Five Poems for Bookmakers and Librarians
Marshall Weber
The below five poems were written and rewritten numerous times over the last four decades while I considered the role of the book, language and writing in my life and in my dreams. All of these poems have appeared in artists’ books of both mine and others. My poems tend to never be completely finished, they change with the times or I adjust them for use in my artists’ books and upon the requests of other publishers and artists’ bookmakers who use them.
I feel that sometimes there are matters that can only be addressed poetically; curators, librarians and journalists sometimes ask me how and why I do this or that, I can answer the “what” and the “how”, but “Why?” and other questions about the spirit and heart seem best answered with poetry. I hope these poems can clarify and inspire the reader to consider the ecological and material reality of both spoken and written language, human and otherwise. I have always been inspired by the beauty of the resonance of human letterforms, calligraphy, books and bookmaking with the natural and spiritual world, and have often conjectured about the birth of these cultural manifestations. I hope these poems can evoke my passionate observations regarding these matters and provoke some similar epiphanies for you, the reader. Lastly, I would like to thank Lilian Landes for courageously supporting this eclectic blog entry.
- 4:12 AM, 1987
- Figures of Speech, 2004/2020
- The Veldt’s Grammar, 1994/2020 – please note that this poem was written collaboratively with artist and Booklyn co-founder Christopher K. Wilde
- The Tide’s Story, 2006
- Nervous System, 1998

4:12 AM
A man laughing at a flower
you see what happens next.
I have been seen floating over a lake of blood
massive books with cracked leather covers
break the surface of the blood lake
and rise toward me.
He was only happy when he was miserable.
hope prowls
history has made it a wary beast.
They would rather spill milk into the dirt.
Figures of Speech
dance in my mind
fate
call it what you will
causality has always been my favorite
but faith alone
determines the greatness
of any endeavor
you can always trust fire to burn
I had thought that I had said that
LISTEN
see what I mean
you can always trust blood to dry
true or false
in this age of endless equivocation
who can say but you
for you make the words
do interesting and challenging things man
they are but carrion birds on the horizon for me
I have watched
those wavering flickers
tremble as they approached
my eyelids assumed distance
though the reeking smell
foretold intimacy
up
down
with thrusts persistent
the grey messengers grew large
their arrowed flight writ out
the last sentence of Zoroaster
hey
your pages are turned down man
every book a feather
on my wing
words pulled out of my heart
tongue tied
ink quilled finger tips
scratch runic
put your book down and sing
while your last breath leaves you
your last chance to greet
forever
with Christopher K. Wilde
The Veldt’s Grammar
Finally alone in the heat
sun high
all is quiet
she exhales a hot sigh
and looks deep into the cave
watching the stick figures
on the walls mutate
into dancing letters
she thinks about thinking
about the golden horse
galloping in her head
she turns to look at the veldt
and sees the herds writing
across the line of the horizon
she feels the wind
paging the leaves
over and over again
as the storm’s lightning
traces future alphabets
The Tide’s Story
I.
please
hold me with both of your hands
tightly
so we both feel the exchange
of blood and ink
let us stare at each other
relentlessly in endless
yet silent
conversation
this is the life we share
contracted
by the death of beings
gentler than ourselves
quiet and swaying
they bequeathed infinite
universes
with paths as numerous and varied
as their roots
as profound
as the dark earthen depths
to which those tendrils
plunged
life’s anchor
securing the laden vessel
holding sails to the sky
and pages to the sun
floating in the sea of words
each water drop a letter
each wave a word
a sentence
a paragraph
all telling
the tide’s story
II.
sentenced
to madness
lunatic imaginings
our legions
of scrawled tinder stick
kindling
igniting
firestorms
in our brains
lightning fields stricken
with tangled consciousness
please
hold me tightly
with both of your hands
turn me
again and again
please
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my lessons
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my lessons
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my lessons
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my lessons
please help me I have too much joy love living I have my lessons

Nervous System
she sleeps
buried in her beauty
dreaming
baby animals’ dreams
her
cascading hair spreads
like moonbeams on a soft pillow
tracing the roots of the tree
whose branches and leaves shadow
the lines on her face
and the veins in her hands
her fingers are still in poses
that reflect her body
arm and legs lightly contoured by the sheet
which seems to float a hairsbreadth above her skin
it’s draping reminding me of gentle calligraphy
with letter forms of coral and rivers
roadways and maps
a groundhogs dirt path through the woods
an orchids bloom
a child’s brushstroke
the convolutions of my brain
and
the infinite mirroring
of dendrites, capillaries and the constellations
of the branching chandelier suspended above her
casting dim golden highlights
upon all these nervous systems

© M. Weber
Zum Autor
Marshall Weber war 1999 Mitbegründer und ist jetzt leitender Kurator der Booklyn, Inc., einer weltweit renommierten New Yorker Künstlervereinigung, die sich ganz dem Künstlerbuch verschrieben hat. Weber ist Träger des Künstlerbuchpreises 2019 der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel, wo er das Projekt „The Wolfenbüttel People’s Library“ entwickelte: Webers breites künstlerisches Schaffen und seine internationalen Verdienste um das Genre Künstlerbuch (bis etwa nach China, wo er mit Xu Bing zusammenarbeitet) hier auch nur ansatzweise schildern zu wollen, muss scheitern… Weitere Informationen
Diesen Artikel zitieren: Marshall Weber, “Five Poems for Bookmakers and Librarians“, in Kunst zwischen Deckeln, 05. Juni 2020, https://bookarts.hypotheses.org/?p=1308