well then there now

by Juliana Spahr
Black Sparrow Books

Juliana Spahr’s book of poems focuses closely on the ecology of the Hawaiian Islands. It was delivered fully designed and composed, so I needed to develop a cover that harmonized with the refined modernism of the interior. The interior photographs didn’t work at all well for the cover, but a little research led me to a collection of small images of extinct Hawaiian birds. The scans were too low-resolution to use as they were, so I abstracted them and redrew them as strongly silhouetted forms in flat color.  There was a minor argument about the cliché of putting birds on a book of poetry, but my little papercut-style illustrations won the day.

Softcover, 6 × 9"