My five-minute foray into artificial intelligence artwork. Using free app of the day TapUniverse AI Art Generator, input a photo of classic blue and gold marbling from the endpapers of an antique book. After selecting the steampunk style, it generated this nifty image. Well, had my fun and now deleting the app.
reading in my cozy bed, ridiculously late
words begin to slur and rhymes, to blear
my eyelids fight me — like a heavyweight
goodnight, sweet sleepy zzzzzhakespeare
—Terri Guillemets
I am searching for my feelings
through shelves of dusty books
can’t help but feel I’ve left them
in some forgotten ancient nooks
as if an author long before me
captured my emotions in his day
and saved them in fine poetry
for future me to find someway
—Terri Guillemets
“…multum ille et terris jactatus et alto
Vi superum, saevae memorem Junonis ob iram,
Multa quoque et bello passus, dum conderet urbem
Inferretque deos Latio:…” —Virgil, The Aeneid
Having no home, what should I do with these,
Tossed as I am about the sounding seas,
Sport of exiling winds of change and chance—
Feet in America, and heart in France.
Homeless, ’tis meet I find my books a home:
Coffined in crates and cases long they lay,
Distant from me three thousand miles of foam
Dungeoned in cellars cold and nailed away,
As in a sepulchre, till Judgment Day.
Lost to their gentle uses in the tomb,
Cobwebbed companions of the spidered gloom,
At last they rise again to live once more,—
Dread resurrection of the auction room.
Books I have loved so well, my love so true
Tells me ’tis time that I should part from you,
No longer, selfish, hoard and use you not,
Nor leave you in the unlettered dark to rot,
But into alien keeping you resign—
Hands that love books, fear not, no less than mine.
Thus shall you live upon warm shelves again,
And ‘neath an evening lamp your pages glow,
Others shall press ‘twixt leaf and leaf soft flowers,
As I was wont to press them long ago;
And blessings be upon the eyes that rain
A tear upon my flowers—I mean on “ours”—
If haply here and there kind eyes shall find
Some sad old flower that I have left behind.
—Richard Le Gallienne, “Ex Libris R. Le G.,” May 1905
Let’s get drunk at the library
and have a book party!
“What a good time!” she said
in an excited whisper.
—Terri Guillemets
scrambled blackout poetry created from F. Scott Fitzgerald,
A headstone is just a bookmark in our unfinished lives.
—Terri Guillemets
To kill words with fear,
It’s a dreadful thing.
—Don’t.
—Terri Guillemets, “Censorship: What the D!ck@%$?”
blackout poetry created from Charles Dickens, “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain,” 1848
the miracle of a library card
to study, oh, you know,
fill in the blank — anything
—Terri Guillemets
blackout poetry created from Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club, 1996
“Hester unadulterated. The end.”
—Terri Guillemets, altered prose – found poetry, created from
“Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned.”
—Alberto Manguel (b. 1948), The Library at Night, 2006
Grass of Walt
[D!@%] of Moby
Boz gets Lit
Bard’s the [$h¡t]
—Terri Guillemets
Book lovers are better under the covers.
—Terri Guillemets
Reading in bed is a gateway drug to writing in bed.
—Terri Guillemets
A school library is the brightest beacon of youthful hope.
A public library is the brightest beacon of community hope.
A local library is the brightest beacon of global hope.
—Terri Guillemets
Up late with books, reading in bed—
Up early with coffee, extra lead.
—Terri Guillemets
To burn one book is to burn the entire library.
—Terri Guillemets
i love to
smell the flowers
and sniff the books
sitting in gardens
and library nooks
—Terri Guillemets
Read instead of watch TV?
Now there’s a novel idea!
—Terri Guillemets
Happiness is sharing a bowl of cherries and a book of poetry with a
—Terri Guillemets