On September 28, 2007, in a coffeehouse in uptown Phoenix, Arizona, I fulfilled a decades-long dream of becoming a participant in a Poetry Reading in a Coffeehouse. Ever since I read about the Beat poets, and the Beatnik/Coffeehouse phenomenon that persisted till the early 60's, I'd daydreamed about doing that myself, and despaired that I'd missed my opportunity (imagine me at 7 years old, with a beret, reading with irony and angst my immortal "I was walking down the road/When I saw a big fat toad/He was big and fat and round/Then he hopped along the ground" while a classmate of mine punctuates my words with bongo percussion). Behold, the pendulum has swung, and Poetry Slams are in vogue now, and coffeehouses are too.

Some of the poets read from typewritten pages, but the smugger of them (or was it my imagination?) read from professionally printed booklets or magazines. I thought Wow, these are the Select Few, STRANGERS have PUBLISHED THEM!! Then, later, I found out about Chapbooks.

Chapbooks are cheaply produced samplers of a poet's work. Twelve to twenty poems are the usual for one. Sometimes a poet will hire a publisher; more rarely, a publisher will pay the poet for the right to publish and sell.

Sometimes, though, the poet eliminates the middleman and lays out the Chapbook him- or herself, then takes a CD of the document to a Kinko's or an AlphaGraphics for printing. That is what I have done.

Luckily, I have a background in graphic design--I have a bachelor's degree in Studio Art, and I was a design/layout/pasteup guy for a local AlphaGraphics for six months in the early 90's. I also edited newsletters for two different healthcare entities for a total of more than two years.

I've been posting my poetry-laden Journal pages here at Eons since mid June of 07--it'll be a full year of that in less than three weeks. And it's a true Journal, which is literally an everyday thing; have done over 500 pages since late 06.

Here are the pages I laid out:



Upper left is page 16 (left) and 1 (right). Folded down the middle, this is the sheet directly inside the cover.

The next sheet prints on the other side of the first one, so it's pages 2 (left) and 15 (right).

Continuing counting backwards and forwards, the very last sheet is the center spread, pages 8 and 9.

This was all written on Microsoft Word 2007. I looked for a template, but the only Chapbook ones I found were text- and not text-and-image oriented. So I relied heavily on Insert Picture and Insert Text Box, and built it from scratch with a million tweaks. (Lucky me: I can fiddle with a layout ad infinitum with the same satisfaction I get when I take a long walk.)

After some putter-around days I got a feeling of urgency that led me to that fateful three-to-two days ago, when I said NO MATTER WHAT, I FINISH TONIGHT. And THAT is how I found myself at Kinko's at 3:45 AM, approving their proof to the tune of a 12-copy First Edition. Cost to me per copy, over and above the hours I spent on layout, and the months I spent creating the original poems and images, was a hair less than five dollars per copy. I could've brought it in cheaper if I hadn't had some color pages inside.

Why such a limited edition? I KNEW--didn't just think, KNEW--that as soon as I took the finished product home, I would want to make some changes. Sure enough, I saw one major change to make as soon as I had a really good look at it. I also want to add a few more pages, and do a little cleanup/bordering on the pages I've made already.

Finally, let me word this carefully: this is neither an offer to sell, nor a solicitation to buy, but if you have further interest in this project, please send me a private message.