The Life-Changing Magic of Defacing Books
Hi there.
I don't know about you, But I spent a lot of time in elementary school writing in pencil and being in classes that were told not to ever write on anything other than loose leaf and worksheets.
There were also workbooks, which were flocks of worksheets bound together with black magic, PVA glue, and spite. But those were not the same things as Books with a capital B.
Books, I liked.
Books did not become truly participatory objects until late college and high school, and writing was certainly not allowed to be permanent for a good long minute.
Especially not in math class. I'm not bitter.
I recently bought myself a small child's mass worth of math textbooks. But that's perhaps another story.
I'm here to tell you about Bright Colors in a Short Field.
It's a book. Of poems. With really nice titles. Most of which I stole from a being called Carl Phillips.
In 2019 I met an early copy of a book he wrote called Pale Colors in a Tall Field thanks to one of those marvelous Little Free Library boxes. And I wrote in it. Wrote poems next to its poems using the same titles. Day after day in early 2020, until the whole book was filled.
Highly recommend the book, for its reading value, and as a notebook.
I'm here to offer you that same chance to talk with your books. Not just to make marginalia. But to speak with them on their terms, and yours.
This is the difference between those friends you listened to endlessly, admiringly, without ever becoming a person to them, or letting them become true soft squishy real people to you.
And the friends who make you more of a person in your collisions with them. Like some kind of delicious galactic smoothie.
I'm inviting you to use books as manuscript paper.
Chapbooks are great because poems leave so much room for breathing and ranting and responding. But novels and textbooks work too.
All those lovely blank pages at beginning and end?
Try writing the fits and starts of your own stories on them.
Sheer proximity lends you borrowed brilliance.
Steal lines, words, titles. Mash and twist and make the beautiful profane and make clumsy sentences curt and lovely. Write in pen.
Break something. I dare you. I won't tell the teacher.
Love, always and ever,
Alex
P.S. If you want to meet the messy manuscript from the book notebook, I'm sharing it here. I really like it. If you feel like quoting back any nice phrases that stick out to you, or singing the praises of the entire endeavor, I'd be delighted to read your replies. If you think it's trash, EXCELLENT. Keep that to yourself. Or better yet, print it out and deface it in creative rage. I'd love that. That, too, is my favorite thing.
Double P.S. I emailed Carl last year about writing in his book and he responded. He was very kind. :)