A copy of a simple verb by JJ Rowan on a black gridded cutting mat. The hand-printed linocut cover design is made up of two large yellow semicircles and a large lavender open oval, overlapping. Red lettering spells out the title and author’s name.
Three folded chapbook interiors, unbound, without covers, black text printed on cream paper. From left to right: Fog by Dakotah Jennifer, Victoria by Douglas Piccinnini, and a simple verb by JJ Rowan.
Three chapbooks with linocut covers. From left to right: FOG by Dakotah Jennifer, blue and cream waves with dark blue text; A SIMPLE VERB by JJ Rowan, yellow and lavender geometric shapes with red-orange text; and VICTORIA by Douglas Piccinnini, light green-to-dark green gradient ground with a gray house and gray text.
JJ Rowan
All six chapbooks, arranged in a three-by-three grid on a woven rug. The covers are colorfully printed by hand from hand-carved linocut blocks.
Two copies of a simple verb by JJ Rowan. The top copy reveals the hand-printed linocut cover design in yellow and lavender with red text. The bottom copy is turned to show the back, which is blank except for a red hand-carved stamp in an abstract spiral shape.
A sample page from a simple verb by JJ Rowan, in black type on cream paper.
A copy of a simple verb by JJ Rowan on a black gridded cutting mat. The hand-printed linocut cover design is made up of two large yellow semicircles and a large lavender open oval, overlapping. Red lettering spells out the title and author’s name.

SIMPLE VERB
JJ Rowan

$10.00

May 2019
6 x 9 |  20 pages

Handprinted linocut cover
Caligo Safe-Wash Relief Ink or Speedball Relief Print Ink on cream 80 lb cover
Digitally printed interior on natural white 60 lb text
Hand sewn in natural twine

Note: Individually printed by hand in small batches, no two covers will be exactly alike. Expect minor variations in color across the edition. Thank you, readers, for your incredible support of Bloof’s handmade series. Full series subscriptions are sold out, but you can create your own custom bundle (discounted shipping) with the books that remain!

Limited to 150 numbered copies

BLOOF BOOKS CHAPBOOK SERIES
Volume 4: Issue 3 (2019)
ISSN 2373-163X

a simple verb moves intuitively but never hesitatingly through its untitled sequence, turning over an interleaved pile of memory, experience, and language as it languidly ranges. Each prose-poem piece is shaped by the author’s compositional strategy of writing by hand on gridded paper, usually in public. “what the simple verb is versus what the simple verb wants. hold a simple verb in your body long enough it complexes. // you become your own diagram.”

JJ Rowan is a queer poet and dancer living in Southern Oregon’s Rogue Valley, looking for the places where the written line and the lines of the moving body intersect. Their poems, hybrid work, and VisPo have appeared in Phoebe, the Hunger, Dream Pop Journal, and others. Their collaborative sonnets with Nate Logan were recently published in where is the river and in the chapbook mcmxciv. (Shirt Pocket Press).

46 in stock

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Description

Excerpt

memory will be excruciating, but it’s not your apology to say how we each were failed.

we’re reluctant to allow the table to hold the arm’s weight. hold in. hold back. hold that tender spot where the heat gathers, press pad of finger against meat surrounding joint.

reach for something that isn’t there.

reach blankly (retch blankly). reach until something appears (retch something). trust the spell of reaching. step onto the void.

void all.

didn’t wake in the night.
didn’t unstiff in the night.
turned the mistake into a flourish.

//

Additional information

Author

Rowan, JJ

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