The publisher says:
A collection of poems written between the two World Wars, now being reprinted. The poems are traditional in style, utilizing meter and rhyme. The poems will appeal to those who like this sort of poetry, particularly to nature lovers (about half the poems deal with nature in some way). The other poems cover a variety of topics: love, historical events, literature, patriotism, religious feelings, and others.
I’ve looked around and found some good advice about covers for fiction and non-fiction, but hardly anything about poetry. So I decided to put this draft of the cover up here. Don’t worry about the horizontal placement of the photo; it will bleed off the right and stop at the spine fold on the left (which may not be exactly where I have it at the moment). This cover is not as artistic as many I see here. However, the book itself is simple (just the text, no illustrations or anything) so I thought a straightforward cover was the way to go.
Nathan says:
There’s a difference between “straightforward” and “generic,” and I think you crossed the divide here.
Even with poetry — which has a very limited buying audience, and which (along with lit fic) doesn’t want to appear too lowbrow by using cover that pander to crowd appeal — the cover should convey something beyond “contains poems.”
You mention specifically that these poems are “traditional in style, utilizing meter and rhyme,” which is definitely not the norm these days, most poetry being dominated by free verse. You should therefore play up the traditional/classic vibe of the cover. Use a period photograph or painting. Use typefaces such as you would find at the time. Heck, look at poetry book covers (or, lacking those lit magazine covers) from the period and design it as if this book were from that period. You’ll have better luck finding those readers who want traditional poetic instead of free verse.
Other ideas?
Something like one of those old masters paintings of Greek philosophers gathered, with their harps, to recite their classic poetry might do well toward capturing the target audience. Unfortunately those images tend to be a bit played out because they are both stereotypical and public domain.
You might see if you can find something from the 1925-45 period with the same vibe. I know I’ve seen gatherings of WWI and WWII soldiers that could work, but that brackets the years you intend. In your case searching through art about the Great Depression might yield better results. This is assuming it won’t clash with your poems. You wouldn’t want this for poems mostly about natural splendor, for example.
Definitely too generic. As already stated, you need to let people know what kind of poetry you’re selling here. Contemporary “free verse” poetry strikes a lot of the reading public as a bunch of empty noise from pretentious propagandists and bloviating blowhards, so very few care to read it. Old poetry from the era between the World Wars is likely to seem comparatively a lot more “authentic” and heartfelt to people, and more interesting to a great many more prospective readers from coming as it does from people who’d just survived the horrors of one war and were (naively in the retrospective eyes of some of those readers) hoping they’d never have to endure another.
What reminds the reading public in general of that era, of course, is grainy old black-and-white pictures of suffering people from the Great Depression and likewise grainy old black-and-white footage of celebrities from the movies of roughly that same era. Therefore, whether or not your imagery is actually from that time, it will look that way as long as you also make it grainy and black-and-white. For best results, of course, you should try to get something that actually is from the indicated period complete with some people in it dressed in the prevailing fashions (I’m thinking “soup kitchen aesthetics” here) of the time.
Genuine or not, though, you should definitely try to make everything about this book cover seem like an antique from eighty to ninety years ago, because that’s what’s so appealing about its contents. In addition to grainy gray-scale, maybe add sepia tones to the picture and make up the dead space on the cover to look like paper yellowed with age, use an antique-looking font for the titles and byline, and add some border lines that look like they might come from an old playbill. Basically, make it look something like a movie poster forThe Sting, which was also set in that era.
In short, what this cover really needs is some… I won’t say “nostalgic” because nobody would really want to live through that era again… but “retro” appeal to it.
I can only reiterate what RK wrote.
The cover design is cut-and-dried generic and the image is simply too bland and uninformative. Think of it this way: you could substitute your title for any one of a hundred others and no one would know the difference. You need to find an image that speaks more specifically about the poems in this book. Since the subtitle spells out that the poems are from 1925-1945, you should try to find an image that reflects this fact.
Thank you all for the comments.
Nathan: The idea of emphasizing the traditional aspect of the verse is appropriate. I have in fact looked at some poetry books and magazines from the period but not gotten much help. If the books had dust jackets, they haven’t survived so I just see a dark cover with (usually) gold stamping. The magazines are usually black type with (sometimes) stylized graphics, not photos. I will keep looking.
The idea of a period photo is intriguing. But many people see an old photo and associate it with something old/outdated/no longer interesting. Maybe the audience for poetry such as this book offers will be less apt to react that way. I’d have to find just the right photo. It would almost certainly be b&w not color; would lack of color on a cover turn off potential buyers?
The cover typeface issue is interesting. The original printing of this book dates from 1947 and the cover is set in Futura bold italic. Futura and similar faces were very popular in mid-century America. I first thought of using Futura but I think there’s a disconnect between a strongly modernist typeface and traditional content — although the printer in 1947 didn’t seem worried about that.
Kristopher: finding a cover photo that goes with the content is a challenge because the poems cover many topics. A lot of them (almost half) deal with nature in some way, which was one factor in my first cover design. But the rest deal with a wide range of things. The idea of looking at Depression-era art is worth pursuing. For whatever reason, none of the poems deals with issues like unemployment, although a few clearly reflect the two World Wars. (They may have been written after the worst of the Depression was over; 1925 is a guesstimate, while the last poem is dated 1946.)
RK: you’ve clearly articulated why these poems are worth preserving; thanks! Regarding the question of old photos / b&w and I raised above, you obviously have no issue with that – in fact you see it as positive. I’m not sure I’d go quite as far as you suggest in faking the look of an antique, but maybe. Much to think about here.
I do think the antique photo could well be even more boring. Faking them usually looks fake – unless you are really really good at it. I would rather go for era-appropriate art work, but that might require hiring someone – period covers usually were drawn with the lettering, so the writing integrates to the artwork in a different way than using ready-made fonts. Here are some German examples: http://50watts.com/BLICKFANG-The-Eye-Catching-Covers-of-Weimar-Berlin though unfortuntely not many have nature themes.
Note here is also that the era was innovative and designs were visually striking; it does seem like you were going more for a c. 1900 feel here.
As for poetry covers in general, there is no rule that they should be really underwhelming either – here is a selection, through the last century: https://www.poetrysociety.org/psa/poetry/crossroads/on_poetry/covers/
I am surprised you say you did not find any, as I netted quite a few with just a quick Google search.
There is an option to go for purely typographic cover, they do appear, but usually for poets who are already well known – then the name does the heavy lifting, I don’t think it would work here unless the design is really really special.
But please, please do not have a picture incorporating harps or fingers on them. That just makes it look like readers are being talked down to.
Tuula, thank you for the comments and links — latter are very interesting, although (as you say) not quite what I’m going for. I agree that faking things usually doesn’t work.
I have played with some designs without any artwork. You’re probably right that such covers work best for well known authors.
Of course, this might be a good time to note that not all pictures from the Great Depression era were in that gloomy gray-scale; a few years ago, the Library of Congress released a collection of rare photos in full color from that same era showing mostly various slices of people’s daily lives (which were mostly agrarian). Also, you may notice that poster for The Sting was drawn in full color; if pictures in grainy gray or aged sepia tones seem too drab for you, one of those color photos or an old-fashioned-looking line drawing like the one on that poster might suit your purposes better.