Earlier this week, at the first Great Works faculty roundtable of the semester, talk focused on strategies for teaching close reading. Unanimous nodding broke out when John H. mentioned the importance of asking students to write out, on paper, the very lines of literary text they’re grappling with. Something about the intimacy of bringing one’s hand, mind and ink into sync with a given stretch of words–so that inscription belongs as much to the student as to the Great Works anthology–seemed essential. Hours later and a few blocks away, I found myself cramped into the 5th Avenue window display at the Graduate Center, arranging small, hand-made books to draw attention to the the Third Annual Chapbook Festival (www.chapbookfestival.org) — taking place March 2-5 both at the GC and at other locations throughout the city. The Festival celebrates, per its name, chapbooks–small publications, usually of poetry, ranging from the simplest construction of sewn sheets to elaborate, collectible editions–produced outside the machinery of commercial publishing. The colorful, beautiful little books in the window–etched, embossed, embroidered, delicately made–seemed to belong to the same universe as the practice of writing out lines of text — both not-so-lost arts.