Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, author of the recently released Chord Box, writes the article many of us live out, outlining the struggle to keep up with a self-imposed demand for original, pithy, well-felt or whatever ways to personally sign over a book. She gives a good/funny run down of the options an author faces, but then this, raiseing the bar for us all.
The best inscription I got at AWP this year included touches of the sincere, the complimentary, and the ironic. Wendy Xu’s book, You Are Not Dead, was just published by Cleveland State University Press, and I happened to be there when she was signing books. “I hope you like these poems!” she has written first: humbleness, classy sincerity. And then, for the unexpected twist: “Your cardigan is changing my life.”