Rare Books is a regular column showcasing items from the L.R. Benes Rare Book Room. The L.R. Benes Rare Book Room features artist books, first editions, chapbooks, and broadsides, among many other treasures of literary significance. These holdings are searchable in the Poetry Center catalog and may be viewed by the public upon request during our open hours, Monday through Friday.

Today's feature: Contents Meant Contentment: Book 112 by Beata Wehr & Kristi Maxwell

In a public Facebook post about this project, Beata Wehr writes, "I wanted to house Kristi's poem in a book and I decided to devote one page to each question. To show repetition, echoing and permutation of the words I used transparent paper. I experimented with the format of the text and chose typing on an old typewriter over handwriting. The cover is made out of linen white shirt. Red thread binding the book and entangling it signifies love (with all its beauty and problems). All the pages and the cover are dipped in wax -- opening it seems to be a little difficult -- the viewer/reader is entering a very intimate territory of love."

Kristi Maxwell writes of the Contents, "...I knew I wanted to play with that in the writing process: how do we ask in a way that can be answered? Vulnerability seems foregrounded in the figure of the question—vulnerability is the mode intimacy takes here."