Meeting a Living Book

There are times when something familiar suddenly feels different. That happened to me the first time I sat in the Special Collections room at SDSU and a librarian placed a small Persian manuscript in front of me. It was a copy of The Divan of Hafez, a poet whose name I had heard many times from friends, conversations, and small cultural moments that stayed with me. I knew how meaningful Hafez was to people I care about. I had heard the warmth in the voices of my Iranian and Afghan friends when they mentioned him. Still, I had never held one of his books. I had never seen his poetry in a form shaped by hand, by time, and by the people who once lived with it.

The book was smaller than I expected. Its leather cover was worn in a way that felt honest, as if it had lived its own long life without trying to hide any of it. When I touched it, something in me slowed down. I noticed the red ink beginning each ghazal, the soft shimmer of gold that appeared even in gentle light, and the faint lined texture of the handmade paper. I saw the small signs of age: a loose spine, softened corners, slight tears. None of these felt like damage. They felt like evidence of use, of hands and eyes that had been here long before mine.

In that moment I understood that this book communicated in more ways than one. It did not speak only through its poetry. It spoke through its material presence: through color, texture, and the traces of all the people who had held it. I wanted to respond to that in a way that felt as alive as the object itself. I wanted to write something that did not only analyze the book but answered it.

That is where this project began.

My final project combines a poem with a longer reflection. Poetry allowed me to express what the physical book made me feel, and the analytical essay helped me understand that experience through the ideas we studied in class, especially those of Amaranth Borsuk and Jessica Pressman. In this blog style version, I try to guide you through that process with the same calm attention the manuscript asked of me.

My poem argues that the manuscript of The Divan of Hafez communicates through its physical qualities just as much as through its words. Red ink, gold illumination, and signs of age all shape the way a reader encounters the book. This material experience connects directly to the theories of Borsuk and Pressman. By close reading my poem, I explore how creative writing can express the physical presence of the manuscript in a way that reveals new layers of meaning.

There are some objects that come into your life quietly and stay with you for reasons that are hard to explain at first. The manuscript of The Divan of Hafez became one of those for me. I had heard about Hafez through friends who spoke about him with the kind of affection people usually reserve for those who have helped them through something. I knew his poetry held emotional weight for many people, but I had never seen a manuscript version with my own eyes. When the librarian placed it gently in front of me, what struck me first was not the text but the feeling of presence. The book was small enough to rest easily in my hands. Its leather had softened where fingers had met it again and again. The gold still caught light, and the red ink marked each new ghazal with simple clarity. Even its loosened spine felt like part of its story.

As I spent more time with it, I felt the manuscript encouraging me to slow down. Its beauty, age, and texture created a rhythm completely different from digital reading or even modern printed books. This was reading shaped by material qualities, not just by language. It reminded me of what Borsuk and Pressman wrote. Borsuk describes the book as an interface, something that shapes our reading through its design. Pressman argues that the codex remains endlessly new because every encounter with it becomes its own experience. This manuscript made both of those ideas feel real to me.

This project grew directly out of that experience. I wanted to respond to the manuscript with attention and care. First through a poem, and then through a reflection that connects my response to the ideas from our course. Both together became my way of showing that careful looking and slow reading can become their own form of understanding.

Red Ink Soft Hands

I opened you
and you breathed.

Not loudly,
just enough for the gold
to wake on the page.

Your red ink
waited for me
like a small flame
still warm
after so many winters.

I could not read your script
but I could read your touch
the softened corners,
the thumb shaped shadows,
the places where time
sat down to rest.

You were held
before I ever knew your name.

Someone bent over your pages,
mixing red pigment,
pressing gold into borders
as if love could be made
with steady hands.

Now you lie quietly
in a cradle of soft foam,
but nothing in you
is still.

Your colors move,
your edges whisper,
your red lines rise like breath
between one thought
and the next.

If a book can look back,
you did.

And I answered
the only way I know
with a poem
that tries
to hold you
as gently
as you have been held.

Writing this poem felt natural, almost necessary. It came from the emotional reaction I had before thinking about theory. The manuscript did not feel distant. It felt alive. The red ink, the hand drawn borders, the soft worn pages all created a sense of presence. I wanted the poem to hold that presence in language. I did not want to make it overly academic. I wanted to stay close to the simplicity and honesty of my first encounter. The short lines reflect the pauses I took while looking at the manuscript, and the imagery grew from what I saw and felt. The tone remains gentle because the book itself felt gentle.

I also wanted the poem to acknowledge the human hands that created the manuscript. Someone once spent hours mixing pigments and shaping letters. That labor is part of the meaning of the book, and including it in the poem felt essential. Writing creatively became a way to mirror, in a small way, the care that went into the manuscript. After writing the poem, I stepped back to understand how it reflects what the manuscript showed me and how it connects to the ideas from our course.

My poem argues that the manuscript of The Divan of Hafez communicates through its physical qualities as much as through its words. The manuscript guides the reader with red ink, gold illumination and traces of age, and this material experience can be understood through the theories of Amaranth Borsuk and Jessica Pressman. The opening lines of the poem express that first impression of presence:

I opened you
and you breathed.

This sense of awakening resonates with Pressman’s idea that physical books remain endlessly new. The book itself is old, but the encounter is alive. The next lines continue this impression:

just enough for the gold
to wake on the page.

The “waking” of gold is not literal, of course. It is a reaction created by light, movement and attention. Yet it shaped my reading as strongly as any translation of the text. This is where Borsuk’s idea of the book as interface becomes helpful. The manuscript’s design guides the reader’s emotions and focus long before the linguistic content comes into play.

The red ink became one of the strongest emotional elements of the manuscript. In the poem I describe it as

like a small flame
still warm
after so many winters.

This image captures how the ink felt both old and alive. The rubrication created a kind of rhythm on the page, guiding my eyes even though I could not read the language itself. The red ink still communicated structure, emphasis, and a certain feeling, even without my understanding of Persian script. Borsuk notes that color in manuscripts often shapes how we move through a text, and my poem reflects how strongly this use of color influenced the way I experienced the manuscript.

Another element that shaped my response was the material wear of the book. The soft corners and slightly darkened edges made the manuscript feel honest. When I wrote

the places where time
sat down to rest,

I meant that age had become part of the object, not a flaw but a form of memory. These marks created a connection to past readers. Borsuk calls such markings the residues of reading, and the poem tries to capture how these residues changed my experience. They made the book feel shared across time.

The poem also imagines the scribe who once bent over the pages. Writing

pressing gold into borders
as if love could be made
with steady hands

was my way of acknowledging the devotion involved in making the manuscript. Persian manuscript culture emphasizes beauty as part of meaning. The gold borders are not just decoration, they shape the experience of reading. Jessica Pressman’s writing about bookishness helps explain this, physical books often invite admiration because of their design, not only their words.

The ending of the poem expresses the heart of my experience:

If a book can look back,
you did.

Reading is not passive. Books shape us as we study them. The manuscript created an emotional response that felt almost reciprocal. This moment in the poem connects both to Pressman’s idea of newness and to Borsuk’s understanding of material interaction. The poem becomes a record of how the manuscript looked back at me through its design, its age and its presence.

Even though the poem is a creative work, it performs media specific analysis. It focuses on the physical details that shaped my experience. It pays attention to how design choices, color and age guide reading. It treats the book as a product of human labor and as an object that continues to live through its readers. Through this, the poem becomes a reflection of the manuscript’s materiality and a demonstration of how physical books communicate across time.

Working on this project changed the way I think about books. The Divan of Hafez taught me that meaning is not only in the words but also in the gestures surrounding them. Red ink, soft paper, worn corners and gold illumination all communicate in subtle but powerful ways. The manuscript showed me how beauty, emotion and intellect can coexist on the same page. Writing the poem allowed me to express that emotional connection, and analyzing it helped me understand why that connection mattered.

This project reminded me that books are alive because people return to them. They continue to live through attention, touch and care. Each encounter adds something new. Each reader brings their own breath. The Divan of Hafez has been read for centuries, and working on this project made me feel like I had joined that long line of readers in a small way.

When I read Walter Benjamin’s Unpacking My Library, one line really stayed with me. He writes, “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector’s passion borders on the chaos of memories.” (p.60) I read that twice. It felt so true. Collecting isn’t just about owning things it’s about holding on to moments that meant something once.

Benjamin talks about how his shelves look messy but how that mess has its own kind of order. I love that idea. It reminds me that memory doesn’t work in straight lines either. It’s full of little pieces that somehow belong together, even if they don’t make sense to anyone else. Maybe that’s what a collection really is, a space where all those pieces can live side by side.

When I think about my own things, I realize I do the same. My computer is full of old photos, half-written notes, and random screenshots I can’t bring myself to delete. They might not look important, but every one of them connects to a moment I don’t want to forget. It’s a kind of digital version of Benjamin’s bookshelf, just with files instead of books.

What I like most about Benjamin’s thought is that he doesn’t see disorder as something bad. Sometimes chaos just means that something is alive. Maybe that’s what collecting really is a way of keeping our memories close, even when we don’t know exactly why.

When I was reading Michelle Levy and Tom Mole’s The Broadview Introduction to Book History page 6-8 was interesting for me. They talk about how printed books used to be the main way people shared knowledge and stories, but even as new technologies appeared like the radio, film, or the internet books didn’t disappear. Instead, they learned to live alongside all these new forms of media.

When I think back on the discussions from the last few weeks about whether books are really threatened by new media, it makes me imagine books as living things that adapt to survive. Even now, when most of us read on our phones or tablets, books are still here, quietly holding their own space. Some people talk about the “death of the book,” but Levy and Mole remind us that people have been saying that for centuries. Every time a new technology arrives, there’s this fear that reading will change forever, and yet the book always finds a way to remain part of our lives.I can feel that in my own reading habits. I also love scrolling online and reading on screens because it’s fast and easy, but holding a real book feels different. The weight of it, the texture of the pages, even the sound of turning one it makes me slow down and focus. Reading a printed book feels calmer and more intentional, like I’m connecting with something that’s been here for hundreds of years.What I love about Levy and Mole’s idea is that it makes me stop worrying about the future of books. They aren’t going anywhere. They’re just changing, like they always have. Maybe that’s what makes them so special, books don’t fight against new media, they grow with it.

In The Artist’s Book as Idea and Form, Johanna Drucker writes, “If all the elements or activities which contribute to artists’ books as a field are described what emerges is a space made by their intersection, one which is a zone of activity, rather than a category into which to place works by evaluating whether they meet or fail to meet certain rigid criteria.” (p.2) This passage interested me because it redefines how we think about art and books. Instead of treating the artist’s book as a fixed form that can be easily defined, Drucker presents it as a living space where creative actions and ideas come together.

The phrase “zone of activity” suggests that meaning and value are created through process rather than through a set of rules. Drucker’s approach moves away from seeing art as a finished product and focuses instead on the relationships that form during creation. When she speaks of intersections, she reminds us that books combine many elements for e.g. like writing, design, printing, binding, and reading and that each of these contributes to the work as a whole. The artist’s book becomes a place of interaction where ideas, materials, and people meet.

What I find compelling about this idea is how it shifts the way we respond to art. Instead of asking whether something fits a definition, Drucker asks us to notice how it operates and what it does. This encourages a more open and flexible way of thinking. It also makes me reflect on how we often approach learning, since education tends to focus on definitions and categories. Drucker’s view suggests that real understanding might come from exploring connections rather than setting limits.