For a book binder, a breath sheet (blank sheet of paper) is traditionally placed at the begining and at end of a book block (the sewn pages) as a formailty and as a way to connect the words to the spine. Some call them support sheets for the aliteration and incase of future distress. The support sheets help protect the content of the book from normal wear and tear as well as provide pages for rebinding, if the damage the book carries ever becomes too much. Dspending on the weight of the words, failure to incorporate sufficant breathe sheets could result in the book's extinction, a block of truth unable to be rebound to a the strength of a spine.
The "breath" sheet however, for a book artist, has a less technical fuction, it can serve as a breath, a warning, protection, or resting place for the hand and heart of a reader.
Asghar has given us both. Breath and support through out her reflections and truths. As I traced the placement of the blank sheets I found that the writer had thoughtfully spinkled them throughtout the text, 4 out of 5 of the sheets particulary placed before each Partition.
Symbolic to say the least.
Jesi, I agree that Fatimah Asghar left us breathless. I appreciate you providing with the knowledge of the "breathe sheet," I know that is something I was not aware of so it was lovely to grasp her work more. I love your thought of the breathe sheet serving as a waring, I did find helpful to stop and take in all that I just read. It was definitely worth a read!
ReplyDeleteI didn't realize that Asghar had placed a breath page before 4 or 5 of the Partition poems. I was trying to understand whether the poems themselves functioned as divisions, or the space between the partitions were the divisions... hope this makes sense. I think the fact that she included extra space makes me think that the moments between the Partition poems are separations in and of themselves... how the slicing up of communities and nations and family structures really has no end. When something is fractured, the fractures go out in ripples from the source.
ReplyDeleteYES! JES! I wanted someone to talk about the breath sheet. It’s truly part of the architecture and promotes those partitions in terms of theme. Nice!
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"I am am architect./I permission everything/into something new./ I build & build/& someone takes it away"
ReplyDeleteThank you for bringing attention to the architecture of this amazing collection of poetry. Your response made me come back to all the breath sheets and the poems named partition and read them again as a group, holding transition and light between them. Thank you!