My project presents Anne Waldman’s 2003 poem In the Room of Never Grieve in three ways. Using the possibilities and limitations of sculptural bookforms, I crafted unique reading experiences that allegorize the text, engage tactility, and pace the poetry.

The piece functions both as a conceptual object and a teaching tool. Conceptually, the work translates temporal and hermeneutical devices of meter, associative leaps, and mood into graphic and sculptural dimension. Educationally, the piece encourages the young reader—perhaps a high school student new to the content—to explore complex ways of reading that consider the above-named devices, more so than the linearity of prose.

The overall container and the nested cubes, specifically, reflect on the room of never grieve as an architectural space. The placement on type on the cuboid pages perhaps recreates the darting, frenetic attention of the subject of the poem.

The perforated, wire-o codex reflects on moments of broad, subject-matter leaps in the poem, so dramatic that they “tear” the text. Take, for example, the leap from “cheetah under her skin” to “one window on the sunny side”, adjacent in the text. Both the enactment of tearing and the color reveal, under the first layer, demonstrate this drama.

The vellum portfolio with the belly band considers the uses of layering in the text and its emotional ambiguity. The repetiion of “with stylus”, “w/ rancor”, and “w/ daggers” creates jazz-like layers. The hazy vellum considers the unnamed-ness of the anxiety, regret, or guilt that the subject of the poem experiences. Similarly, the use of color, photography, and texture throughout the piece is ghostly, surreal, and, perhaps, sickly.