BOOKSELLER
Artist
The Alternative Press
Artist
Ann Mikolowski
(American, 1940-1999)
Artist
Keith Taylor
Datec. 1993
MediumLetterpress on paper
DimensionsPaper Size: 11 × 8 in. (27.9 × 20.3 cm)
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineGift of Gary Eleinko, 2023
Object numberUAC7451.10
DescriptionLeterpress printed poem by Keith Taylor titled, "BOOKSELLER".Letterpress printed drawing by Ann Mikolowski.
BOOKSELLER
I don't really care about the characters in books, certainly not
about the people who write them. I'm not much interested in
their contents, how one book supports or argues with another.
I like the objects, the shape and color of them, and the pleasure
they take in themselves.
They create abstract patterns: a large red book seperated from
a small blue one by a used yellow; or a whole shelf assuming
twenty shades of green, the variations blending into each other
until individual volumes almost disappear. The books make an
ever-evolving kaleidoscope, colors shifting into new patterns almost
every day.
I prefer to think that it's willed, chosen by the books themselves.
But there is a deeper joy in the bookshop, one that comes despite
or because of my need to keep the books in some kind of order.
A book on tantric meditation will suddenly appear in the psychology
section. I reshelve it. A month later it pops up in the European
history section. Six months after it's in the last shelf of poetry
books, looking comfortable between Yeats and Zukofsky. The books
find their own order. Their movement seems a dance with a
geologic tempo, so slow I can't see it. The dance is like the story
country children tell about trees moving at night, just a millimeter
or two, nothing that can be noticed in the morning, until one day
a child climbs onto a rope swing that's tied to a maple branch,
and he swings out as he has done hundreds of times before, but this
time slams straight into the side of the barn.
Published by The Alternative Press, Issue Number Nineteen.
