Portrait of Jack Spicer’s Admonitions

I have a copy of Jack Spicer’s Admonitions. 8.5 x 11, three staples. The title, hangs centered just below the top staple, bold and all caps, his name not all caps and slightly smaller sits centered just above the bottom staple. In a plastic thin non glossy sleeve (that sounds like wrapping paper when empty and being rearranged). Printed by Adventures in Poetry at the Poetry Project, there is no date. But track down online that is was published in 1973. The poems are type written. The paper is stained in various ways. The staples have puddles of rust around them and there are markings of the sun, where a piece of paper was laid over the cover at an odd angle in a window. Like the hardwood floors under where the rug has always been. A reddish stain too in two separate cloudy lines on the cover, a little along the spine and down the back too, something was spilled and not daubed at: water color, kool aide? The last few pages have come off of the staples. On the back there is a rusted stain similar to the rust pools around the editing staples. Did it lay on-top of another book and that staple worn into this one? This stain floating up towards the top staple, but its own planet, works through 6 pages deep going in from the back and then other stains and marks take over. Somehow, the spine is still in full force, it has never been broken, the pages never bent back over each other by an encouraged read. I surely will not be the one to do it either, I read the poems holding the cover at an angle, not pushing or rolling it back. Maybe a good use of it would have helped it last longer in a "better" condition, use it or lose it, you know. Another page falls from the back while I have it lifted.

excerpt from Ongoing Recollections on Poets