I’ve never been literary… sure I read plenty of fantasy novels and all of Isaac Asimov’s works, but never literary. When I started dating Emily (now my wife) she gave me a reading list. It included all the classics that I should have been assigned to read in high school yet never did, and some poetry.
I didn't know how to read poetry. Robert Jordan taught me that reading was a marathon and you had to read fast in order to get through all twelve of the 1000+ page books. But poetry is a different race. Each line needs to be unpacked and analyzed. So I started making type compositions as a way of understanding the meaning of the words.
Let be be finale of seem.
That line from The Emperor of Ice-Cream by Wallace Stevens stuck with me, and when Matthew Hoffman asked me to contribute a panel to his You are Beautiful DIY show at Galerie F it seemed like an appropriate sentiment. I always read the omnipresent sticker with an implied “As you are” after.
When read like that it feels like an acceptance of whatever seems to be.
Before you make poetry, you have to make a lot of bad jokes.
