Poetry Friday--Down to the Wire

Originally, the deadline for the Sketchbook Project was January 31, 2015, but, it was extended to March 31, 2015. Bad move. It gave me more time to procrastinate and now it's down to the wire. Will I get it in the mail and postmarked by March 31?

Silly me, I thought the sketchbook was the size of half a 8.5" X 11" piece of paper. I should have known better and taken it out of the envelope and measured it. I spent a lot of time setting all the photos and poems in place so that I could print it on the photocopier and when folded in half would be a perfect little book. My plan was to simply replace the sketchbook pages. I did print it on the photocopier and folded it. It looked great--spaced right, the photos ended up next to the poems, etc. However, the sketchbook, it turns out, is 5" X 7" and I'm up the proverbial creek without a paddle. So, now I'm resizing it, trying to figure out how to set the margins so that it prints only in a portion of the sheet. It's like a giant puzzle, and I'm not a puzzle person. I may not make it. Thirty-two pages never seemed so long!

If you click on the Sketchbook Project link on the right-hand side of the page, you can see the poems in the Sketchbook Project that I have posted since last spring. There are two that I hadn't posted earlier; I'm going to share those today.

I was reading through old reports from The National Child Labor Committee (NCLC) and "found" this poem that I used for the first poem in the book:

Collective Guilt
A poem composed of the words of Florence Kelley found in the "Report from the National Consumers' League" from the Proceedings of the Third Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, 1907

Young children pick the cotton
that we are wearing;
they help to spin it.
They help to stitch
it in the factories.

They have to do
with the distribution
of all our goods.

They are in the shoe factories.
They are in the garment
trade by thousands.
They are in the hat factories...

No one is free today
from participating in this
particular evil.

No one.

The photo and poem I used to end the book:

Title: John Howell, an Indianapolis newsboy, makes $.75 some days. Begins at 6 a.m., Sundays. Lives at 215 W. Michigan St.) Location: Indianapolis, Indiana. Created: 1908 August. Library of Congress: LC-DIG-nclc-03225

Unusable

This photo is unusable.
I am in it.
The story is not about me.
I am merely the means,
I hope--I pray--
to a happy ending.

Here's a photo of an NCLC exhibit panel, which I have decided to use on the back cover:

If I get the book turned in on time, then it will be digitized, and, you'll be able to see it online. I'll let you know if and when that happens.

I'm probably not going to purchase a sketchbook for next year. I think the project is better suited for artists and the media they use. If I'm going to put that much work into a book of poems, then I might as well use the effort to try to sell it! I did enjoy what I created over the past year. I probably could write a few more poems and have real book, but for now, I'm stepping away...

Stop by the Poetry Friday Round-Up where today it is being hosted by Jone at Check It Out.