Description
March 2013
Chapbook, Limited edition
4.25 x 9.25, 24 pages
Blue linen or gray laid 80 lb. cover
Natural white interior
Japanese 4-hole binding
This Is What It Is Like to Be Loved by Me was the second chapbook in the 2012–2013 series from Bloof Books. It was released in a limited edition of one hundred numbered copies, followed by a digital release. The design concept of This Is What It Is Like to Be Loved by Me reflects the Japanese influence of the haibun form. Fifty copies were in blue linen covers, and fifty were in gray laid covers, with hand-sewn Japanese 4-hole bindings in natural twine.
The work is a hybrid of prose and haiku, a loose haibun form. White began writing the pieces while traveling, a daily practice of what he calls “observation as weather,” creating a linked series that deepens and expands over its thirty-four sections.
Excerpt
This is what it is like to be loved by me if my breath went down into my stomach and my food went down into my lungs. I chased you for an hour then I sat like a reader reading a book but not an actual reader an actual book. My poem my novel is one sentence long
I hope I hope
and I am surrounded by evidence
and I am an evidence maker
I could read the words in my mouth because the words have words written on them each word inscribed with the word it is and each mouth tattooed mouth color with the word mouth in the language the mouth speaks, not mouth as it might be celestial and expensive but affordable mouth, adequate and obvious and constantly available. Happy character, mouthing ablutions of words read and knowing how unlonely it is to be the same in Philadelphia as in New York.
Read more about Jared’s process here.
