Bulk-Rate

A Poetry Chapbook

The author’s first chapbook of poetry, Bulk-Rate, was composed at age twenty-three while he was at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop in Iowa City, Iowa. These twenty short, often-intertwined and somewhat mysterious “found” poems were conceived as though the author had received them in the mail all at once via an inexpensive and slow-delivery U.S. Post Office bulk-rate postage amount. These fun, fast-moving and intriguing poems set memorable individual scenarios and visuals in just a few lines and sometimes play with the space on the page (part of one poem is upside down and another poem is greatly expanded so that it’s in a much larger typeface than the other poems, extending across two pages.) Some of the poems also deal with things the author would have seen on kiosks and in store-windows and diners, as well as in movies around Iowa City (including the wonderful University of Iowa Bijou film showings of independent, foreign and classic movies).

The poems were hand typeset and printed by the author using the University of Iowa Typesetting course lab facilities. Sixteen hand-printed, assembled, bound and signed copies were created in December, 1981, and distributed to friends and family members. (One copy was also retained by the University of Iowa Typesetting course lab in order to show future Typesetting students what types of projects could be produced.)

Published in: 1981 By the Reflex Press