I stack books into poems. I delight in finding them where they might not be found. Bookstores, friends’ homes, libraries, conferences, and airports all hide secret gardens for me. What seeds can I find there? What flowers can I grow with those? Some take a few minutes to blossom, others hours. Some poems present themselves as fully grown, others evolve through grafting and pruning.

When transcribing a spine poem, I take the liberty of adding line breaks, and playing with punctuation as I please. Other edits are rare, minimal, and always contextual. Some I share with you in this journal, both as photographs and as text. All honor the book and what it holds.