Fridays are sort of strange now. That kid feeling of “the weekend!!!!” is sort of replaced with “well, I guess I’ll keep sitting here…” so today I wanted to do something out of the ordinary. So, I went through Eric Schmaltz’s beautiful book “Surfaces.” This is one of my most recent acquisitions, bought as a COVID cheer-up item. I’d wanted it for a while and wanted to spend a bit of money at Shelf Life since I’m presently employed, and I’m glad I got it. These posts aren’t meant to be reviews, but I love how this book reminds me of graphic design from when I was a kid, of the rolls of drawings my dad would be working on, and the stationary store near my house growing up… the wonderful shelves of pens and pencils and erasers and notebooks for various notepads for various vocations. Also check out this cover… the textures remind me both of cuts and of Kyle Flemmer’s sonnets. Very cool, very evocative. This one’s been sitting on the new books pile so now it’ll take its place on the Canadian poetry shelf.
