to catch a green lizard without its tail falling off

Above Roy R. Behrens, book cover design for Joseph Langland, The Sacrifice Poems. Cedar Falls IA: North American Review, 1975.

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Lawrence Durrell, quoted in George Plimpton, ed., The Writer's Chapbook (NY: Viking Press, 1989), pp. 107-108—

To write a poem is like trying to catch a lizard without its tail falling off. In India when I was a boy they had great big green lizards there, and if you shouted or shot them their tails would fall off. There was only one boy in the school who could catch lizards intact. No one knew quite how he did it. He had a special soft way of going up to them, and he'd bring them back with their tails on. That strikes me as the best analogy I can give you. To try and catch your poem without its tail falling off.

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I mean the thing you use to rub out mistakes

Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004

Bessie Head [South African novelist], "Some Happy Memories of Iowa" in Paul Engle, et al., editor, The World Comes to Iowa (Ames: State University of Iowa Press, 1987), pp. 86-87—

American English isn't the British English that is spoken in southern Africa. I walked into a stationery shop and said to the man behind the counter, "I would like to buy a rubber, please." The man said: "We don't sell them in ones. We sell them in threes." I said: "But I want only one rubber." The man became hostile: "But I told you we only sell them in threes." I said: "All right, I'll take three then." The man walked to the back of the shop and returned with a small packet of prophylactics that he handed to me. He had such a peculiar look in his eyes that I thought he believed I was a prostitute who had suddenly invaded Iowa City. Half fainting with shock I struggled to explain, "I mean the thing you rub mistakes out with." "Oh," he said, "you mean an eraser."

awaiting the shared use of a set of false teeth

Altered book montages, Roy R. Behrens © 2004

Kingsley Amis, Memoirs (New York: Summit Books, 1991), p. 1.—

[My paternal grandfather] was a great teller of jokes, typically without preamble, to trap you into thinking you were hearing about some real event. One of these horrified me so much [as a child] that I have never forgotten it. A Scotsman (I was still so young that I had not heard about Scotsmen being supposed to be mean) took his wife out to dinner. Both order steak. The wife started eating hers at top speed, but the man left his untouched. "Something wrong with the steak, sir?"—" No, no, I'm waiting for my wife's teeth." I had not then heard of false teeth either, and imagined the living teeth being torn from the woman's jaws on the spot and inserted into her husband's.

milkman comes up the walk and pauses to talk

Altered Book Montages / Roy R. Behrens © 2004

Susanah Mayberry, My Amicable Uncle: Recollections About Booth Tarkington (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1983), p. 4—

Early one morning during this period he [Booth Tarkington] went for a walk after an unusually long writing session. He met the milkman coming up the walk and stopped to talk: ''You been up all night?" he [the milkman] asked. ''Yes," I answered. "What you been doin'?" he went on. "Working," said I. "Workin'!" said he. "What at?" "Writing," said I. "How long?" said he. "Since yesterday noon," said I. "About sixteen hours." "My God," said he. ''You must have lots of time to waste!"