262 | Rollita, Variants

I am delighted to have Becca Costello's poem Rollita in the Poems-For-All Series. It entered the series as #262 and debuted at the PFA Second Saturday Reading that featured Becca, Rachel Leibrock and Gene Bloom (who filled in for an ailing frank andrick.) I had little under a week to develop its cover.

Below is a cover variant that wasn't used. I first heard Becca read Rollita one year ago on frank's radio program Pomo Literati. I was deeply moved by it; struck by how she could effectively fold humor into sadness. And while I wanted a cover that could reveal the poems undercurrent -- an older man's lecherous designs on an eight year old girl -- this cover seemed to take that too far. The eyes are too desperate; the cover too serious. It was hard to let this cover go, but it didn't seem to strike the balance of fun(ny) and fate that Becca achieved with the poem.




The published cover (below) has been lightened a bit. Both the color -- blue was selected to correspond with the roller rink floor -- and the mood of the man involved. I'm loathe to say it's more "playful." But it is a more humorous presentation and more in balance then the first variant with the content it was designed to cover.