poetry. Note, it has all the earmarks of a great poem. Strange capitalization and punctuation, odd line breaks, and nonsense imagery.

Some of the poems in the example section on the site remind me of this.
posted by Sukiari at 10:13 PM on February 8, 2007