My brother just asked. And before I fired off something
snappy, I checked the hefty Random House Dictionary of the English
Language that I keep on the dictionary stand in my study. According to
which, a chapbook is:
1. a small book or pamphlet of
popular tales, ballads, etc., formerly hawked about by chapmen. 2. a small book
or pamphlet, often of poetry.
A chapman, if you're wondering, is a peddler.
Not too long ago (okay, probably longer than I think--I'm
always losing track of this kind of thing) Poets and Writers ran a feature or
two on DIY chapbooks of varying sorts. I was tempted, and I kept the magazine
issues on the bottom shelf of that dictionary stand, but I haven't made one yet.
I might, though. In grade school, we had a Young Authors
Fair when we all made books. Each kid wrote her stories or poems, illustrated
as necessary, and then we made the covers, sewing the pages together (probably
stapling, sometimes) and folding fabric or red-flocked wallpaper out of one of
those heavy sample books over the cardboard. It was the best. I loved the whole
event. All our books would be laid out on tables in the gym, and our parents
would file through to ooh and aah. It felt totally real--we had made
real books.
I kept making books long after grade school, though I
haven't done much for a while. Still, I've been thinking about a bookbinding
class. Just as art supplies lure me with their ranked rainbows in open
boxes--just take one new colored pencil, or maybe two; just like candy--the
bookbinding supplies on the next shelf sing out, You, too, could do this. Use your words this way.
I never developed much patience or skill with fabric crafts or wood. I couldn't build a dictionary stand like the one my grandfather made.
But I do like paper. I like the juxtaposition of the handcrafted and the
high-tech. Even as I type this on my snazzy laptop, I'm thinking about the
gorgeous paper scraps I've been hoarding all these years, waiting for a
project. Perhaps we can have both, at least for a while--the e-book and the pamphlet of handmade paper sewn with spider silk.
There
won't be spider silk, but my chapbook, Detours,
I'm happy to say, will soon be available from Burnside Review. More on
that to follow--detour ahead!
