Misprints & Mind Melds

Distant Dwellings #5: A funny thing happened on the way from the printer's

When books go undercover

Finally the shipment arrived. I ripped into the carton, pushed through wads of packing, and pounced on the glossy covers of my new book. O, the aroma of freshly inked paper!  

Then I cracked open a copy. WHAT?

The book looked like mine: WHISH in burgundy letters over a trompe l'oeil image painted by my sister. Below the art—my name in bold serif font. But inside? The title page read: Tendrel: a Meeting of Minds by Anne Waldman.

A mystifying meeting of minds

Tendrel is a Tibetan term used to describe the relationships between all that we observe. Tendrel (not tendril) refers to magical connections. Through some sort of mishap at the factory, my book had melded with Waldman’s book. My cover, her text. For a moment my identity shifted and I became Anne Waldman — black haired, wild eyed, bohemian. I imagined myself sharing a stage with Allen Ginsberg, chanting poems, shattering conventions.  

The Italian surrealist Italo Calvino wrote a novel like this. If On A Winter's Night A Traveler follows the misadventures of a frustrated reader who blunders through hopelessly mangled books. Stories merge into stories, plots tangle, and the reader embarks on a convoluted journey to reconstruct the narrative.

Turns out, things often go awry on the assembly line. Covers get swapped, pages lose their places, and books stumble into the world scrambled and confused. The mistakes can be disorienting and thoroughly delightful.  How wonderful to find Anne Waldman's  adventurous words inside my cover. How thrilling to imagine a similar switcheroo. Maybe Anne Waldman opened a copy of her new book to find... MY poems! 

T. S. Eliot famously said, “good writers borrow, great writers steal.” Even without swapping book covers, cross-pollination occurs. When I wrote WHISH, I often caught myself echoing other writers.

For the hybrid forms, I thank James Tate and other masters of prose poetry. For the wild leaps, I thank surrealist poet Dean Young. For the sentience of inanimate objects, I'm grateful to Victoria Chang. And for the occasional forays into rhythmic wordplay, I'm indebted to Anne Waldman.  

Poem

Here's an excerpt from a poem Anne Waldman wrote in the 1980s and reprinted in Tendrel.

I am putting makeup on empty space:
all patinas converging on empty space
rouge blushing on empty space
I am putting makeup on empty space
pasting eyelashes on empty space
painting the eyebrows of empty space
piling creams on empty space
painting the phenomenal world...

             ~Anne Waldman, from Tendrel: A Meeting of Minds (Trident Press)

Did you receive a mixed up book?

If you ordered WHISH and found something else under the cover, enjoy the adventure ... but please do notify the bookseller and request a corrected copy.

Prompts

• MISPRINTS: Has your writing ever been altered in a way you did not intend? Tell us what happened.

• MIND MELDS: Do other writers speak through you? Describe a moment when you caught yourself echoing language, forms, or themes you absorbed through your reading.

• If you could tuck yourself inside another writer's book, who would you choose?

Click the “Leave a comment” button to share your thoughts.

The WHISH book tour rolls into May

• Sunday May 5, 2024 – ZOOM. 2 PM ET. International Women’s Writer’s Guild. Register >

• Friday May 10, 2024 – Saratoga Springs, NY. 1 PM ET. Saratoga Senior Center, 290 West Ave suite 1, Saratoga Springs, NY.

• Saturday May 11, 2024 – Albany, NY. 3 PM ET. Book Launch Party: Jackie Craven (WHISH),  Sarah Giragosian (Mother Octopus), and Barbara Ungar (After Naming the Animals).  The Book House of  Stuyvesant Plaza, 1475 Western Ave, Albany, NY 12203. Details >

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“With Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, and Star Trek as her muses, Jackie Craven subverts time... WHISH is a triumph of a book!"  —DENISE DUHAMEL, author of Second Story

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