The Poetic Body

Offering time: songs

Karen S. Kunc. Offering Time: songs. By Rabindranath Tagore. Lincoln, NE: Blue Heron Press, 2001.

DeLoss McGraw. Janet and DeLoss: poems and pictures. By Janet Lewis and DeLoss McGraw. San Diego: Brighton Press, c1990.

Mary Louise Laird. One-handed basket-weaving: twenty poems on the theme of work. Jelaluddin Rumi; translated by Coleman Barks. Berkeley, CA: Quelquefois Press, 1993.

Here are three different approaches to combining imagery with printed poetry. One-handed basket weaving is illustrated with a lyrical drawing by Mary Laird that echoes the motif of the title. Janet Lewis and DeLoss McGraw, poet and artists, collaborated closely in making Janet and Deloss: poems and pictures. The poems are printed on separate pages from the large, bleed-edged prints that were developed in response to the poems. In Karen Kunc’s realization of Rabindranath Tagore’s Offering time she integrates her colored woodcuts with the body of the poem. The book opens vertically and may be read page by page, or viewed fully extended.