Description
June 2013
Chapbook, Limited edition
7 x 7, 28 pages
Full color 80 lb. cover
Natural white interior
Machine sewn in a zigzag stitch
2 interior photographs (b&w in the chap & PDF, color in BOUND)
Poems Are the Only Real Bodies was the fourth chapbook in the 2012–2013 series from Bloof Books. Each chapbook in the series was released in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release. Poems Are the Only Real Bodies is also included in out first chapbook-compilation paperback, BOUND: The First Array.
A collection of letters to the historical object, Harriet Tubman (aka Araminta Ross/The Conductor/Moses) the sequence considers the pleasures and difficulties of what it means to encounter and experience a radiant historical figure—how do subjectivities collide? How does poetry service the body? Most of the chapbook was written in situ at the Harriet Tubman Memorial Triangle in Harlem, the neighborhood in which Tamayo both lives and works.
The design concept of Poems Are the Only Real Bodies included a detail of one of the interior illustations—JT with a statue of Harriet Tubman in Harlem—and the colors are inspired by a popular fast-food chain located in the same plaza, which also appears in the poem. One hundred copies were machine-sewn in variations of orange, white and pink.