It’s good to crawl out from under the thin and watery blues with some good news. Hotel Almighty has been chosen as having one of the best-designed covers of 2020 by AIGA, the American Institute of Graphic Artists! This is really a thrill. Back when I used to sojourn over to the Frankfurt Book Fair to do book-cover slide shows for one of my company’s publications, I used to pore over this very list swooning over good design.

The cover of Hotel Almighty was designed by Danika Isdahl and Kristen Miller at Sarabande, who suggested the cut-out method I use with various collages in the book. I made the cover collage in a dank basement in the Austrian Alps two summers ago. I mocked up three ideas and they liked this one. And I did too. I couldn’t be happier. It’s a good cover and a good ambassador for the book.

Some months ago I did an alternative version of one of the poems (“Now I must rinse…”) in the book using the color-burst cut-out design. I like the colors of this one too. I’ve posted the image below along with the original as further examples of the cut-out.

Meanwhile, I am still waiting to be vaccinated. I’m sure I must be doing something wrong, even people much younger than me are being vaccinated in Spain and Italy while I wait in Germany for an appointment. If I’d wanted AstraZeneca I could have gotten one already, but I’m slightly skeptical about that one and you have to wait 3 months in between shots. Of course by the time my first shot of whatever rolls around I might be done with Astra. I kind of hate myself these days. Indecision and failure to act have always been my weak spots.

Otherwise, I’m reading and working and making salad for dinner and having all kinds of problems and some good moments here and there. I’m going to participate in Zoom panel on visual poetry tomorrow hosted by Tupelo Poetry Quarterly. In case anyone is interested, email me and I’ll pass along the link and password. The other guests are Naoko Fujimoto and Rodney Gomez!