Last February I asked 2 friends here in Santa Fe to do a monthly word-based prompt challenge with me. One of us would select a word the first of the month and then we’d get together toward the end of the month to show the books we’d made, inspired by the word. I was first to pick, using the OED word-of-the-day:
mim, adj. and adv. Reserved or restrained in manner or behaviour, esp. in a contrived or priggish way; affectedly modest, demure; primly silent, quiet; affectedly moderate or abstemious in diet (rare). Also (occas.) of a person’s appearance.
I read quite a bit of poetry before finding this early (1858) Emily Dickinson poem:
Snow flakes.
I counted till they danced so
Their slippers leaped the town–
And then I took a pencil
To note the rebels down–
And then they grew so jolly
I did resign the prig–
And ten of my once stately toes
Are marshalled for a jig!
(It’s also one of only a handful of poems that Dickinson titled.) I liked the idea of counting snowflakes, which seems like such an impossible task. I imagined Dickinson keeping a ledger book of snowflake tallies, but getting carried away as she starts to do her little jig.
Here’s my book, made to look like a ledger and using the Emily Austin font I bought several years ago. This font comes with ink blots, which you can see in the final picture below, as I imagine Dickinson getting more and more excited about the snow flakes.
