I’m in the midst of Bookman’s birthday weekend. Tomorrow is the official day on which there will be presents and cake (chocolate cherry), but today we went out to the used bookstore. Bookman found a book for himself and I found two for me. A little lopsided since we went for his birthday but, hey, he had his chance. The two books I brought home are:
The Poems of Marianne Moore. It is a complete collection of all of Moore’s poems. Apparently when she prepared her own complete collection in 1967 she excluded nearly half her work. Penguin has kindly collected all of them. I’ve not read much Moore so this will be fun to dig into.
ABC of Reading by Ezra Pound. I tried to borrow this from the library once but couldn’t because it had been lost. At the time it was out of print or at least very hard to find. The copy I found is in decent condition and is the 1934 edition. New Directions just reissued the book in 2010 which will make it easier to come by new, but there is something special about an old copy.
Now, on to something decidedly unbookish I thought I’d share. Back in the spring Danielle participated in a mail art exchange, The Elevated Envelope. I decided to give it a go and signed up for the summer exchange.
The prompt for the exchange was “sweet” whatever that means to the participants. I received the prompt and the four people I was to send an envelope to in mid June. I spent the first two weeks figuring out what I was going to do. I have spent July, an hour here an hour there, creating the envelopes. The postmarked by deadline is July 31st and I finally finished them up today.
I decided to go with “sweet dreams” as my theme. Acquired different colored paper with stars on it. Drew a sleepy moon on the front and on the back “sweet dreams” in blue and silver.
We are also to include a little something inside the envelop; nothing big just something to go along with the envelope because while getting arted up envelopes in the mail is cool, it is even more fun when there is something inside. Included in my envelopes are a tiny envelope of “stardust” (aka gold glitter), a bookmark that says “sweet dreams till sunbeams find you” and a couple packets of bedtime tea.
The folks in my group must be going to the wire like I did because I haven’t gotten any envelopes from them yet. When I do I will share them with you.
If you think this looks like fun and have been wanting to try your hand at mail art or are looking for a creative outlet, you can sign up for the fall exchange. The prompt is already posted so you have lots of time to come up with an idea. The prompt for fall is “malicious surprise.” Halloween fun!
Now I have to go try and finish reading Ragnorok by A. S. Byatt for the Slaves book discussion on Tuesday. Good thing the book is short otherwise I’d be in trouble since I just started reading it yesterday.
Filed under: Mail art, New Acquisitions, Personal
