I've been teaching English 101 and Poetry Tour and most of my students are earnest and lovely people. I have been thesising. Yes, thesising is a verb in my life. I have been reading Citizen J by the brilliant Daniela. Daniela, who will be in town soon (September 12) for a reading, The Artificial Houndstooth Reading, which will precede a house party featuring the band KRILL.

But I'll just sit these here. These are my babies:

I have removed their spines delicately but without anesthetics, for the purposes of bettering them. For example, this book started with a leather spine (calf), in certain disrepair.

I furthered the disrepair with the aid of a blunt knife.

Side view, just pretty. Look at that marbling. The marbling is going to be a bear to line back up neatly.

Scrape scrape scrape. Leather, glue, going going gone.

With the help of goop, suddenly I could see the sections underneath all that glue!
Incidentally, animal glue reconstituted smells like dead things.

With the spine free of glue (FREEEE AT LAST!), it was time to break the book, section by section.

Until all of the sections were independant.

It is important to keep track of who follows whom.

In the end, the book looks like a rattier book if you stack it neatly with the covers.

I found a lock of hair among the pages of one of the other books. Gross. Romantic? It was the Illiad. In Greek, so I'm not exactly sure if the page carries romantic significance.