The book is divided into several subtle “chapters,” each eulogizing - or perhaps elegizing - a particular object of wistful affection. The weirdness and wonderfulness of the story, at first so strange it renders one unable to understand where it is going, converge to remind us of Gertrude Stein’s memorable observation: “If you enjoy it, you understand it.” Laliberté’s art and design are as striking as Pintauro’s writing - haunting found photographs of children and lovers and soldiers become visual metaphors for the very polarities Pintauro explores in his breathtaking text, which Laliberté renders in beautiful hand-lettering.

What emerges is a poem, a love letter, an elegy for Mother Earth, an incantation against war, and above all a vibrant invitation to aliveness.

Dedicated to spring was The Rabbit Box ( public library) - a most unusual lens on themes both of the time (the dawn of the environmental movement, the anti-war movement) and timeless (love, peace, the meaning of the human experience), equal parts strange and spectacular. In 1970, poet, playwright, and former priest Joseph Pintauro teamed up with artist Norman Laliberté on a marvelous limited-edition boxed set titled The Rainbow Box, containing four children’s books for grownups, each dedicated to a season and full of playful and poignant fragmentary meditations on love, loss, war, peace, loneliness, communion - in other words, the emotional kaleidoscope of life itself.

Cycle sounds magic box