I just never know what I'll be called upon to do at my work. This past week it was to put together a display of broadsides of some of Billy Collins's poems in anticipation of his receiving the library's literary award this year. Here are some objects I made to support the imagery of the poems, such as a boat that turns into a book in "Voyage". The little creatures are meant to be sheep, made from reproductions of pages from the Gutenberg Bible, illustrating this poem that I actually heard Sylvia Boorstein read in a podcast years ago, and so it is her voice I hear in my head when I read these poignant words:
Flock
It has been calculated that each copy of the Gutenburg Bible
required the skins of 300 sheep.
I can see them
squeezed into the holding pen
behind the stone building
where the printing press is housed.
All of them squirming around
to find a little room
and looking so much alike
it would be nearly impossible to count them.
And there is no telling which one of them
will carry the news
that the Lord is a Shepherd,
one of the few things
they already know.
~ Billy Collins
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