Author: Nick

There is so much in this poetry to talk about. Some of it, I am just not sure what to make of it, but there is just as much that I find illuminating. And this is what I find central to “Cold” – the uniformity of contradictions. The line that might capture such a theme best is found on Page J: “volcanic ice.”

I love what Meg does with light in this poetry. We normally think of it as coming from above revealing from on high what is “here, below.” However, Meg does something quite fascinating: she moves the origin of illumination to “below” or, better yet, to “inside.” This idea struck me most on pages T and U – which are perfectly places side by side. On T, Meg introduces the lines with the incorporated title, “The Astronomer’s Basement.” What use does an astronomer have for a basement? Surely, it would be such wasted space. Page U helped me to see, partly, the answer to such a question. When lake ice melts from light – the source of rising temperature – the warm water below pushes the ice up. While I don’t understand the scientific explanation for why this occurs, a moment of reflection shows how this is so contrary our prima facie reason. Surely the light from above, the sun, would melt the ice on top leaving ice at the bottom of the ocean. (Again, suspend that you know that lakes freeze over leaving water below for just a moment.) However observation proves otherwise. The light comes from below, and, using the idea of a basement and water encapsulated with ice, we get the idea that it comes from within.

Meg shows more that the interior is a source of beauty. On V, Meg uses the geode to express the interior giving meaning and beauty to the exterior. A hollowed sphere lined with crystals. Placing it by the mouth – the faculty of expressing meaning – gives a mental image of light shining through crystals giving color and beauty to what is seen, not only in the crystals, but beyond them. I should note that Meg uses the adjective “systolic” to describe “pulse.” Systolic apparently refers to phase of the heart’s rhythm in which it is pumping blood into the arteries. Hence, expression, light, valuing are acts proceeding from the inward onto the outward.

This latter point about the heart and the choice of words in much of Meg’s poetry place an aspect of music into discussion. I think someone else might be able to say more about this, but I see the expression of music as expressing the harmony of contradictions. So much of this poetry reminds me of Heraclitus.

Overall, I see this poetry as a reaction against modernity. Modernity makes hard distinctions between this and that. Descartes is generally considered the starting point, and his substance dualism places the person in juxtaposition with world. As such, the world becomes instruments of use. “Cold” is an expression of the person’s integration with world giving the exterior inherent value. In this way, Meg is following the tradition of Romanticism (especially Wiliam Blake) as well as taking up ecocrticism.

NewLights Press is committed to integrating new techniques with the older. As their website states, they are committed to “the intersection of artists’ books and experimental text/image//making.” NewLights Press uses a letter press along with digital printing seeing the latter as an extension of the former. Additionally, NewLights Press uses sewn binding in many of their books while also publishing works, such as This/Days No. 2, that can only be appreciated on digital devices. This/Days No. 2 along with their edition of The Collected Books of Jack Spicer exemplify the two poles of their technology. The Collected Books of Jack Spicer is a letter pressed book printed on off-white near yellow paper with a yellowed cover demonstrating a retro aesthetic. A book that shows the intersection of the two poles is Book 1: The Movement-Image which uses sewn binding and pictures reminiscent of late nineteenth to early twentieth century photography along with hard angled lines and arrows that remind the observer of our ever digitalizing culture. NewLights Press comments on technological change’s influence on books and the books’ influence on us in The New Manifesto of the NewLights Press: “The book is a dangerously unstable object. . . . From the book we gather the scraps of ourselves—the shabby, mortal, sagging, staggering things that we are. . . . We will continue to fail. The book will continue to fail. But there is always the next thing, the next page, the next day.” NewLights press is aware of the fickle illusion of comforting stability.

The visual piece pictured above is an attempt to capture at least some respect of NewLights Press. As I pointed out in my post, Aaron Cohick says, “I think that we are living through another transitional period, culturally, politically, and economically, and that meanings that we have taken for granted are once again being contested, and that there is an enormous amount at stake” (319). Because our period seems to be attributed to general anxiety over several changing aspects of society, I wanted to reflect NewLights Press’ embrace of the new. Most of the visuals are inspired by Book 1: The Movement-Image where the lines and the old photograph come from. Additionally, I wanted to use a font very similar to that used in several of their books like that found in Splitting/Debt, but it seems to be a font unique to NewLIghts Press. The vertical text is inspired from Splitting/Debt, however. Overall, my goal was to present an anxiety and integration of the old and new – an attitude that is present in NewLights Press.

Works Cited

“Aaron Cohick: NewLights Press,” 2012. A Poetics of the Press, edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press & Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021, pp. 310-21.

NewLights Press website. “About.” NewLights Press. https://www.newlightspress.com/about. Accessed Oct. 24, 2021.

The NewLights Press uses letterpress printing as a medium in “the intersection of artists’ books and experimental text/image//making” (NewLights Press website). Letterpress is a tool alongside others such as laser/Risograph and delamination. Aaron Cohick explains that he does not see the new as a replacement of the old technologies, but, instead, the new is an extension of the old. The beginning of the interview concerns itself with the NewLights edition of Jack Spicer’s Collected Works. Cohick copied and modified another edition in which he used Palatino typeface. Cohick explicitly chose to use letterpress and Palatino typeface to reflect the descriptions Spicer remarked on the older edition.

               Cohick expands on Spicer’s vision of material and content. Chick explains that Spicer thought of poetry and print as a sort of Cartesian dualism in which the activities of the poet and printer are distinctly different. “The poet was not a typesetter, looking at copy and arranging the words into a physical form. Typesetting, printing, publishing, . . . were a different activity” (315). In fact, Cohick explaines that Spicer used such metaphors as the poet receiving diction from “ether” as a radio receives invisible signals. As such, the material is merely a means of communicating the immaterial artistic monologue. Such a division between material and linguistic art not only reminds the intellectual of dualistic metaphysics but also the Plato’s Ion in which Socrates and Ion discuss whether a poet is or isn’t inspired by the gods. However, Cohick is skeptical of such sharp division. He explains, that being influenced by French structuralist and post-structuralists, that he sees that division of disciplines to be an overemphasis. “The work that I have been doing for the past few years is based on the premise that writing-designing-printing-publishing can be one (dis)continuous gesture. . . . If there is a division between mind and body, I try to make the work that I do operate across that division. Or maybe the work is the interaction between the two sides” (315).

               Cohick hints how old printing technology (including letterpress) fits within the future of publishing. Remarking on the contemporary, Cohick says, “I think that we are living through another transitional period, culturally, politically, and economically, and that meanings that we have taken for granted are once again being contested, and that there is an enormous amount at stake. . . . I want to make the NewLights Press into a total practice—not just what the book looks like, or even what they say (though that is still important), but how they are made and how they are distributed” (319). Letterpress will fit in in just the manner that Cohick is currently publishing work – as a means of capturing attitudes and ideas of authors, but as a tool among many.

Works Cited

“Aaron Cohick: NewLights Press,” 2012. A Poetics of the Press, edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press & Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021, pp. 310-21.

NewLights Press website. “About.” NewLights Press. https://www.newlightspress.com/about. Accessed Oct. 24, 2021.

               In my previous post, “The Reality of Letterpress in Publishing,” I may have given the impression that I believe the letterpress has no future. I’d like to correct that notion in this post where I reflect on my visit to Meshwork Press.

               As I was first to enter the workshop, I had the opportunity to ask the proprietor questions concerning the letterpress. One of the lingering questions I had after viewing the film Pressing On and reading online blogs is the dispute between those who believe the print ought to only “kiss” the paper or make an indenting impression. The argument against the latter is that the machines are not designed for that task; however, the impression itself is the leading consumer appeal. While I could not receive a definitive answer to the machines’ durability, I did sense a confidence that such a concern is inflated. While the machines probably are wearing out at an accelerated pace, the rate likely does not drastically increase breakdown. A second question I had concerned other advantages letterpress has over digital printing. Digital print is inferior to letterpress in printing neon colors.

               What does this mean for letterpress in publishing? For one, the letterpress can be used more liberally than what was first implied which means more can be produced without drastically increasing production cost. Secondly, letterpress will still not be used in the mass production of more conventional books. Perhaps this last point is what might be misunderstood. Anyone who wishes the letterpress to be used for thick codexes like they were used before will be thoroughly disappointed. Such pages would use the “kiss” technique which excludes the valued impression. Nevertheless, unconventional small “books,” such as posters and cards, could easily be mass produced. My point is, letterpress will never return as the primary tool for printing, but it still has a place in publishing though in another branch of the industry.

               Mary Laird of Quelquefois Press and the Perishable Press Limited reflects, “Marrying old and new technology in my art has been a challenge. I consciously tried to this in Remember the Light, where I printed and pained on etchings” (106). Her book uses a variety of techniques including letterpress, but notice that her book is unconventional. It is an artist’s book, a niche in the industry that is unlikely to become highly popular anytime soon. Even so, her work is still valuable and shows the place of the letterpress – a tool among many but not the primary.

Works Cited

“Mary Laird: Quelquefois Press & The Perishable Press Limited.” 2005. A Poetics of the Press, edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Cuneiform Press & Ugly Duckling Presse, 2021, pp. 96-107.

               The letterpress is a process that has grown outdated in comparison to the fast-paced book production that can be done using a copier and an engineered factory. The ebook threatens the printed codex putting the letterpress in even farther distance as far as mass production is concerned. There is, however, a certain aesthetic quality about the letterpress. Many people agree that there is something about having that physical copy of the book that overshadows the ebook. I personally read print book more readily than any attempt to read over electronics. A letterpress adds more to this materiality that gives a book body and beauty if used in a particular manner. However, the question remains as to if the letterpress will stage a place in publishing in the near future.

               I should note first that when I think of letterpress, I have in mind the indention on the page along with the application of ink. However, Adina Segal quotes Eric Gill: “A print is properly a dent made by pressing; the history of letterpress printing has been the history of the abolition of that dent.” Segal further explains that the contemporary movement has a divide in which some pressers argue that the “kiss” is proper, and others argue that the impression is what makes letterpress distinguishable from litho printing. Further, Sara McNally reports that deep impression potentially damages typeset and machinery. While impressions add to the materiality of book and art, there is reason to use it sparingly, and the question indeed arises for the consumer when using a kiss technique, “What is the aesthetic value?”

               I think the most attraction to the letterpress for artists and publishers is the activity. There is joy in involving body into the process of creation. There simply isn’t as much satisfaction in digitally printing a work or much less electronically publishing your book. Furthermore, the current market of books shows the disconnection between full length letterpress book producers and consumers shows that letterpress will remain a small niche in book publishing. Consider, a letterpress edition of John Milton’s Paradise Lost from The Arion Press. It is sold for a whopping $1,200. A more practical example doesn’t support letterpressing to become more mainstream either. Thornwillow Press sells Pride and Prejudice for $125. Remembering that a “kiss” is indistinguishable from litho printing, letterpress will remain a sparingly used technique, and only those who can enjoy the fine details of letterpress will consume it.

Works Cited

Segal, Adina. “Kiss vs thump.” lettica, Sept. 30, 2016. https://www.lettica.co.uk/blog/kiss-thump-letterpress-debate.html. Accessed Oct. 7, 2021

McNally, Sara. “What’s the deal with impression?” Constellation & Co. Jul. 16, 2013. https://www.constellationco.com/blog/blog/2013/07/whats-the-deal-with-impression. Accessed Oct. 7, 2021.

            “What is a book? A book is an experience. . . . A book starts with an idea. And ends with a reader” (Chen and Meador).

            With so many variations of what we call “book,” it would be next to impossible to argue what a book is. However, Chen and Meador’s conception of book might be a starting point.

            As I set out to accomplish my assignment, the first question I had to answer is “What goes on the pages?” This is the beginning of the experience. As the bookmaker/co-writer/pseudo-publisher, the various elements that I needed to account were both shaped by my ideas and shaped my ideas. One element was settled for me: the book would be in the style of accordion folds. With that settled, I began to contemplate what the accordion could provide in terms of presenting content. Of all the ideas I considered, I found that the accordion folds could communicate something about the way we as people interact with each other. We often keep ourselves closed off, specifically that inner self, but there are opportunities to open our inner most selves. This is the experience I wanted to communicate.

            The next task was to decide on the content. Given the intimacy of revealing the inner self, I wanted the content to invoke emotional responses in the reader. Poetry seems to capture subjective thought and emotion in a way that no other content can. What’s more, I had decided to voice that which goes unsaid. Ulises Carrión reflects on the connection between poetry and print:

            “Poems are songs, the poets repeat. But they don’t sing them. They write them. Poetry is to be said aloud, they repeat. But they don’t say it aloud. They publish it. The fact is, that poetry, as it occurs normally, is written and printed, not sung and spoken, poetry. And with this, poetry has lost nothing. On the contrary, poetry has gained something: a spatial reality that the so loudly lamented sung and spoken poetries lacked” (2-3).

            What other form of communication could so very well capture the intimate and suffering inner self? The decision of content is just as much an experience as that which I want readers to undergo. The small idea I had, that I wanted to communicate the closed off inner self open up, was now being modified by the content I had decided to use. My book, Unspoken, would attempt to communicate the suffering of the victims of suicide. We are always surprised to hear of someone attempting or committing such a tragedy. “They seemed so happy. I never thought i’d be them,” we say. Mellisa Paiz opens her poem reflecting how true this experience is from the other person: “Look into my eyes and tell me what you see, / in front of you, in front of the world, and wherever I go, / I’ll plaster a smile on my face so no one will know.”

            Turning my attention to the materiality of the book, I needed to reflect these experiences to my audience. To reflect the deception of the outer self, I chose a floral pattern paper for the covers. Flowers also have a communicate aspects of death, but anyone sees Unspoken lying around would likely not expect the subject of the book to reflect on suicide. For the pages, I chose to use black paper for its somber tone. Here is where materiality affected my book in a manner less out of my control. The paper available to me was dimensionally 12” x 15”. To get the most out of the material without too much waste, I used 4”x4” squares as my page dimensions. This affected the font size of my book as well. I didn’t want the book to have a large depth so I chose to limit the pages. I used a yellow background to print my text. The choice of yellow was aesthetic as it matched some of the tones in the floral covering. The material of the book was affected by my idea, but what was available also affected what I chose.

            Creating Unspoken has indeed been an experience. However, the process is incomplete. Until people read Unspoken, the book is incomplete. It is only when other people experience my production it may be called “book.”

Works Cited

Carrión, Ulises. “The New Art of Making Books.” Kontexts, no. 6-7, Center for Book Arts, 1975.

Chen, Julie and Meador Clifton. How Books Work. Flying Fish Press, 2011.

               Tona Wilson takes advantage of the codex with spiral binding for her book, Dress Code Strictly Enforced. The purpose of the book is to spread awareness of the biases, negative effects, and injustices of the American culture and dress, particularly in the court. Most of the pages consist of monologues on the left side of the page and a character on the right. However, these pages are split horizontally in two places across. Each “page” is actually three pages that can be viewed simultaneously. By using the spiral binding, a reader can flip through the different pages mixing the monologues and sections of characters. When flipping through the pages in the manner that we would normally, the characters we perceive do not strike us unusual. For instance, the image of a man wearing a prison uniform is one such character. The monologue on the right says, “The sentences are to / run consecutively, / so you will run the sentence after your original sentence of 35 years to life.” The monologue directed at the prisoner is also nothing striking. However, by flipping through the pages in the middle and bottom, we can create an unusual character: the head of our original prisoner, a torso with a shirt that reads, “I’m a party waiting to happen!” with the hands bound by zip ties in the front, and legs dressed in a knee length skirt and heels. The monologue now reads, “The sentences are to / be represented by counsel (and by that I mean an attorney) if that’s possible, Your Honor.” The image now presented is a bit non-sensical, but it serves a purpose in that it reminds us of the biases we hold perceiving people as stereotypes. Additionally, the script we adhere to in our discourse is ruptured reminding us to review how we speak and also of our programmed phrases.

               When considering a book, there are two features that likely come to mind. The first that we might think of while I am communicating this over the internet is the content of the book. The second feature that you might notice before hand is the material structures and formatting of the book.

               When I first grabbed Poems to Read on a Streetcar, I noticed its simplicity in material. The pages are made from some form of print paper, and the cover from cardstock. The entire book is bound by two staples. The color used on the cover is an off-white rather than attempting to catch a would-be-reader by using a colorful background to have it stound out from other books.

               The choices in material construction appear to reflect the content of the chapbook. When I had first opened the book in no particular place, I came across the poem “Verona.” True to its title, the content is written as if Girondo had been writing this poem while riding the streetcar: “A powdery rain makes the Plazza delle Erbe shine; it draws itself up into tiny speres that sail across the pavement and suddenly burst, for no reason” (13). While the extraction of meaning and beauty might be anything but simple, the phenomenological view from which observations are made is what is so simple.

               The format of Girondo’s chapbook mostly follows the theme of simplicity. Titles are given at the top, and verse appear in standard font. Where I presume Girondo wrote his poetry in English, the poems are printed side-by-side on different pages. However, there are some poems that I assume were originally written in Spanish. In such cases, the original Spanish appears on the left page, and Cleary’s English translation displays on the right page. While most of the formatting is simple, anyone flipping through the chapbook will be drawn to “Cantar de las ranas” or “Frog song” on pages 20 and 21 respectively.

Works Cited

Girondo, Oliverio. Poems to Read on a Streetcar. Translated by Heather Cleary. New Directions Publishing Corporation, 2014.

Of all the variations that the book took in form over history, none may be less influential to how we know books today than the Chinese bamboo scrolls. Like all forms of book, the bamboo scroll was a product of the resources available and the primary book form the 17^th century BC to 4^th century AD (Stromer). The choice to use bamboo is intuitive in that it is widely available in China. Because bamboo is thin, they were cut into strips and sewn together with hemp, silk, or leather. Writing required a fine point marker, either in the form of a brush or a carving tool, rather than a broad instrument. This contributed to the complex characters of the Chinese writing system. Amaranth Borsuk reports, “The tradition Chinese style of writing from top to bottom arises directly from the book’s materiality—a bamboo slip was too thin to permit more than one character per line” (26). Additionally, Borsuk explains that Chinese writing also reads from right to left because Chinese writers found it faster to add blank slips with their left hands. I find this not to be a satisfying explanation, however. For one, this doesn’t explain why the slips were used vertically. I can imagine using them horizontally just as well. This would allow for both a left-to-right writing and reading system as well as a more simplified form of writing since more than one character could be placed on the same line. Secondly, I see no reason why we could not create a writing system that forms words vertically rather than horizontally. Thirdly, a look at some bamboo scrolls show that it was common to add complex sketches that expanded onto many slips. Perhaps a better explanation as to the use of complex characters is that the scrolls would be cumbersome so it would be more economical to fit more communication into smaller spaces. Perhaps attempting to refer to book materials for explaining all the choices in the development of the book and writing is erroneous.

The bamboo scroll is extremely impractical for most books in English. However, the artist who wishes to display some shorter poems or very short prose could modify the scroll by writing on the scrolls horizontally rather than vertically. I came across some pictures of popsicle sticks sewn together in a similar fashion to the bamboo scrolls. Those interested in arts and crafts can make a quick afternoon project out of it.

Works Cited

Borsuk, Amaranth. The Book. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018.

Stromer, Daniel et al. “Virtual cleaning and unwrapping of non-invasively digitized soiled bamboo scrolls.” Scientific Reports. 2019, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-39447-0, accessed 10 Sep. 2021.

In his essay “On the Cult of Books,” Jorge Borges points us to Plato for one conception of the book. Specifically, Borges writes, “[Plato] said that books are like the painted figures ‘that seem to be alive, but do not answer a word to the questions they are asked’” (359).

Maybe Plato is correct here, but does this diminish the value of the book? Not in the manner that Borges presents the quote at the very least. Borges ties this conception of books to the moral position of antiquity that the oral word is superior to the written. It is well known that Socrates himself never wrote any treatises, and it was common for orators in the past to memorize myths as a means of entertainment and moral teaching. The quote above seems to support the orator over the scribe, but the sentence that Plato follows with the quotation we are examining undermines this position: “And the same may be said of speeches” (1135) Plato was not a critic of books and a supporter of the oral tradition. The context of the dialogue is concerned about getting to truth. A memorized speech is no more equipped to answer questions posed to it than a book.

There is value, however, in both the written word and the speech. The book is given value in that we can interact with the content. The book acts as inspiration for questions even if it cannot answer them like a person with which we are in discussion. The book brings us wonder. It gives us ideals with which to strive and vices to avoid. Books are themselves dialogues between other books in that they challenge one another on truth, beauty, morality, and more. It is not just the explicit content that matters either. The numerous implicit messages in books serve as inspiration for us to question our perceived realities. The book acts as our ancient Muse.

Works Cited

Borges, Jorge Luis. “On the Cult of Books.” Selected Non-Fictions. Translated by Eliot Weinberger, Penguin, 2000, 358-363.

Plato. “Phaedrus.” The Dialogues of Plato. Translated by Benjamin Jowett, Random House, 1937, 1078-1138.