Book Poem

Book binding is far from easy. Regardless, I made a book following Dean Young:

Shamanism 101

by Dean Young

Like everyone, I wanted my animal

to be the hawk.

I thought I wanted the strength

to eat the eyes first then tear

into the fuse box of the chest

and soar away.

I needed help because I still

cowered under the shadow of my father,

a man who inspected picture tubes

five out of seven nights,

who woke to breakfast on burnt roast

except the two weeks he’d sleep

on a Jersey beach and throw me

into the gasoline-sheened waves.

I loved him dying indebted

not knowing to what,

thinking his pension would be enough,

released not knowing from what,

gumming at something I was afraid

to get close enough to hear, afraid

of what I was co-signing. So maybe

the elephant. The elephant knows

when one of its own is suffering

up to six miles away. Charges across

the desert cognizant of the futility.

How can I be forgiven when I don’t know

what I need forgiving for? Sometimes

the urges are too extreme: to slap

on the brakes and scream, to bite the haunch

of some passing perfume, so maybe my animal

is the tiger. Or shark.

Or centipede.

But I know I’m smaller than that,

filling notebooks with clumsy versions

of one plaint, one pheromonal call,

clamoring over a crumb that I think

is the world, baffled by the splotch

of one of my own crushed kind,

almost sweet, a sort of tar,

following a trail of one or two molecules,

leaving a trail

of one or two molecules.


My images in the book reflect some of the visual imagery from the poem, such as the Jersey shore. The pages themselves also progressively get smaller and darker, reflective of how the character feels about himself. The cover is the image of a sad mask, that when opened, exposes the poem full of animal masks, that the character is trying to hide behind. Below are some images that are in the poem book.