CUNEIFORM PRESS

BUMPERS

2011-12-19T10:01:00.000-05:00

On average, 120,000 vehicles drive over the Brooklyn Bridge every day. What if each displayed a poem that could be read by the 4,000 pedestrians and 2,600 bicyclists that cross the bridge as well? BUMPERS suggests that an alternative medium has the power to bring poetry to the streets.

BUMPERS is a collection of twelve genuine crack-'n-peel bumper stickers designed and printed letterpress by Kyle Schlesinger with the assistance of Hannah King in two or three colors each. Contributors commissioned to compose poems specifically for this project are David Abel, Bill Berkson, Johanna Drucker, Craig Dworkin, Michael Gizzi, Michael Gottlieb, Ted Greenwald, Dorothea Lasky, Hoa Nguyen, Tom Raworth, Kit Robinson, and Carolee Schneemann. Now available from Small Press Distribution.

REVIEW OF HANGING QUOTES by ALASTAIR JOHNSTON

2011-12-16T11:54:00.000-05:00

Excellent review of Alastair Johnston's Hanging Quotes by Stephen J. Gertz today on Booktryst.

TED BERRIGAN by BILL BERKSON AND GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

2011-12-13T14:27:00.005-05:00

Ted Berrigan, a collaboration between Bill Berkson and George Schneeman is now available direct from the press. Order this titles, as well as all other titles in print, using PayPal in the column on the left. Copies SIGNED by Berkson are available while supplies last at no extra charge.

WHAT YOU WILL (REVIEW)

2011-11-30T00:59:00.000-05:00

A very generous review of my new book, What You Will, by Michael Cross on Disinhibitor: http://www.disinhibitor.blogspot.com/2011/11/what-you-will.html

WHAT YOU WILL

2011-11-28T13:34:00.000-05:00

Today, my new book, What You Will, is officially released from NewLights Press. Pick up a copy here.

HANGING QUOTES

2011-11-03T00:19:00.001-04:00

Cuneiform Press is pleased to announce the publication of Alastair Johnston's Hanging Quotes: Talking Book Arts, Typography & Poetry. 272 pages, 7x10 inches. Cover art by Frances Butler. $22

Excellent printing history by its 20th-century makers — highly recommended!

— Terry Belanger

Founding Director, Rare Book School

This book is a series of amazing interviews with great figures in contemporary culture. While the interviews might have been intended for ephemeral publication, each of these is a keeper. With questions that sometimes take unexpected turns, Alastair Johnston has compiled a book that gets the neurons firing.

— Paul W Romaine

President, American Printing History Association

Conducted over the course of four decades, Hanging Quotes is a landmark oral history project comprised of nineteen interviews with pioneer book artists, typographers and poets. Alastair Johnston’s thoughtful questions evoke fascinating new stories and information from luminaries as diverse as Nicolas Barker & Robert Creeley. He discusses the transition from cast metal to digital type with the prime movers in the field: Matthew Carter, Sumner Stone & Fred Smeijers; and he takes stock of the field of artists’ books in wide-ranging conversations with Sandra Kirshenbaum and Joan & Nathan Lyons, while his ground-breaking interviews with Dave Haselwood, Holbrook Teter, Bob Hawley, Walter Hamady, & Graham Mackintosh shed new light on the history of the book in the 20th century.

Alastair Johnston, a native of Glasgow, Scotland, moved to California in the 1970s. On April Fool’s Day 1975, he and artist Frances Butler founded Poltroon Press in Berkeley. Johnston is the author of Alphabets to Order (British Library, 2000), three bibliographies of San Francisco Bay Area small presses (Auerhahn, White Rabbit & Zephyrus Image) and co-editor of William Loy’s Nineteenth-Century American Designers & Engravers of Type (Oak Knoll, 2009). His many articles on artists’ books and typography have established him as an authority in the field.

SPIRAL ORB FOUR

2011-10-30T11:07:00.000-04:00

I am delighted have seven new poems in the forth issue of Spiral Orb, an experiment in permaculture poetics. Contributors include Wendy Barnes, Alyse Bensel, Lisa Cooper Anderson, Andrew Durbin, Brenda Iijima, Genevieve Kaplan, Bobbi Lurie, Sandra Marchetti, Jane Miller, Jessy Randall, Michael Lee Rattigan, Candy Shue, & Julia Wieting. An opening poem composted from fragments of each of the poems in the issue, Spiral Orb Four is here:
http://www.spiralorb.net

NEW VIDEO

2011-10-29T10:04:00.002-04:00

My paper, 'The Editor at Work: Artist's Books and New Technologies,' presented at the Collaboration and the Artists Book Conference in Caen, France last spring, is now online at: https://w3.unicaen.fr/recherche/mrsh/forge/5522

More about the conference here: http://collaborationandartistsbooks.tumblr.com/

It looks like the proceedings will be published by Cuneiform Press in 2012, including essays by Charles Bernstein, Bill Berkson, Raphael Rubenstein, Constance Lewallen, Antoine Cazé, Olivier Brossard, Vincent Katz, Gervais Jassaud, Antoine Coron, Susan Bee, and others. More on that soon.

MICHAEL CROSS' HAECCEITIES GROUP REVIEW

2011-10-24T11:50:00.000-04:00

Little Red Leaves has published a group review of Michael Cross' Haecceities (Cuneiform Press, 2010) here. Order a copy from Lulu, and the proceeds will be donated to Chax Press. Still don't know what compelled Thom Donovan, Brenda Iijima, Jamie Townsend and Chris Martin to write an 80 page book reveiw? Pick up a copy of Haecceities at SPD by clicking here. And if you're a facebooker, like it right now by clicking here.

TED PELTON DISCUSSES STARCHERONE BOOKS

2011-10-24T10:25:00.000-04:00

TED PELTON DISCUSSES STARCHERONE BOOKS
Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing acclaimed novelist and maverick publisher Ted Pelton of Starcherone Books on behalf of the graduate students in the Publishing Program at UHV.
http://vimeo.com/30834177

POG READING

2011-10-18T22:50:00.001-04:00

I'm looking forward to reading in the POG reading series in Tucson on Saturday November 19th with Steven Salmoni. Earlier that afternoon Charles Alexander and I will be discussing letterpress printing, artists' books, and poetry in the Chax Press studio. More information is available at: www.gopog.org

PICTURE DAY

2011-10-17T09:01:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend Alan Loney of Electio Editions sent out an e-prospectus about my forthcoming book of poems, Picture Day. Here are some details:

Picture Day will be printed in an edition of 50 copies on Magnani 160gsm handmade paper on an Albion handpress, and with typographic prints by the printer. Binding will be in boards covered with Cave handmade paper. 24 pages. Page size 9 1/2 x 6 inches. Types will be Giovanni Mardersteig's Dante for the text and a variety of others, including wood types, in several colors, for the prints.

Price is Australian dollars $260 per copy (includes postage).

A printed prospectus will be available, and please email me [alanloney at gmail dot com] if you wish to receive one.

NYC READING

2011-10-08T15:46:00.000-04:00

I'm looking forward to reading with Susan Landers, Jennifer Moxley, Jenn McCreary, Elizabeth Treadwell, and Mark Weiss for the launch of the second series of Least Weasel chapbooks @ 443 PAS Saturday December 3rd.

NEW WEBSITE part 2

2011-10-07T22:41:00.000-04:00

Due to a technical glitch, the new website won't be available as soon as expected. For now, please go to Small Press Distribution for all new titles, including Charles Alexander's Pushing Water, Alastair Johnston's Hanging Quotes, Mimeo Mimeo 5, and Charles Olson at Goddard College. With any luck we'll have our site up and running again soon--anyone know a good web designer?

S. 1st BRIDGE

2011-10-01T22:24:00.000-04:00

Since Schablone Berlin, I've always had a fondness for stencil art. Here's one my girlfriend and co-author of that book found and photographed yesterday.

NEW SITE

2011-09-30T10:07:00.001-04:00

I'll admit that working on the website is my least favorite part of running Cuneiform Press. As a result, it's been outdated and pretty much useless for years. Finally, with the help of the IT guy at work, our new site should be up and running any day now, featuring:

All of the books we've published in the last three years that never made it onto our old site
New search categories that will make finding the book you want a breeze
Easy check-out
Subscription and standing-order information
A mailing list that will (mindfully) keep you updated with occasional announcements
And the same url you've known for years, www.cuneiformpress.com

CLEARVIEW/LIE

2011-09-28T19:59:00.001-04:00

A few years ago I had the pleasure of reading Ted Greenwald's memoir, Clearview/LIE when it was still a manuscript, written out longhand at 300 plus pages. My father read it too--first time I've ever seen him read a book in one sitting. Yes, it's that good.

Fast forward a little bit and Clearview/LIE is published by Lewis Warsh's United Artists with a gorgeous cover by Hal Saluson. I did the design this summer.

There's a fresh review by John Olsen here. Order the book direct from United Artists by clicking here.

Order from Small Press Distribution by clicking here. And while you're at it, note that the last copies of Greenwald's Cuneiform books 3 (paperback or signed hardcover) and Two Wrongs (paperback or signed hardcover) are also available from SPD. A complete bibliography is available at the EPC.

And don't miss the new Close Listening interview with Greenwald conducted by Charles Bernstein at PennSound, available here.

CHARLES ALEXANDER'S PUSHING WATER

2011-09-26T23:08:00.000-04:00

Charles Alexander's long-awaited epic serial poem, Pushing Water (Cuneiform Press, 2011), is on its way to the Kelly Writers House in Philadelphia direct from the press. If all goes well, it will be available tomorrow night when Alexander takes the stage at 6:00. For details on the reading, click here.

This book will soon be available through our distributors SPD (in the States) and West House Books (in the UK) as well as on our own newly remodeled website (forthcoming).

Advance praise for Pushing Water:

This long serial poem weaves, dodges, shifts, dissolves, coalesces. Improvisation is the foundation for a practice of listening: directed meditation, evanescent rumination, sparkling allusion. “A life in words” through rhythms made new in the wandering flow of thought’s melodies.

— Charles Bernstein

“through the tunnel pushing water” : the first appearance of this image in Charles Alexander’s serial poem arises as if in a dream, and that sense of dream persists throughout this long and complex work (“the dream pushes up from under the water”). Yet, “pushing water” also becomes a metaphor of body, of breath, of heartbeat, blood and brain, of consciousness itself, time and history, rendered in diverse poetic forms. Alexander embraces language and the bodies of work that comprise the touchstones of English poetry from the “word hoard” of the Anglo-Saxons through Shakespeare and Greville, Dickinson, and Williams, Olson and Creeley. But overall, this is a love poem to and for the poet’s wife, the painter Cynthia Miller, and the poem is imbued with the color and forms of her work. The domestic scene is the setting, the love of family is one of the motives for the writing (their two daughters are often invoked) and there is a sense of shelter from the wider world. Without having done an actual word count, “love” and “syllable” (the beat or rhythm of the word) seem to me to be the most frequently used in this poem of love, language, and love of language.

— Beverly Dahlen

What’s the shape of a life, one among many, what’s the rhythm? What’s pushing water? If air were water (and it is) you’d feel the graceful displacements that make up a life here ripple out, and you’d register the rhythms of other lives as undulations coming back in, the day’s news. From right here all the way to water’s cosmic rim and back: the local the (only) universal, as in Williams’s grand and expansive pragmatism. Or Dickinson: “And he unrolled his feathers / And rowed him softer home— // Than Oars divide the Ocean, / Too silver for a seam— / Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon / Leap, plashless as they swim.” That’s a fact—here made plain as any day, or daybook.

— Tenney Nathanson

BOXING BUMPERS

2011-09-03T12:48:00.002-04:00

Boxing Bumpers this afternoon... 11 down, 289 to go. Contributors include David Abel, Bill Berkson, Craig Dworkin, Johanna Drucker, Michael Gizzi, Michael Gottlieb, Ted Greenwald, Dorothea Lasky, Tom Raworth, Kit Robinson, Hoa Nguyen, & Carolee Schneemann.

REVIEW OF HAECCEITIES

2011-08-31T20:04:00.000-04:00

Thanks to Little Red Leaves for publishing this extensive review of Michael Cross' Haecceities, available from Small Press Distribution.

http://littleredleavesjournal.blogspot.com/2011/08/lrl-e-editions-sneak-peek-group-review.html

Book Number Two

2011-07-27T08:38:00.000-04:00

The colophon for Bumpers was printed yesterday morning. Trim and pack and call UPS and we're good to go. Here's a picture of the dummy for book number two.

BUMPERS 4

2011-07-24T10:56:00.001-04:00

On Monday I wasn’t sure if it would be possible to finish Bumpers before the end of my residency at Columbia. The edition is three hundred with a dozen ‘pages’ each, and each page is two or three colors. You can do the math, but the bottom line is that there was a whole lot of printing in the forecast. I stayed late on Wednesday night and got a little bit ahead of where I wanted to be in terms of the production schedule, and by Thursday afternoon it was clear that we would finish the book with time on our side. I attribute this largely to the competence of my assistant and the high standards of organization in the workshop. The machines are very well maintained and ample supplies of everything (inks, solvents, rags, you name it) is on hand. For a shop that has so many students and community members passing through, the depth of organization at the Center for Book and Paper Arts is quite remarkable. It appears that the printing will be done tomorrow morning. All of the crack’n peel has been printed, only the table of contents (two colors) and the spine (also two) remain. I have plenty of extra material, and may make some mailing labels as well (that’s only been on the to-do list for a decade!).

What to do with the week that remains? It’s been an incredibly rich time to reflect on the last decade of Cuneiform, which started in 2001. Change is the only constant, but I think things are going to look different in the second decade than the first. I don’t need a manifest, or any drastic reordering of things, but certainly, change is inevitable. For example, when the press started I was mostly interested in publishing chapbooks by young writers using the letterpress to make the covers, photocopies or offset for the text, and a simple pamphlet stitch for the binding. In the last ten years I’ve done less of that, not because I don’t care about new writing, but because it seems to me that the chapbooks were a lot of work, as expensive as trade editions to produce, and rarely got reviewed. With the increasing popularity of print-on-demand technologies, e-books, online audio files, blogs, and more sophisticated websites, it seems to me that new media have given young writers have plenty of resources and tools for getting their work into the world. I wouldn’t say that I’ll never publish another chapbook because there are plenty of reasons to do son, but as a general trend I don’t think the necessity is the same as it was a decade ago.

On Friday evening I gave a casual talk about the press and brought in a bunch of books to share with the audience. Being self-taught as a printer and typographer, I’ve learned through trial and error, most importantly, by sending the books off to publishers and artists I admire knowing full well that I would get some constructive criticism in return. In the talk I cited some examples of memorable observations from Walter Hamady, Johanna Drucker, Paul Romaine, and others. At home, I keep the Cuneiform books in alphabetical order on the shelf mixed in with all the others, so this was the first time I had seen a number of them together. Taken as a whole, they look quite different than they do in isolation. The publishers I like most tend not to use standardized formats or fall into predictable typographic or literary patterns; they favor the eclectic and eccentric (Something Else Press, Coracle, Jargon Society, etc.).

In the very near future we’ll be publishing Charles Alexander’s epic Pushing Water; Larry Fagin’s Complete Fragments (the poet’s first full trade edition since 1978); and Alastair Johnston’s Hanging Quotes (interviews with poets, typographers, and book artists). It’s pouring presently, and I’m very excited about going to visit Woodland Pattern for the first time today since the studio is closed.

BUMPERS 3

2011-07-21T00:51:00.000-04:00

I think I'm in love.

BUMPERS 2

2011-07-20T08:57:00.000-04:00

First day in the workshop I got a tutorial on the A2 platemaker from April Sheridan. I’m considering getting one for my workshop at home, so it was great to get an overview from a pro. Brad gave me a tour of Columbia’s a amazing facilities and introduced me to Hannah King, a graduate student at Center for Book and Paper Arts who will be my assistant for the next two weeks. After getting acclimated it didn’t take long to get busy on the press. The film was ready and waiting when I arrived and when we realized that there weren’t enough A2 plates on hand we expedited a shipment from Boxcar Press, which arrived early Tuesday morning. I trimmed paper in the morning and got on the Vandercook SP-25, which may be my new favorite press. It took a little while to get used to the relatively large quantity of ink it consumes (the bed is much larger than my #4) and now it’s running like a top. I’ve been waking up super early every morning like a kid on Christmas, too excited to sleep. Yesterday I printed three colors on Tom Raworth’s contribution, which was the first because it has the tightest registration. Brad was a little worried, but everything lined up as close to perfect as one could ask on the first proof. Not bad. Here's a snapshot of Tom's before adding the third and final color:

BUMPERS

2011-07-19T09:28:00.001-04:00

I boarded a 5:00 flight from Austin, read Jimmy Schuyler’s Selected Art Writings (although a New York poet, he was born in Chicago in 1923) and arrived in Chicago early Sunday night. Who else was born in Chicago (poetry wise)? Brad Freeman met me at the airport and we took a quick train to the Loop. This must be my second or third time in this city. I figured I would be staying in a dormitory or Motel 6, so I was pleasantly surprised when Brad dropped me off at Columbia College’s presidential suites on (get this) Printers’ Row. Of course there are no commercial printers here any more, but the annual printers’ ball will be happening Friday July 29th (there’s more information about that on the Poetry Foundation’s website).

I’m here on a two-week residency at the Center for Book and Paper Arts to complete a book that I conceived in 2007 or ’08 when I was living in New York City (where time and money are always at odds with one another). A ‘book’ of bumper stickers appealed to me because I’ve always been interested in the relationship between public and private reading spaces, public and personal libraries, group and individual reading experiences, and the art of finding poetry in unexpected places. Also a fan of vernacular typography, I found no shortage of inspiration in New York (tho there’s more and more commercial design on the streets every day and my childhood memories of beautiful subway trains plastered in graffiti, each one different, are nothing but fading memories). Even the street art of Berlin that I documented with Caroline Koebel in 2005 has largely vanished due to gentrification.

James Sullivan’s On the Walls and In the Streets is a classic study of poetry broadsides of the 1960s, a must for anyone interested in poetry, politics and the power of the press. I actually didn’t encounter Sullivan’s book until after I finished my dissertation, but was pleasantly surprised to see that our bibliographies were quite similar. In any event, with the oil wars continuing to rage, record-setting temperatures due to climate change, and Hummers still (oddly) fashionable, it occurred to me that the bumper sticker might be an interesting medium to work with because it is a form of ephemera that surely has roots in the broadside and handbilll.

I invited a number of poets and artists to compose bumpers, reminding them that the text should a) be written to be read in public b) that it must be short if it is to be read while the reader and/or sticker is in motion c) that the text need not mimic the conventions of a bumper sticker (i.e., I’d rather be reading; My other car is a sonnet; Imagine word peace; etc.) while offering no guidelines whatsoever in terms of content. Some happily defied or ignored my request not to mimic the conventions of bumper stickers, and those actually turned out to be some of my favorites. Also important to note that I didn’t invite all of my friends or ‘favorite’ artists to participate; there are some greats who I like very much who I just couldn’t imagine writing bumpers, while I imagined others ideal candidates for the job. For example, Tom Raworth, as I recall, responded within an hour of my invitation via. email with several bumpers to choose from. A terrific printer and collage artist, Tom not only wrote, but designed his own sticker (which I’m printing today). Another example: Sitting at our regular hang-out spot, a bar called Mumbles, with Ted Greenwald, I laid the idea on him. “Oh, I don’t know about that, let me think about it.” Ted turns back to his coffee, looking skeptical. “Okay, I got it.” Ted pulled an index card out of his breast pocket, wrote a line, signed and dated it, and handed it to me. Perfect on the first attempt.

Morning sunshine is pouring through the windows and the bulldozers and cranes on the construction site next door are making the building bounce. I’ll put up some pictures of the studio and works in process tonight.

CHARLES OLSON AT GODDARD COLLEGE

2011-06-10T16:48:00.000-04:00

In the spring of 1962, poet Charles Olson descended upon an experimental college in rural Vermont to read from The Maximus Poems and The Distances, and to lecture on Herman Melville. His captivating performance sparked lively debates with the audience on the nature of myth, history, etymology, narrative, knowledge, and sexuality. CHARLES OLSON AT GODDARD COLLEGE is an enthralling and indispensable annotated transcript that celebrates the intersection of Olson's poetics and a hopeful moment in American education.
Edited with an introduction by Kyle Schlesinger. Foreword by Basil King.

Buy Now @ Small Press Distribution

BERKSON ON THE AIR

2011-05-09T10:40:00.000-04:00

Terrific interview with Bill Berkson conducted by Joe Milford in Georgia May 7, 2011:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joe-milford-show/2011/05/07/joe-milford-hosts-bill-berkson

STEVE MILLER RELIEF FUND

2011-04-30T10:48:00.004-04:00

Steve Miller, friend, printer, teacher, and founding member of CBAA, lost his house in Tuscaloosa, AL on Wednesday in a devastating tornado. Dozens of his friends and colleagues have already donated to his relief fund, set up by CBAA. To donate, go to http://www.collegebookart.org and click on the Donate button and indicate you are donating to the Steve Miller Relief Fund. You don't have to be a member of CBAA to contribute. Many thanks.

Tune in

2011-04-27T19:32:00.000-04:00

KUSF IN Exile: Gwen Allen and Bill Berkson
Re: Artist & Poet Magazines

Saturday, May 28

KUSF IN EXILE
Roll Call: Bay Area Arts and Culture
Dj Margaret Tedesco

http://www.kusf-archives.com

Tune into KUSF IN EXILE LIVE STREAM

Listen through iTunes

COLLABORATION AND THE ARTIST'S BOOK

2011-04-05T08:32:00.000-04:00

Collaboration and the Artist's Book at the University de Caen April Fools Day 2011. (L to R) Charles Bernstein, Pascal Poyet, Raphael Rubenstein, Françoise Goria, Antoine Coron, Susan Bee, Bill Berkson, and Gervais Jassaud.

KIT ROBINSON'S EAST COAST DETERMINATION TOUR 2011

2011-03-16T10:33:00.000-04:00

KIT ROBINSON will be reading from his new book, Determination (Cuneiform, 2010) in Washington, Philly, and New York this April.

4/12, 7:30 pm – Washington, DC – Bridge Street Books <http://store.bridgestreetbooks.com/index.html>
4/13, 6 pm – State College – Pennsylvania State University
4/14, 6 pm – Philadelphia – Kelly Writers House <http://writing.upenn.edu/wh/calendar/0411.php> , University of Pennsylvania
4/15, 6 pm – Philadelphia – Fergie’s Pub <http://www.fergies.com/index.cfm> , (with Ryan Eckes, Kate Greenstreet & Matthew Landis)
4/16, 2 pm – New York – Poets House <http://poetshouse.org/progcoming.htm> , (performance/panel by co-authors of The Grand Piano: An Experiment if Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980 <http://www.thegrandpiano.org/> , including Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman and Barrett Watten with moderator Catherine Taylor)
4/17, 6:30 pm – New York – Emily Harvey Gallery <http://www.emilyharveyfoundation.org/> (with poet Anne Tardos and pianist Sergei Tcherepnin)

Order a copy from Small Press Distribution: http://www.spdbooks.org/Producte/9780982792636/determination.aspx

ROGER HORROCKS REVIEWS ALAN LONEY'S THE BOOKS TO COME

2011-03-02T09:43:00.001-05:00

A wonderful and extensive review of Alan Loney's The Books to Come (Cuneiform, 2010) by Roger Horrocks, founder of the Department of Film, Television and Media Studies at the University of Auckland at The Landfall Review: http://www.landfallreviewonline.com/

FOR OUR FRIENDS IN THE UK

2011-02-22T10:31:00.000-05:00

Cuneiform Press is pleased to announce that West House Books in Sheffield is our new European distributor. All of our titles, including Mimeo Mimeo, will be available from them shortly. Save some cash shipping overseas and order from West House Books' lovely proprietors, Alan Halsey and Geraldine Monk at: http://www.westhousebooks.co.uk

MIMEO MIMEO 4

2011-01-13T12:43:00.001-05:00

The 4th issue of MIMEO MIMEO is now available!

Featuring interviews with Tom Raworth, David Meltzer, and Trevor Winkfield; essays by Richard Price, Ken Edwards, and Alan Halsey; a selection of letters from Eric Mottram to Jeff Nuttall; and a long out-of-print statement by Asa Benveniste, poet and publisher of London’s legendary Trigram Press. Cover by Trevor Winkfield. Get a copy at Mimeo Mimeo.

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on artists' books, typography and the mimeograph revolution. This periodical features essays, interviews, artifacts, and reflections on the graphic, material and textual conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

FORTHCOMING:

Mimeo Mimeo 5 features Michael Klausman on poetry LP art; a lost essay by Paul Blackburn on the mimeograph revolution; Jim Sullivan on The Gallery Upstairs; Abel Debritto on Charles Bukowski and the little magazines; Alan Loney on Robert Duncan’s typewriter; Bill Stewart on current trends in artists’ book collecting; an interview with Larry Fagin; Steve Clay on Robert Creeley and Marisol's Presences; and more. Cover by Buzz Spector. Summer, 2011.

Mimeo Mimeo 6 will focus on poet, novelist and publisher Lewis Warsh. Winter, 2012.

http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com/

ALAN LONEY'S THE BOOKS TO COME

2011-01-07T12:26:00.000-05:00

New from Cuneiform Press: Alan Loney's The Books to Come

Poetics & Typography. Foreword by Jenni Quilter. Of Loney's long-anticipated collection of essays, Johanna Drucker has written: "Few people have mused with such imagination on the topic of the book as Alan Loney does in this volume. His reflections distill a lifetime of practice and reading, of knowing books and living with and around them. His thoughts about libraries, writing, texts, the codex, printed books, the artist's book, fine press traditions, and bibliography are at once philosophical and poetical. Though writing in the tradition of Mallarmé, Jabès and Blanchot, Loney's sensibility is contemporary and original, informed by his practice as a printer and a profound engagement with books as expressive objects and objects of contemplation. I predict that this thoughtful, provocative, book will become a crucial reading on the codex. Loney's writing is wonderfully suggestive, but clear, fresh, and precise. He addresses issues much debated but rarely articulated so well and with such a skillful ability to open up the field for investigation and discussion."

About the author: Alan Loney had his first book of poems published in 1971 and began printing in 1974. He was co-winner of the poetry prize in the New Zealand Book Awards in 1977, Literary Fellow at the University of Auckland in 1992, and Honorary Fellow of the Australian Centre at the University of Melbourne 2002-2006. He was Convener of the Conference on the History of the Book in New Zealand at University of Auckland 1995. Loney has published 11 books of poetry, and eight books of prose with a recent emphasis on the nature of the book. Fine editions of his work have been issued by Granary Books, The Janus Press, Barbarian Press, Red Dragonfly Press, Pear Tree Press, INK-A! Press, and The Holloway Press. A short account of Loney's printerly life and a checklist of his first 50 printed books can be found in The Private Library, Winter 2007, and his most recent book of poems is Day's Eye (Rubicon Press, Canada 2008). He was Printer in Residence at the University of Otago for 2008, and an exhibition of his books was held in 2008 at the Christchurch Art Gallery, New Zealand. THE BOOKS TO COME brings together formulations of Loney's thinking about the relations between poetry and typography for the first time.

Typeset in Quadraat by Kyle Schlesinger and graduate students in the MS in Publishing Program at UHV, this clothbound edition is limited to 200 copies of which 26 are lettered and SIGNED by the author. Available from SPD by clicking here. Note that SPD has a few copies of the signed edition available upon request while supplies last.

You may also order a copy direct from the press by sending a check for $39.95 plus $5.00 S&H to:

Cueniform Press
UHV/A&S
3007 North Ben Wilson
Victoria, TX 77901-5731

Cuneiform @ 10

2010-12-30T21:15:00.000-05:00

In 2011, Cuneiform Press will be celebrating its first decade of bookish activity. Rob McClennan recently interviewed me for his blog, and his questions proved to be a welcome opportunity to reflect on the last ten years, and to contemplate, as Alan Loney says, ‘the books to come.’

Here's to a prosperous 2011!

Kyle

http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2010/12/12-or-20-small-press-questions-kyle.html

Review of Haecceities

2010-12-29T16:50:00.000-05:00

Check out Karla Kelsey's review of Michael Cross' Haecceities at the Constant Critic.

DETERMINATION

2010-12-23T00:38:00.000-05:00

You'll need Determination to start the New Year off right! Get Kit Robinson's most recent masterpiece at Small Press Distribution today. Why delay? It's here.

BILL BERKSON, KIT ROBINSON & MICHAEL CROSS: CUNEIFORM NIGHT AT MOE'S BOOKS IN BERKELEY

2010-12-22T11:10:00.003-05:00

COME CELEBRATE THE RELEASE OF THREE NEW BOOKS FROM CUNEIFORM PRESS WITH POETS BILL BERKSON, KIT ROBINSON & MICHAEL CROSS!

Wednesday, January 19th at Moe's (2476 Telegraph Avenue, Berkeley)

Now in its tenth year, Cuneiform Press is a non-profit publisher of poetry, typography, and artists' books as well as the magazine Mimeo Mimeo (edited by Jed Birmingham and Kyle Schlesinger). Recent and forthcoming titles include Michael Cross' Haecceities, Kit Robinson's Determination, Alan Loney'sThe Books to Come, Bill Berkson's Sudden Address and Ted Berrigan (in collaboration with George Schneeman), Charles Olson at Goddard College, and Alastair Johnston's Hanging Quotes.

Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties. Director of Letters and Science at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1993 to 1998, he taught art history, critical writing and poetry and directed the public lectures program there from 1984 to 2008. He studied at Trinity School, The Lawrenceville School, Brown University, Columbia, the New School for Social Research and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

Past recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artspace, Yaddo, the Briarcombe Foundation, the Fund for Poetry, the Poets Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, he was Distinguished Paul Mellon Lecturer for 2006 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and was awarded the 2008 Goldie for Literature from the San Francisco Bay Guardian as well as the 2010 Balcones Poetry Prize. A collection of his criticism, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, appeared from Qua Books in 2004, and Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 from Cuneiform Press. in 2007. A new volume of his art writings and interviews, For the Ordinary Artist, has just appeared from BlazeVox.

Kit Robinson is the author of Determination (Cuneiform, 2010), The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003(Adventures in Poetry, 2009), Train I Ride (BookThug, 2009), and 17 other books of poetry. A co-author of The Grand Piano: An Experiment in Collective Autobiography, San Francisco, 1975-1980 (Mode A, 2006-2010), Robinson lives in Berkeley, where he works as a freelance writer and plays Cuban tres guitar in the Latin dance band Bahia Son.

Michael Cross is the author of In Felt Treeling (Chax, 2008) and Haecceities (Cuneiform Press, 2010) and editor of Atticus/Finch chapbooks and On: Contemporary Practice (w/ Thom Donovan & Kyle Schlesinger). Other projects includeInvoluntary Vision: after Akira Kurosawa's Dreams (Avenue B, 2003), Building is a process / Light is an element: Essays and Excursions for Myung Mi Kim (Queue Books, 2008), and a forthcoming edition of the George Oppen Memorial Lectures. He lives in Oakland where he studies 21st century poetry.

Cutter

2010-12-08T20:57:00.004-05:00

Last week my son and I took a drive down to San Antonio to check out the remains of a shop being sold off by a printer's widow. There was a smattering of AB Dick offset equipment, a beat-down C&P, paper folder, industrial stapler, hot-foil stamp, a lot of dry ink, and a few other odds and ends. The type cabinet sold just before I got there--no telling what was inside. After some deliberation I came away with a 19.5" C&P paper cutter mounted on its original metal cabinet. A free-standing 23" or 26.5" would be better for working with parent sheets, but this will certainly help with the small stuff. Thanks to Aaron Cohick for nudging me in the right direction, and major thanks to Jeffrey Pethybridge and his son Patrick for helping me move the sucker into the workshop.

Sorting type over the Thanksgiving holiday with Ed Dorn and a couple of beers. What could be better?

ANCIENT INK!

2010-11-26T21:40:00.000-05:00

Ancient ink! Spent my afternoon scraping this delicious black goo out of the Vandercook. The new workshop is nearly complete and I aim to start printing in December. If anyone knows of a platen for sale within a day's drive of Austin drop me a line. Can't wait to get to work again....

POEMS & PICTURES

2010-11-18T11:02:00.001-05:00

My new book, Poems & Pictures, is now available from Oak Knoll. Click here to order a copy.

Hey Teach

2010-11-01T10:27:00.001-04:00

From time to time, people ask me what and where I teach and I'm never quite sure where to begin, so before I start my morning grading, I thought I would reflect on that for a moment. I work at the University of Houston-Victoria located in Victoria (not Houston) Texas. Victoria is a small city about 120 miles south of Houston and approximately 30 miles inland from the Gulf of Mexico. I was hired in the fall of 2009 as an Assistant Professor of Communication Design and English, while one of my primary responsibilities is to develop and oversee the University's brand new MS in Publishing Program.

I currently teach four different classes (graduate and undergraduate) in three different divisions two of which are hybrid: History of Visual Communication; Introduction to Publishing; Publication Design; and Professional Writing. History of Visual Communication and Professional Writing are courses for undergraduates. History of Visual Communication is a requirement for students majoring in Communications and Professional Writing is a requirement in English. I teach both classes online using Blackboard. For History of Visual Communication, I use Johanna Drucker and Emily McVarish's terrific textbook Graphic Design History: A Critical Guide, while I use Kitty O. Locker and Stephen Kyo Kaczmarek's Business Communication for Professional Writing.

Introduction to Publishing and Publication Design are core courses for graduate students in the MS in Publishing Program. I teach both of these courses online using Blackboard and again in person on campus Wednesday afternoons and Thursday evenings. I use Steve Clay and Jerome Rothenberg's A Book of the Book for Introduction to Publishing and Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographic Style for Publication Design.

When I wrote the mission statement for the program, the two dialectics I established as central to the curriculum were theory/practice and tradition/innovation. Robert Bringhurst teaches the students the golden rules of typography, giving them a solid set of skills to design a legible, functional, and beautiful book while Clay and Rothenberg's book challenges us to think about books in the broadest sense possible, ranging from its various histories and cultural traditions to its artistic and interdisciplinary possibilities and boundaries.

While fostering a creative and intellectual foundation for thinking critically about the history of publishing, it is important to me that graduates have the skills they need to enter the workforce when they graduate. A lot of vocational training programs put a great deal of emphasis on software, and for good reason, but creating a disciplined Photoshop monkey isn't enough. It does students an equal disservice to complete an MFA with no practical skills: students need to understand how to think with, through, and beyond the software and to understand it as a tool within a long timeline of media history. That said, it's difficult not to spend a lot of time working with CS5 and I plan to begin teaching e-book and webdesign in the spring. We begin with the foundations and work our way up, using exercises as well as real-world projects as the subject of our lessons (including Cuneiform publications). At this time, we have no presses on campus, tho I'd like to see that change. Meanwhile, field trips to the wonderful Museum of Printing History in Houston will allow students to get a sense of the origins of printing.

I should also mention that we all know that the publishing industry is changing every day, so we spend lot of time bopping around the blogosphere gathering news. Class begins with each student giving a 5 minute presentation on a current event in publishing, often drawn from Publisher's Weekly, New York Times, or The Huffington Post.

Last spring I created a website for the program with the assistance of IT that includes a complete description of the program, my syllabi, course and admissions requirements. It's at: www.uhv.edu/msINpublishing

I don't know for sure which courses I'll be assigned in the spring, but last year I taught and designed Theories of Web Design, Advanced Publishing, and Style & Editing. Okay, time to get back to grading.

TWO SHORT REVIEWS

2010-10-26T11:10:00.000-04:00

of Poems & Pictures

POEMS AND PICTURES OPENING RECEPTION AT THE MUSEUM OF PRINTING HISTORY

2010-10-20T18:11:00.007-04:00

Please join us for the Opening Reception for Poems and Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946-1981). Guest Curator Kyle Schlesinger will deliver a Gallery Talk at 6:30.

Copies of the catalog (hot off the press!)available for $15.

Details at: http://www.printingmuseum.org/index.php

CUNEIFORM AUTHOR BILL BERKSON IN AUSTIN

2010-10-17T11:48:00.001-04:00

Reading from Portrait and Dream*
Thursday, October 21
7 pm
Austin Community College
Rio Grande Campus Gallery Theater
1212 Rio Grande Street (corner of 12th Street)
*Awarded the 2010 Balcones Prize for Poetry

Reading New and Selected Poems
Friday, October 22
7 pm
University of Texas at Austin
Joynes Room
Carothers (CRD) 007, 2501 Whitis Ave. Enter through the east doors of the honors quad

Bill's Bio: Born in New York in 1939, Bill Berkson is a poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties. Director of Letters and Science at the San Francisco Art Institute from 1993 to 1998, he taught art history, critical writing and poetry and directed the public lectures program there from 1984 to 2008. He studied at Trinity School, The Lawrenceville School, Brown University, Columbia, The New School for Social Research and New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts.

He is the author of eighteen books and pamphlets of poetry -- including Gloria, a portfolio of poems with etchings by Alex Katz (Arion Press, 2005), Our Friends Will Pass Among You Silently (The Owl Press, 2007), Goods and Services (Blue Press, 2008), Portrait and Dream: New & Selected Poems (Coffee House Press, 2009) and Lady Air (Perdika, 2010). His poems have also appeared in many magazines and anthologies. Other recent books are What’s Your Idea of a Good Time: Letters & Interviews 1977-1985 with Bernadette Mayer (Tuumba Press, 2006); BILL with drawings by Colter Jacobsen (Gallery 16 Editions, 2008); Ted Berrigan with George Schneeman (Cuneiform Press, 2009), and Not an Exit with Léonie Guyer (Jungle Garden Books, 2010).

During the 1960s he was an editorial associate at Art News, a regular contributor to Arts, guest editor at the Museum of Modern Art, an associate producer of a program on art for public television, and taught literature and writing workshops at the New School and Yale University.

After moving to Northern California in 1970, he began editing and publishing a series of poetry books and magazines under the Big Sky imprint. Before coming to the Art Institute, he taught regularly in the California Poets in the Schools program.

In the mid-1980s he resumed writing art criticism on a regular basis, contributing monthly reviews and articles to Artforum from 1985 to 1991; he became a corresponding editor for Art in America in 1988 and also writes frequently for such magazines as Aperture, Modern Painters, Art on Paper, and others.

As a curator he has organized or co-curated such exhibitions as Ronald Bladen: Early and Late (SFMoMA), Albert York (Mills College), Why Painting I & II (Susan Cummins Gallery), Homage to George Herriman (Campbell-Thiebaud Gallery), and Facing Eden: 100 years of Northern California Landscape Art (M.H. de Young Museum).

Past recipient of awards and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artspace, Yaddo, the Briarcombe Foundation, the Fund for Poetry, the Poets Foundation, and the American Academy in Rome, he was Distinguished Paul Mellon Lecturer for 2006 at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, and was awarded the 2008 Goldie for Literature from the San Francisco Bay Guardian. Portrait and Dream won the Balcones Prize for Best Book of Poetry in 2010. A collection of his criticism, The Sweet Singer of Modernism & Other Art Writings, appeared from Qua Books in 2004, and Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 from Cuneiform Press in 2007. A new volume of his art writings, lectures and interviews, For The Ordinary Artist, will appear from BlazeVox Books in fall 2010.

BILL BERKSON'S SUDDEN ADDRESS: SELECTED LECTURES 1981-2006

2010-10-05T10:47:00.002-04:00

Bill Berkson's Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006 is back! If you missed out the first time around, Cuneiform Press is pleased to announce that a second edition is now available.

In these dazzling lectures, poet/critic Bill Berkson addresses artists and writers as various as Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Fairfield Porter, Walter Benjamin, Ted Berrigan, Dante, Edwin Denby, Kenneth Koch, Carter Ratcliff, James Schuyler, Walt Whitman, and more.

Read David Carrier's new review of Sudden Address at Art Critical

Buy a copy at Small Press Distribution

Sudden Address: Selected Lectures 1981-2006
Bill Berkson
Cuneiform Press
Paperback; 2nd edition
ISBN 9780982792605
$14.95

If you already own a copy, please consider giving one as a gift, or better yet, ask your local public or university library to add Bill Berkson's Sudden Address to their collection. Thanks!

-- Kyle Schlesinger

Proprietor
Cuneiform Press

HAECCEITIES by MICHAEL CROSS

2010-09-13T12:00:00.014-04:00

I am honored to announce the publication of Michael Cross's Haecceities, the latest from Cuneiform Press. Of Cross's book, seven hard years in the making, Leslie Scalapinio wrote:

In Haecceities, Michael Cross has made an interim language, his invention a relation between the words--as if this unknown relation or 'noumenon' is 'a hide enthinned' of futuristic Elizabethan single words each at once tactile, optical, aural simultaneously traces and events of reinterpreted future-present spurred in 'the many hundred wing-lit hives.

Michael Cross's critically acclaimed debut, In Felt Treeling: A Libretto, was published by Chax Press in 2008. Haecceities is his second collection of poetry. He is the editor of Involuntary Vision: After Kurosawa's Dreams (Avenue B, 2003) and The George Oppen Memorial Lectures at San Francisco State University (forthcoming). Cross lives in Oakland.

Published in the early autumn of 2010, this oversized edition won't last long.

Paperback
92 pages
ISBN: 9780982792643
$16.95

Click here to order from Small Press Distribution

Approaching the end of our first decade (est. 2001), the future of Cuneiform is contingent on awakening the curiosity of new readers. If you like what we do (and we know you do!) please consider asking your local and/or university library to order a copy of this book. If you teach, share the love and adopt this title. In these tough economic times, your support is necessary and greatly appreciated.
OX//KS

OVERHAUL

2010-09-13T11:31:00.000-04:00

Anyone out there know a brilliant web designer? The Cuneiform site needs to be redesigned from the ground-up. If interested, drop me a line at kyleschlesinger [at] gmail [dot] com and be sure to include a link to your portfolio.

Thanks!

POEMS AND PICTURES -- LAST CHANCE

2010-09-09T13:00:00.000-04:00

Saturday, September 11th is your last chance to check out the Poems and Pictures exhibition at the Center for Book Arts in New York City. Thanks again to everyone who made this possible, as well as Andre Lee, who has done a wonderful job designing this gorgeous catalog. Unfortunately, it wasn't done in time for NYC, but will be available direct from the CBA and from the Museum for Printing History and the Western New York Book Arts Center when the show travels. More details here.

Dark Glasses

2010-09-02T23:54:00.000-04:00

I'm very happy to have a poem in the latest issue of the Colorado Review.

HIDDEN AGENDAS

2010-08-24T10:49:00.000-04:00

It's been a summer of silence on the Cuneiform blog, but thanks for checking in. School's back in session as of yesterday, kindergarten for my son Alasdair, History of Visual Communication, Publication Design, Introduction to Publishing, and Professional Writing for me. I'm looking forward to the this semester in the new Publishing Program at the University of Houston-Victoria, as well as the autumn weather, which doesn't really begin until October down here, where it's been well over 100 degrees for a week.

This brightened up my mailbox earlier this summer: Louis Armand has done the world of letters a great honor by editingHidden Agendas: Unreported Poetics. Conceived as a parallel volume to Armand's Avant-Post of 2006, this volume "grew out of a number of discussions about "marginality" and reception (or critical "reportage"). It assumed a contrarian stance towards the idea of a global exchange of poetic information, as it were. An unreported poetics could not be allowed to simply be thought of as the disadvantaged or disenfranchised other of a presumed mainstream. If marginality is relative, it is also pervasive. It is indeed just as pervasive as the mechanisms of normalization at work inany information/language environment." (from the Introduction).

I had the opportunity to contribute an essay on Asa Benveniste and the Trigram Press called "No One 'Understands' Language" (the statement is culled from one of Asa's poems). Asa was one of London's leading poets and publishers 0f the 1960s and 70s whose typographic sensibility was of the highest order. He printed and published important early books by American and British poets David Meltzer, Anselm Hollo, Tom Raworth, Pierro Heliczer, Jim Dine, and many more. Since there was (and is) very little written about the poet and his publishing house, I spent a lot of time with his archives, conducting interviews, and corresponding with the poets and artists who knew him. All of this is foregrounded in the cinéma vérité approach to the writing, in an attempt to allow the form to respond to the question that many of the contributors to this book ask: how does one address the unaddressed, the margins, the unreported?

Contributors include: Ali Alizadeh, Louis Armand, Livio Beloi, Jeremy Davies, Stephan Delbos, Michel Delville, Johanna Drucker, Michael Farrel, Allen Fisher, Vincent Katz, Stephen Muecke, Jena Osman, Michael Rothenberg, Lou Rowan, Kyle Schlesinger, Robert Shepperd, Stephanie Strickland, John Wilkinson. Read an excerpt, or buy online by clicking here.

OPENING NIGHT

2010-07-18T18:16:00.000-04:00

Thanks to everyone who came out for the opening night of the Poems & Pictures exhibit I curated at Center for Book Arts in NYC. He's a snapshot Nicholas Crawford tool of me with Patricia Spear Jones and Ron Padgett. To my right you'll see Emily McVarish's Flicker and behind us is a recent collaboration between Padgett and George Schneeman. More photographs are available here.

And don’t miss the panel discussion featuring painter Trevor Winkfield, poet Miles Champion and publisher of Granary Books Steve Clay. Moderated by Michael Basinski, poet and curator of the Poetry Collection at the University at Buffalo.
Wednesday, July 28th @ 6:30pm

A comprehensive catalog will be available in August. Reserve your copy by writing to info@centerforbookarts

More info.

POEMS & PICTURES

2010-06-11T18:12:00.002-04:00

Curated by Kyle Schlesinger
Center for Book Arts
New York City
July 7, 2010 - September 11, 2010

Poems and Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946 - 1981) examines relationships between visual and language art. The exhibit features over 60 books produced between 1946 and 1981, as well as paintings, collages, periodicals, and ephemera. Poets, artists and collaborators include Wallace Berman, Joe Brainard, Robert Creeley, Jim Dine, Johanna Drucker, Philip Guston, Joanne Kyger, Emily McVarish, Karen Randall, Larry Rivers, George Schneeman, and many more.
http://www.centerforbookarts.org/

Image above:

Negative, 1973

Bill Berkson and Philip Guston

CUNEIFORM AUTHOR MICHAEL CROSS IS BLOGGING AGAIN

2010-06-03T00:13:00.000-04:00

http://www.disinhibitor.blogspot.com/

INTERVIEW WITH CUNEIFORM AUTHOR BILL BERKSON

2010-06-03T00:11:00.002-04:00

Bill Berkson from Rehistoricizing.org on Vimeo.

ON EAST COAST LAUNCH

2010-05-30T14:46:00.000-04:00

ON Contemporary Practice 2

At Book Thug Nation bookstore in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

June 4th at 8PM sharp

With readings by
CA Conrad
Robert Dewhurst
Brenda Iijima
Robert Kocik
Chris Martin
Evelyn Reilly
Michelle Taransky
and other special guests

hosted by Thom Donovan, coeditor of ON

Book Thug Nation is located at
100 N3rd St
Between Berry St and Wythe Ave
Williamsbug, Brooklyn.

For more information about ON 2 check out our new website:
http://www.oncontemporaries.org/

ON
Contemporary Practice 2
edited by Michael Cross, Thom Donovan & Kyle Schlesinger

Rosa Alcala, Stan Apps, Cara Benson, David Brazil, Laynie Brown, CA Conrad & Brenda Iijima, Corina Copp, Michael Cross, Robert Dewhurst, Thom Donovan, Patrick James Dunagan, Joel Felix, Robert Kocik, Chris Martin, C.J. Martin, Laura Moriarty, Rich Owens, Evelyn Reilly, Michelle Taransky, Dan Thomas-Glass, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Brian Whitener, and Tyrone Williams

on Mónica de la Torre, Stephanie Young, Susana Gardner, Brandon Brown, Lee Ann Brown, CA Conrad & Brenda Iijima, Rodrigo Toscano & Poets Theater, Judith Goldman & Jennifer Scappettone, Dorothea Lasky, Bhanu Kapil, Edmund Berrigan/Jeff Karl Butler/John Coletti, William Fuller, Stacy Szymaszek, John Coletti, Rob Halpern, Conceptualisms, Flarf/Conceptual Writing, Rosmarie Waldrop & Contemporary Womens' Writing, Stacy Szymaszek, Jasper Bernes & Bay Area Publishing, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Dolores Dorantes, Erica Hunt.

SUMMER IN THE CITY

2010-05-24T00:21:00.000-04:00

The blog has been quiet recently, but that doesn't mean that we haven't been busy behind the scenes.

First off, I should mention that we've just received an incredible new manuscript by Michael Cross entitled Haecceities. An acclaimed (and recently reformed) New Brutalist, Cross is the author of In Felt Treeling (Chax Press, 2009) and the editor of Involuntary Vision (Avenue B, 2003). Haecceities is his second full-length collection of poems.

We're also honored to announce that we'll be publishing Kit Robinson's Determination this autumn. Since the mid-70s, Robinson has published nearly twenty books of poetry with consistant ingenuity and integrity. Of Robinson's poetry, Robert Creeley wrote, "Kit Robinson's reflective work is articulate and compelling witness to ominous signs of our time."

I am humbled to announce that Alan Loney's The Books to Come will kick off our new typography series. Loney is the finest poet and typographer living in Australia (or anywhere, for that matter). Loney has published nearly twenty books of poetry and prose. This collection will bring together his most renown essays on the relationship between poetry and the art of the book.

A fourth issue of Mimeo Mimeo is on the way as well. Focusing on the British Poetry Revival, this lavishly illustrated issue will include contributions from Asa Benveniste, Miles Champion, Ken Edwards, Alan Halsey, Alastair Johnston, David Meltzer, Eric Mottram, Jeff Nuttall, Richard Price, Tom Raworth, and Trevor Winkfield with glorious full-color cover art by Winkfield.

The press is moving (once again) to a new home, this time for a good long while. I'll be renovating our new letterpress workshop in Austin, Texas with super-cool insulation and super-bright skylights for optimal observations. We'll soon be taking on commercial printing jobs such as wedding invitations, business cards, stationery, books, and ephemera. Details forthcoming. In the fall, we'll also be offering Saturday morning workshops and private tutorials in letterpress printing. That's all for now folks!

OX//KS

DARK GLASSES

2010-05-06T20:14:00.000-04:00

Dark Glasses is my new chapbook published by No Press. If you would like a copy, email derek@housepress.ca. Thanks! KS

ALL BUSINESS

2010-04-18T17:41:00.000-04:00

Printers rarely have the time to make their own business cards. I've been without one for years, so today I finally decided to print up something new. Eventually, I might even get around to updating my website....

CANNIBAL

2010-04-18T12:57:00.000-04:00

One of the highlights of AWP was meeting Matthew Henriksen, editor of Cannibal. It's a thick handbound magazine with attitude. But most importantly, it reads well from cover to cover. I haven't put my finger on it yet (and that excites me), but there is an aesthetic at work here. Contributors include: Carrie Olivia Adams, Samuel Amadon, Claire Becker, Susan Briante, Lily Brown, Adam Clay, CAConrad, Kate Dougherty, Farrah Field, Laura Goode, Kate Greenstreet, Jane Gregory, Whit Griffin, Melanie Hubbard, Andrew Hughes, MC Hyland, Grant Jenkins, Jeff T. Johnson, Jon Leon, Sam Lohmann, Sara Mumolo, Hoa Nguyen, Danielle Pafunda, Alison Palmer, Kyle Schlesinger, Cedar Sigo, Nate Slawson, Tony Tost, Steven Toussaint, Amish Trivedi, G.C. Waldrep, & Joseph Wood. Order a copy at: http://flesheatingpoems.blogspot.com/

AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW

2010-04-15T23:54:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of guest editing the most recent issue of American Book Review (Volume 31, Number 3 March/April 2010). The focus is called "Poetry without Walls" and includes:

Thom Donovan’s Three Contemporary Activist Presses

Charles Bernstein reviews Tan Lin’s plagiarism/outsource, Notes Towards the Definition of Culture, Untilted Heath Ledger Project, a history of the search engine, disco OS

Rob Halpern reviews Michael Cross’s In Felt Treeling

Gregg Biglieri reviews Alan Bernheimer’s The Spoonlight Institute

Miles Champion reviews Tom Raworth’s There Are Few People Who Put On Any Clothes (starring it)

Michael Gizzi reviews Miles Champion‘s Eventually

William Corbett reviews Michael Gizzi’s New Depths of Deadpan

Alan Davies reviews Kit Robinson Train I Ride

Kit Robinson reviews Anne Tardos I Am You

Elizabeth Fodaski reviews Michael Gottlieb’s Memoir and Essay

Michael Gottlieb reviews K. Silem Mohammad’s The Front

Jenni Quilter reviews Vincent Katz and Francesco Clemente’s Alcuni Telefonini, Leslie Scalapino and Kiki Smith’s The Animal is in the World Like Water in Water, John Ashbery and Trevor Winkfield’s Faster Than Birds Can Fly, and Marjorie Welish and James Siena’s Oaths? Questions?

Marck L. Beggs reviews Keith Waldrop’s Several Gravities

Order a copy at http://americanbookreview.org/

AWP

2010-04-06T16:41:00.002-04:00

I'll be attending AWP this year for the first time. On Saturday April 10th I'll participate in the CHAX Press Reading with Charles Alexander, Hank Lazer, Jane Sprague, and Elizabeth Treadwell. Come celebrate twenty-five years of Chax Press! [Room 201, Colorado Convention Center, Street Level]

Unfortunately, I won't be selling Cuneiform books, but fortunately, that will give me more time to browse the book fair and hang out.

After the conference I'll be heading to Fort Collins to visit my friends Sashsa Steensen and Gordon Hadfield. On Monday I'll be giving a talk at the Center for Literary Publishing on Asa Benveniste and the Trigram Press. Please drop me a line if you would like to attend.

Cheers,

Kyle

KYLE IN KYLE

2010-03-22T19:05:00.002-04:00

Shin Yu Pai and Kyle Schlesinger will read at the Katherine Anne Porter Literary Center on Friday, March 26, at 7:30 p.m. The reading is sponsored by C.J. Martin, Julia Drescher, and Ash Smith. There will be books for sale, too, so bring some cash...

KAP Literary Center

508 Center St.

Kyle, TX 78640

Shin Yu Pai is the author of seven books, including Haiku Not Bombs (Booklyn), Sightings: Selected Works (1913 Press), Works on Paper (Convivio Bookworks), and Equivalence (La Alameda Press). Two books are forthcoming in 2010 from Cinematheque Press and White Pine Press. Her poems are anthologized in The Wisdom Anthology of North American Buddhist Poetry (Wisdom Publications), America Zen: A Gathering of Poets (Bottom Dog Press), and The City Visible: Poetry for the New Century (Cracked Slab Books). Her work has been commissioned by the Dallas Museum of Art and exhibited at the McKinney Avenue Contemporary, The Paterson Museum, the Three Arts Club of Chicago, Harvard University, and 516 Arts in Albuquerque. She is assistant curator for the Wittliff Collections.

Kyle Schlesinger writes and lectures on poetics, artists’ books and typography. With Michael Cross and Thom Donovan, he edits the poetics journal ON: Contemporary Practice. What You Will is forthcoming from New Lights Press in Oakland, California (2010).

Hope to see you there!

-KS

ARTISTS' STATEMENTS

2010-03-09T15:05:00.008-05:00

For years I’ve toyed with the idea of conducting a workshop to teach people how not to write artists' statements (or should the genre be abolished?).

I’d begin with a list of words that cannot be used—ever. These would include “conceptual,” “new,” “aesthetic,” “critical,” “cultural,” “subjective,” “perceptive,” “time,” “space,” “experimental,” “interstitial,” “media,” “hybrid,” “cultural,” “political,” “social,” “theory,” “praxis,” and any word that begins with “multi-” or "inter-" is off limits too.

It's okay to mention one's nationality, but participants in the workshops would be discouraged from doing so in the first sentence.

Verbs like “subvert,” “explores,” “strives,” “attempts,” “questions,” “challenges,” and “seeks” should be used with caution.

No proper names (universities, movements, famous philosophers, etc.) unless the proper name identifies someone with whom you have collaborated directly.

No blurbs (especially from current or former teachers). Period.

It's redundant to say "John Doe lives and works in New York City."

50 word max.

BAD WORDS TO THE RADIO

2010-03-07T11:11:00.001-05:00

My poem "Bad Words to the Radio" appeared in the March issue of the Brooklyn Rail. Thanks to poetry editors Anselm Berrigan and Roger Van Voohrees.

GOES WITHOUT SAYING

2010-03-03T14:03:00.002-05:00

Copies of my poem "Goes Without Saying" are now available from the Eucalyptus Press at Mills College. This broadside was printed letterpress by Kiala Givehand and Lyall Harris to commemorate a reading I gave at Mills in February of 2010. Signed, lettered, limited edition. $15 plus shipping. Write to bookart at mills dot edu to place your order.

THE OFFENDING ADAM 005

2010-03-02T12:17:00.001-05:00

There's a new online journal called The Offending Adam that updates their content weekly, and in a manageable quantity. This week there's a feature on four of my poems with a super introductuon by Ryan Winet that begins: "A poet of Kyle Schlesinger's caliber might find a comparison between his recent work and the classic arcade game Donkey Kong offensive. As tenuous as such a comparison might seem, I encounter Schlesinger’s poetry in much the same way I play Donkey Kong: moving from line to line, knowing that meaning will develop as a particular pattern of tumbling, cascading moments."

Read the rest here: http://www.theoffendingadam.com/

WHAT YOU WILL POSTCARD

2010-02-26T20:48:00.001-05:00

Aaron Cohick printed a beautiful postcard prospectus for my book, What You Will, forthcoming from New Lights Press. Shoot me an e-mail and I'll put one in the post. More details at the New Lights Press homepage.

ABR

2010-02-18T15:28:00.001-05:00

I wrote a very short essay for the American Book Review feature on Bad Books. This issue has a number of terrific responses as well as an exclusive interview with poet-publisher Geoffrey Gatza of BlazeVox.

CHUCK STEBELTON READS IN AUSTIN

2010-02-17T11:53:00.001-05:00

This Saturday I'll have the honor of reading with Chuck Stebelton in Austin. For directions to the reading, please drop me a line.

Cheers,

Kyle

- - - - -

Poets Chuck Stebelton and Kyle Schlesinger Read

Saturday Feb. 20

7 PM (Reading starts are 8:20 PM)

Chuck Stebelton works as Literary Program Director at Woodland Pattern Book Center in Milwaukee. He is author of Circulation Flowers (Tougher Disguises, 2005). Recent print objects and chapbooks include 'Tis' (The John Riepenhoff Experience, 2009); A Maximal Object (Mitzvah Chaps, 2008); Flags and Banners (Bronze Skull Press, 2007); and Precious (Answer Tag Home Press, 2005). Newer writing appears in the current issues of Cannot Exist, The Cultural Society, and Kadar Koli.

Kyle Schlesinger’s books include Moonlighting, Look, and The Pink. What You Will is forthcoming from New Lights Press any day now.

Hope to see you there...

BAY AREA HEAVY METAL

2010-02-16T15:07:00.002-05:00

Last week I went to California for the first time in a decade and met many poets whose work I’ve long admired (Stephanie Young, Stephen Ratcliffe, Clay Banes, Laura Moriarty, Alastair Johnston, Alan Bernheimer, David Brazil, Brandon Brown, Taylor Brady, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Dan Thomas-Glass, Alli Warren, Suzanne Stein, and many more).

Katja Geldhof arrived at the Oakland airport to pick me up with her dogs Greta and Dewey on Saturday night and whisked me back to the apartment. Her husband Michael Cross was still in Buffalo where he successfully defended his dissertation on Louis Zukofsky. I met Katja Michael in Buffalo when we were students back in 2003, so it’s a sweet irony that Michael should be there wrapping things up the day I arrive at their place in Oakland.

Sunday morning I took the BART into San Francisco to meet Aaron Cohick at the Hello Lucky printshop near the Powell station. The bright shop had four Heidelberg Windmills, a Vandercook, large platemaker, a fleet of big-screen Macs, and a stockpile of blank stationery. Among other things, Aaron is the proprietor of New Lights Press and was in the process of printing up a prospectus for my next book, What You Will. I took a look at the book in process and was absolutely floored and humbled by Aaron’s design and craftsmanship (the cover alone has 26 press runs). You can see Aaron documenting the printing/thinking on his blog: http://newlightspress.blogspot.com/. The edition will be limited to 100 copies. Reserve your copy today by writing to newlightspress [at] gmail.com.

We set out on a short walk over to Academy of the Arts University where Aaron is teaching to check out the printshop. It had a totally different feel from Hello Lucky – lots of type, manual guillotine, a small graveyard for defunct equipment, and a fourth floor view of the city that is worth the price of admission alone. We dropped our bags and went out for a bite to eat around the corner. It was Superbowl Sunday, so the place was packed and the volume on the television sets was cranked to eleven. We got lost in conversation and AAU shut down. A security guard from another building let us in to retrieve our bags and we went back to the BART. Katja met me at the Fruitvale station with the dogs and we went to the airport to pick up Dr. Cross and a bottle of black label.

The next morning Michael gave me a lift to Berkeley where he works as a grant writer for a nonprofit. He let me off at Small Press Distribution where I spent a few hours browsing through the well-stocked warehouse. I picked up a few books which I’ll soon review on the Mimeo Mimeo blog, including Rudy Burckhardt’s Mobile Homes (Z Press, 1979), Lita Hornick’s Night Flight (Kulchur Foundation, 1982), Bill Berkson’s Fugue State (Zoland, 2001), and two signed copies of John Godfrey’s Where the Weather Suits My Clothes (Z Press, 1984) (I gave the other to Michael). I meet Clay Banes, Brent Cunningham and Laura Moriarty on my way out. Brent took me around the corner to Jeff Maser’s bookstore, but nobody was home, so I bopped over to the legendary Serendipity. It’s better than I imagined. I spent a few more hours browsing and came away with a few more books, including Robert Creeley’s Contexts of Poetry (Four Seasons Foundation, 1973), Tom Raworth’s The Mask (Poltroon Press, 1976), Kit Robinson’s The Dolch Stanzas (This Press, 1976) and Chinatown of Cheyenne (Whale Cloth Editions, 1974).

I met Alastair Johnston at Serendipity and we took off for a coffee around the corner. We’ve corresponded for years, and I’ve learned a great deal from his work, so this was a particularly special occasion. Alastair offers to show me the Poltroon pressroom, so we hopped into his Honda, but the battery died. We got a jump and took the scenic route back to the press while the battery charged. Frances Butler (co-founder of Poltroon) was standing in the driveway when we arrived. After a quick introduction we ducked down into the subterranean workshop stocked with a plethora of unusual sorts, functional library, piano, and of course a wellspring of presses. Alastair gives me a quick tutorial on his recently restored Stanhope and tells me about his plans to print a book of Philip Whalen’s poetry on it. Before I leave, he sports me a copy of Poltroon’s controversial reprint of Life of Crime. Michael picks me up in his pick up truck after work and we go out for some incredible enchiladas.

On Tuesday afternoon I go to Mills College. I’m there to give a poetry reading that night and a talk to Kathleen Walkup’s Book in the Edition seminar as part of their new MFA in Book Art and Creative Writing the following afternoon. I had always assumed that there was a relationship between the Creative Writing and the Book Arts programs, but only in the very recent past has the degree (quite unlike any other) been formalized. With a lineup of all-star faculty and outstanding facilities in both departments (not to mention the idyllic location) I am sure that the program will thrive. You can read more about the program at: http://www.mills.edu/academics/graduate/eng/programs/MFA_in_bookart.php.

I made my way up to my room, and much to my surprise, it’s a huge suite on the fourth floor of Mills Hall. I take a stroll over to the printshop with Kayla Givehand and meet Lara Durback, the studio specialist. Another warm, meticulously organized shop with large windows looking out over a lush landscape. I’ve read bits and pieces about the history of the Eucalyptus Press (most recently in Megan Benton’s Beauty and the Book) but haven’t found a full bibliography. Lara, Kiala and Lyall Harris (who arrives a moment later from San Francisco) unveil the astonishing broadside they have produced for the reading. Lyall did the illustrations (each one a little different) and is the first student in the College’s new MFA program. Kathleen Walkup read a very generous introduction to a packed house. I tend to read short, but that night I read for almost an hour, sampling from different books, and did a short Q&A.

The next day I had lunch with Kathleen and we talk about teaching – turns out that although we don’t teach any of the same courses we use most of the same books in the classroom. We made our way over to her seminar. I came prepared to give a talk on Asa Benveniste and the Trigram Press, but the students are sharp and full of interesting questions, so we have an upbeat conversation about the relationship between writing and the book.

Later that afternoon I met up with Kit Robinson for dinner and then we walked over to Moe’s for the launch of ON2 with readings by DZ Brazil, Brandon Brown, Taylor Brady, Jocelyn Saidenberg, Robin Tremblay-McGaw, Dan Thomas-Glass, Alli Warren, Suzanne Stein, and Laura Moriarty. Alan Bernheimer took some terrific photographs of the event and posted them to his flicker page: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alanbernheimer

Thursday was my last day in the Bay Area, so I went to the Mission to catch up with Emily McVarish. The area has changed considerably since the last time I was there. Everyone on the street had a yoga mat strapped to their back or pushed a designer baby carriage (sometimes both). Latte stands, boutiques and bookstores lined the sidewalk with a few old auto garages and taquerias in between. New College is boarded up. I went to a bookstore on Mission on the second floor above a paint store and found a copy of Alan Bernheimer’s translation of Valery Larbaud’s Le Hameau des Abeilles printed by Michael Waltuch. This book is particularly interesting to me because it was printed on the press I bought from Michael last year with much of the type still standing. Emily and I met at a pie shop and took a stroll over to her workshop (which was totally awesome). I got to see a number of fascinating presses and came away with a number of ideas for getting my own shop up and running. Hopefully it won’t be another ten years before I’m back in the Bay Area.

Many many thanks to everyone who made this trip possible and a pleasure.

GOING TO CALIFORNIA

2010-01-29T12:07:00.002-05:00

When I was thinking about going to graduate school ten years ago I went to San Francisco to check out New College. I was teaching public school at the time, and decided to stay on Russian Hill for a week during spring break. I didn't know anyone, so I spent most of my time going to bookstores and cafes. Buy a book. Drink some coffee. Read. Walk to another bookstore. Repeat three times. Eat and repeat again (substitute beer for coffee). Go to sleep. Get up. Wake up. Do it again.

Moe's, Black Oak and Green Apple were my favorites, but there seemed to be a good bookstore in every neighborhood. I sat in on David Meltzer's class at New College. It was hot, but he wore a wool cap and sturdy blue jeans. He gave an unforgettable lecture, more like an improvisatory riff on Up and Down: Some people say 'what's up' and others say 'what's going down.' They seem to mean the same thing but they're opposites. 'Feeling high' and 'feeling low' can sometimes feel the same, you know; 'let's get high and get down to business.' Heaven's high, hell's low. 'Upside down' is up and down, but it's the opposite of 'downside up.' High quality and low. You're above something if it's beneath you....

I'll be going to California again for the first time in a decade in early February. I look forward to checking out Serendipity, SPD and catching up with (now) old friends like Michael Cross.

I'll be reading at Mills on Tuesday February 9th from 5:30 - 7:00. The calendar is here. Special thanks to Stephanie Young for the generous invitation.

The following afternoon I'll speak with Kathy Walkup's students in the MFA in Book Arts program. After the talk, there will be a big launch for the second issue of ON: Contemporary Practice at Moe's. Here's the scoop:

ON: Contemporary Practice 2

edited by Michael Cross, Thom Donovan and Kyle Schlesinger

Wednesday February 10 at 7:30
2476 Telegraph Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704-2392

FEATURING:

DZ Brazil
Brandon Brown
Taylor Brady
Jocelyn Saidenberg
Robin Tremblay-McGaw
Dan Thomas-Glass
Alli Warren
Suzanne Stein
Laura Moriarty

2010-01-22T13:56:00.004-05:00

Aaron Cohick posted our conversation about What You Will, forthcoming from his New Lights Press, on his blog yesterday: http://newlightspress.blogspot.com/

JAB 26

2010-01-17T20:33:00.002-05:00

Journal of Artistic Bookmaking: "A compendium of writing addressing the artist book advocating rigorous discourse and eschewing silly cliche."

Yes sir. It's out. This issue includes contributions by Sheelagh Bevan, Kyle Schlesinger, Emily McVarish, Amanda D'Amico and Michelle Wilson, Amber Hares, Mary Tasillo, Clifton Meador, Johanna Drucker, Tate Shaw, Brad Freeman and April Sheridan. Now that's a party.

Beautifully produced (as always) with 4-color letterpress covers by Mary Jo Pauly (cranked through an SP-15!) with Hamady-inspired colophon on the back. The other colophon states that this issue was printed and designed by Brad Freeman on a Heidelberg GTO at Columbia College. Pick one up at: http://jab.lib.uchicago.edu/index.php and check out Mr. Freeman's new homepage: http://www.bradfreeman.com/

THOM & HARRIET

2010-01-16T13:29:00.001-05:00

Note that poet-critic-amigo Thom Donovan will be guest-blogging at Harriet.

WHAT YOU WILL

2010-01-14T22:49:00.000-05:00

Aaron Cohick of New Lights Press has been blogging about the production of my next book of poems, What You Will, due out in a few short weeks. For those of you in the Bay Area, the launch will be at Mills College on Tuesday February 9th. You can visit their website here and scroll down for details. Follow the development of this book online at: http://newlightspress.blogspot.com/

2010-01-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

Thanks to everyone in Eugene and Portland involved in sponsoring my readings with Charles Alexander and Joel Bettridge last week. A lively, wonderful scene in both cities!

READINGS IN EUGENE AND PORTLAND

2010-01-05T11:11:00.004-05:00

On Thursday January 7th at 8:30 I'll be reading in the New Poetry Series curated by Tim Shaner in Eugene with Joel Bettridge and Charles Alexander at DIVA Center 110 W. Broadway. More information here.

And on Saturday January 10th at 7:30 I'll have the pleasure of returning to the stage with Joel and Charles in the Spare Room Poetry Series curated by David Abel, Maryrose Larkin, Sam Lohmann, Joseph Bradshaw, James Yeary in Portland at the Concordia Coffee House at 2909 NE Alberta. More information here.

Between readings I'll be at the College Book Arts Association's annual conference hosted by the Oregon College of Art and Craft. Details on the conference are here.

FROM ASA TO ANSELM

2009-12-27T20:08:00.001-05:00

14 v 68
Dear Anselm,

Sorry not to have written before, but up to my heart with all sorts of setbacks. Thanks for the little peace message from the Reps; soon after I got it, a couple of thugs (I guess, although I aint met them) broke into the press and took away every scrap of type and metal we had in the place. About 700 pounds of the stuff, almost worthless as scrap, but blood and oxygen to us. And that right in the middle of my knockdown match with Ted L-S and the illiterate US cultural attache. You know about that—anyway seemed to me at the time like Chicago-style old movie (Break up the radical newspapers so they wont print those lies no mo’). And to top it with more of the same, a couple of days later, ‘they’ broke into Camden Square, same way, and generally, erratically, upset the rhythm at that end.

Chap ii: so coincidentally a group of irate poets and publishers gathered outside Turret Books on the day of the ‘poetry symposium’ taking place at the USIS, handed in some flowers and wreaths and (you never seen so many against so quiet) the police arrested ten of us (me too) for ‘obstructing. Case so far postponed until September; gives all of us a chance to square off – for what? Outlines getting a little blurred. And only just now, with a little bread scraped together, back at the press with a couple cases of type and paper to thinking once more of putting ink to cartridge (I mean paper).

Your turnaround on TPhillips did turn me off for a while, because as a matter of fact I’d already asked to design a cover and about 4 drawings for the inside, which he’s done. Actually wants to do about seven drawings to choose the best. And I honestly think the stuff he’s done is beautiful—in its own right and not only for the book. He digs the poems very much, and has worked on the drawings with great care and calm—to me some of the best work of that kind around. I think what was wrong with the cover Ambit did was that bad kind of literal illustration of the title that always comes out coy and outlandish. Faces & forms—so on the cover form (graeco/roman lesson on anatomy) & face (some of the same and not enough outside to imply anything else.) Phillips saw immediately that it would be awry to ‘illustrate’ the poems but read them very closely and has produced four drawings that have the same kind of sequence within them that the poems have. Anyway, you’ll see. As soon as he's through with the six or seven he’s doing I’ll get copies of them and send them on. No, I won’t say ‘nervous’. What turns me on is their clarity.

There’s also the hump of time now. Tom’s poems are in proof with illustrations, and I’d like to bring both books out at the same time. But anyway let me know when you get the drawings. Hope you like them.

TMOORER [Raworth] incidentally is in Granada, apparently hating it, but that was when he first got there, sort of alone, non-speaking and weary. Maybe better now. He gets post at Lista de Correos, Granada, Spain. When letters get past the avaricious curiosity of the postmen.

Poems from Hogg? Never came.

Read a story the other day about Aaron Copland and a friend driving through Kansas. Copland insisted that they get through the state non-stop because anything was liable to happen. But finally his friend had to stop for food, and when it came to the dessert, the waitress said they only had peanut flan pie, and Copland shrieked ‘I told you we shouldn’t have stopped in Kansas.’

Hope it’s warmer. London shines with the sun.

Love,

Asa

ASA BENVENISTE: POEMS OF THE MOUTH

2009-12-25T13:33:00.004-05:00

I've recently returned to a short essay about Asa Benveniste and the Trigram Press of London that I started researching in 2005. Here's Poems of the Mouth (1966) with illustrations by Asa's then-wife Pip Benveniste. Typical of Asa's restrained, learned, typographic sensibility, most of the book was set 11/12 pt. Benveniste printed the book himself on quality (not flashy) paper. Your monitor isn't blurry--the 'hazy' effect of the cover pictured above was produced by the vellum dustjacket. Only the words 'of the mouth' were printed directly upon it (thus the sharp focus on foreground). The epigraph is from Sepher Yetzirah (the book of formation),the earliest extant book on Jewish esotericism. The flap reads:

Asa Benveniste was born 1925 in New York, which he left in 1948 'after being pursued by a doppelganger in the same furnished coven in Irving Place which Madame Blavatsky inhabited several decades earlier.' Between 1948 and 1950 he lived in France and Tangier co-editing the literary magazine ZERO. From 1950 he has lived in England 'learning English, straightening ice cream bricks on a conveyor belt, character acting in the provinces, market gardening, rearing chickens and pedigree dogs, editing books and publishing poetry.'

This is his first published volume. He says of it 'The Chinese considered the mouth the paramount aperture of the body. God breathed life into Adam. The Hebrew Cabalists believed the utterance of certain sounds so important that some were completely prohibited. The earliest experience of love is oral. Sustenance is taken in the mouth. Speech is the most common form of communication, and we all die first in the mouth.... It was only after writing these poems over the past two years that I realised there were linked by the word of mouth.'

For every book, there is a book that could have been, a book behind the book we rarely see. Archives preserve these books, these possible futures frozen in time, and that's one of the things I enjoy most about bibliographic research. I visited the Trigram Press Archive in St. Louis (of all places!) the week Tookie Williams was executed. There, I found a draft of the cover for this book. It was to be a painted wood relief dated 1963 (by Asa?) depicting a wide-open mouth with five exclamation points inside, and the title printed vertically in bold sans. "VOX" (Latin for voice) appears below the mouth like large caption looming large under silent lips.

ASA BENVENISTE: A CHECKLIST (in process)

2009-12-23T13:02:00.003-05:00

Arranged by year, this checklist includes books and a few ephemeral items by poet and publisher of Trigram Press, Asa Benveniste. It includes collaborations and co-publications with other authors, but does not include appearances in periodicals. Corrections and additions welcome at any time. Items followed by ‘ns’ are those that I have ‘not seen’ in person. – K.S. (12.20.09)

Poems of the Mouth (London: Trigram Press) 1966. [book]

A Word in Your Season: a Portfolio of Six Serigraphs w/Jack Hirschman (London: Trigram Press) 1967. [book]

Count Three (San Francisco: Cranium Press) 1969. [book]

The Atoz Formula (London: Trigram Press) 1969. [book]

Umbrella (London: Larry and Ruby Wallrich) 1972. [ephemera]

Time Being w/ Tom Raworth, Ray DiPalma; printed and illustrated by Elisabeth Brandfast (London: Trigram Press) 1972. [book]

Blockmaker’s Black illustrated by Ralph Steadman (London: Steam Press) 1974. [ephemera] ns

Certainly Metaphysics (Bowling Green, OH: Blue Chair Press) 1974. [broadside]

Edge (London: Joe Dimaggio) 1975. [book]

Dense Lens w/ Brian Marley (London: Trigram Press) 1975. [book]

Listen (Bowling Green, OH: Doones Press) 1975. [book] ns

A Part Apart (Osterley, UK: The White Dog Press) 1976. [book] ns

Loose Use (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Pig Press) 1977. [book] ns

Colour Theory image by Marc Vaux (London: Trigram Press) 1977. [ephemera]

Language: Enemy, Pursuit w/ note by David Meltzer (Berkeley: Poltroon Press) 1980. [book]

Throw Out the Life Line Lay Out the Corse: Poems 1965-1985 (London: Anvil Press Poetry Ltd) 1983. [book]

Pommes Poems cover by Agneta Falk (Lancashire: Arc Publications) 1988. [book]

Textural (London: Turret Books) 1989. [ephemera] ns

Invisible Ink (Philadelphia: Singing Horse Press/Branch Redd Books) 1989. [book]

Hadrian's Dream images by Ken Campbell (London: Circle Press) 1990. [book] ns

THREADS TALK SERIES

2009-12-05T15:12:00.004-05:00

I am very pleased to announce that the Threads Talk Series I curate with Steve Clay is now online at PennSound. The first four speakers in this ongoing series devoted to the art of the book are Alan Loney, Charles Alexander, Simon Cutts, and Buzz Spector. Special thanks to PennSound and Danny Snelson.

Please bookmark Threads at: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Threads.php

CUNEIFORM FOR THE HOLIDAYS

2009-12-04T16:55:00.000-05:00

Looking for a special holiday gift? A number of titles from Cuneiform Press are available from Small Press Distribution, including:

TED GREENWALD'S 3

$15 paperback / $50 signed and lettered hardback

DAN FEATHERSTON'S THE CLOCK MAKER'S MEMOIR

$12 paperback

SARAH CAMPBELL (ed) I HAVE IMAGINED A CENTER WILDER THAN THIS REGION: A TRIBUTE TO SUSAN HOWE

$10 paperback

TED GREENWALD & HAL SAULSON'S TWO WRONGS

$20 paperback / $75 signed and numbered hardback

ULF STOLTERFOHT'S LINGOS

$10 paperback

BILL BERKSON'S SUDDEN ADDRESS

$10 paperback / $50 signed and lettered hardcover

GREGG BIGLIERI'S SLEEPY WITH DEMOCRACY

$10 paperback

KYLE SCHLESINGER'S MOONLIGHTING

$15 paperback

ALAN LONEY'S THE PRINTER PRINTED

$15 paperback

ANDREW LEVY'S SCRATCH SPACE

MIMEO MIMEO 1

MIMEO MIMEO 2

MIMEO MIMEO 3

And our most recent title, TED BERRIGAN, by poet BILL BERKSON and painter GEORGE SCHNEEMAN will be available from SPD soon for just $20 (or direct from the press by following the instructions below).

Thanks to everyone who has supported Cuneiform Press in 2009. We have a number of terrific titles lined up for 2010, including ALAN LONEY'S THE BOOKS TO COME, MICHAEL CROSS'S HAECCEITIES, THE BUMPER STICKER BOOK (contributors include TOM RAWORTH, JOHANNA DRUCKER, MICHAEL GOTTLIEB, SUSIE TIMMONS, CAROLEE SCHNEEMAN, BILL BERKSON, TED GREENWALD and more)....

We'll also be issuing the second issue of ON: CONTEMPORARY PRACTICE (edited by Kyle Schlesinger, Thom Donovan and Michael Cross) with essays by ROSA ALCALA, DAVID BRAZIL, ROBERT KOCIK, LAURA MORIARTY, TYRONE WILLIAMS and more) and the fourth issue of MIMEO MIMEO (edited by Kyle Schlesinger and Jed Birmingham) focusing on the British Poetry Revival with contributions by KEN EDWARDS, TOM RAWORTH, TREVOR WINKFIELD, ALAN HALSEY, RICHARD PRICE and many more.

Our new Vandercook 4 is almost up and running, so look for new letterpress goods from time to time available directly from Cuneiform Press.

Thanks!

Kyle

EVERYTHING IN WRITING

2009-12-01T21:26:00.001-05:00

In Clifford Burke's classic, Printing Poetry: a workbook in typographic reification, he discusses the importance of a printing environment, contrasting a warehouse-sized space illuminated by thousands of florescent bulbs to his own shop, nestled in the living room of his family's home in San Francisco.

When I'm done designing a book and ready to go to press, I always make up a specification sheet and send it off to a couple of jobbers for estimates, some small, some large. Since I'm new to Austin, I had no idea where to go to have Bill Berkson and George Schneeman's collaboration entitled Ted Berrigan printed locally. My pal Terry Cuddy used to work in a mom and pop printshop in Auburn, NY and he taught me how to write a spec sheet about ten years ago. The specification sheet for Ted Berrigan's looked like this:

TITLE: TED BERRIGAN

AUTHOR: BILL BERKSON AND GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

FORMAT: PAMPHLET

RUN: 500

DIMENSIONS: 13 INCHES TALL X 10 INCHES WIDE

PAGES: 28

SHEETS: 7 PRINTED ON BOTH SIDES

COLOR: BLACK AND WHITE

BLEEDS: YES

SCORED: YES

FOLDED: YES

TRIMMED: YES

COLLATED: YES

BINDING: CUSTOMER WILL BIND BY HAND AND RETURN PAMPHLET FOR TRIM

PROOFS REQUIRED: YES

TEXT STOCK: HEAVY COVER STOCK, TO BE DETERMINED

COVER STOCK: SAME AS TEXT STOCK, TO BE DETERMINED

FILES: ADOBE INDESIGN CS4 OUTPUT AS PDF

DELIVERY: CUSTOMER WILL PICK UP, NO SPECIAL PACKAGING REQUIRED

SHRINKWRAPPING: NONE

These specs will answer some of the basic questions most printers will want to know in order to provide an estimate. One thing that has changed recently in the printing industry is that there is often a form available on the printer's website that allows you to 'request a quote' by entering information like this into a digital form that is then uploaded. That's what I did when I request a quote form Ginny's Printing here in Austin, Texas and I learned something very, very important: when you request a quote through a form on a website, you typically will not receive a copy of your spec sheet, only receive a copy of the estimate, which will vary from shop to shop (each with its own abbreviations, shorthand, cost breakdown, etc.). "Everything in writing," as my father used to say....

Chris Deibert at Ginny's Printing came in quick with a reasonable bid on the job, not the lowest in town, but reasonable, so I hired them for the job after discussing the particulars over the phone. The proofs looked great in terms of the quality of the printing, so I singed off to go into production. A week or so later I came home from work one day and saw that the 'books' had been printed. The only problem was that the 'books' were flat, like posters, delivered in no particular order and not scored. Of course I was pissed, but mistakes happen, and I felt confident that after a quick call the next morning the printer's error would quickly be corrected. No dice.

Chris Deibert at Ginny's Printing in Austin Texas said that he could 'correct' the problem for an extra $1,200. I nearly shit a brick. The scam works like this: come in low and fast on the bid, do part of the job, then double the price to finish it. Like many large jobbers that don't know an ass from an elbow, Ginny's makes their money on large corporations who do very routine work. Small press publishers like me are not their bread and butter, so there's little, if any incentive to do the job with integrity or honesty--it's a bait and switch operation run by incompetent assholes.

The lesson is to put everything in writing, meet your jobbers face-to-face and do your best to support local printers who care about the quality of their work.

All that aside, the books came out beautifully, so just scroll down to learn how to purchase one.

MIMEO MIMEO #3: HOT OFF THE PRESS

2009-11-15T15:58:00.001-05:00

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on artists’ books, typography and the mimeograph revolution. This periodical features essays, interviews, artifacts, and reflections on the graphic, material and textual conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

We are especially pleased with this issue, our first devoted to the work of a single author. In Simultaneously Agitated in All Directions, Daniel Scott Snelson discusses the relationship between structuralism and the poetries of the mimeo era by presenting a detailed analysis of Form (a Cambridge-UK magazine published in 1966) and Alcheringa (a journal published by Boston University in 1975), two exemplary gatherings that brilliantly illuminate the historical, material and social circumstances under which theory informed art (and vice-versa) in the early works of some of today’s most celebrated experimental writers.

This issue includes a special insert, The Infernal Method, written, designed and printed by Aaron Cohick (NewLights Press). The Infernal Method, is an essay about legibility in printing, about manipulating process to attain multiple registers of legibility in books. Images and the physical specs can be seen at the NewLights IDE(A/O)(B)LOG(Y/UE):

Reserve your copy today by sending $10 (plus $3 for shipping in the US, $5 for shipping to Canada or $10 for shipping overseas) to: Kyle Schlesinger | UHV A&S | 3007 N. Ben Wilson | Victoria, TX | 77901-5731.

Using Paypal, direct payment to kyleschlesinger [at] gmail [dot] com.

And don't forget to check out our recently restored blog: http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com/
Paypal orders can be placed via the Mimeo Mimeo blog as well.

THE JARGON SOCIETY

2009-11-15T13:27:00.001-05:00

Richard Owens and Jeffery Beam have done a terrific job editing the long-awaited Jonathan Williams feature in Jacket 38 (late 2009). Includes important new writings about Williams by friends such as Erica Van Horn, Simon Cutts, Richard Deming, Bob Arnold, Harry Gilonis, Robert Kelly, Thomas A Clark and Laurie Clark, Thomas Meyer, James Maynard, Jed Birmingham, David Annwn, James Jaffe, Michael Basinski, Dale Smith, and Robert Bertholf as well as reprints of significant texts by Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Guy Davenport, and many more. My essay, "The Jargon Society" is available at: http://jacketmagazine.com/38/jwd02-schlesinger.shtml

BERKSON ON VERMEER

2009-11-13T15:44:00.002-05:00

Cuneiform author Bill Berkson has a new essay on Vermeer up at artcritical.com: http://artcritical.com/berkson/BBVermeer.htm

NEW FROM CUNEIFORM PRESS: TED BERRIGAN by BILL BERKSON AND GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

2009-11-10T22:05:00.007-05:00

Ted Berrigan, a collaboration between Bill Berkson and George Schneeman, is now available from Cuneiform Press. Ted Berrigan is an homage to the poet and painter's mutual friend produced as a unique book in real-time at George's studio on St. Marks Place on March 5, 2006. The book is comprised of eight spreads where image and text fuse, bleed off the page and cross the gutter, as well as an afterword by Berkson and a note from the publisher. Handsewn, the dimensions are true to the original. Edition limited to 500 copies.

$20 plus $3.50 shipping in the United States, $10 overseas.

Make checks out to Kyle Schlesinger and post to:

UHV / Arts and Sciences

3007 N. Ben Wilson

Victoria, TX 77901-5731

No, Dear

2009-11-10T00:09:00.001-05:00

No, I won't be able to make it back to the city for this reading, but I'm damn proud to have a poem in this sweet new magazine. Details on the event follow:

No, Dear Magazine Issue 4 - Reading & Celebration

Friday, November 13th, 7-8:30pm
Pete's Candy Store
709 Lorimer Street, Brooklyn

Pick up a copy of the new PANTS issue featuring the following poets:
Emily Brandt
Ben Fama
Katie Fowley
Meghan Guss
Matt Reeck
Christopher Hirschmann
Kyle Schlesinger (not reading on Friday)
Marty Northrop
Emma Alabaster
Ekoko Omadeke

No, Dear is a hand-sewn print poetry publication featuring the work of New York City poets. Founded in 2008, No, Dear comes out twice a year.

FOUND

2009-11-08T13:34:00.001-05:00

PART-TIME STRIPPER

2009-11-03T19:09:00.003-05:00

Today I finished stripping and sanding this beautiful old Hamilton type cabinet and applied a light stain. Refurbished rollers arrived from Pamarco via. UPS, and the FedEx guy dropped off some essentials from Talas. Next step will be to redistribute the type (much of it is covered in sawdust and spider eggs!), identify and label the odds and ends.

TRADING SPACES

2009-10-31T12:01:00.003-04:00

Rather than use the long-lost Mimeo Mimeo Blog as an inferior template for a website, my co-editor Jed Birmingham and I have decided to make this a 'live' blog that will serve as an extension of the print periodical. We'll attempt to update it every day with materials, questions, and reflections that pertain to artists' books, typography and the mimeo revolution. Jed has made a number of spectacular posts this week: http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com/

Here on the Cuneiform Blog, the focus will narrow slightly as I attempt to focus on issues, ideas, people and projects that pertain directly to Cuneiform Press.

While we're on the subject, I should mention that Mimeo Mimeo #3 (an imprint of Cuneiform Press) will be available in early November.

Mimeo Mimeo is a forum for critical and cultural perspectives on artists’ books, typography and the mimeograph revolution. This periodical features essays, interviews, artifacts, and reflections on the graphic, material and textual conditions of contemporary poetry and language arts.

We are especially pleased with this issue, our first devoted to the work of a single author. In Simultaneously Agitated in All Directions, Daniel Scott Snelson discusses the relationship between structuralism and the poetries of the mimeo era by presenting a detailed analysis of Form (a Cambridge-UK magazine published in 1966) and Alcheringa (a journal published by Boston University in 1975), two exemplary gatherings that brilliantly illuminate the historical, material and social circumstances under which theory informed art (and vice-versa) in the early works of some of today’s most celebrated experimental writers.

This issue includes a special insert, The Infernal Method, written, designed and printed by Aaron Cohick (New Lights Press).

Reserve your copy today by sending $10 (plus $3 for shipping in the US, $5 for shipping to Canada or $10 for shipping overseas) to: Kyle Schlesinger | UHV A&S | 3007 N. Ben Wilson | Victoria, TX | 77901-5731.

Using Paypal, direct payment to kyleschlesinger [at] gmail [dot] com.
Also available from Small Press Distribution

And don't forget to check out our recently restored blog: http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com/

TED BERRIGAN

2009-10-25T15:46:00.005-04:00

Ted Berrigan is a collaboration between poet Bill Berkson and painter George Schneeman that pays homage to their mutual friend. Like so many of George's collaborations with poets (Ron Padgett; Anne Waldman; Lewis Warsh; Allen Ginsberg; Dick Gallup; etc.) Ted Berrigan is a somewhat improvisatory, one-of-a-kind book produced in real time at George's studio on the Lower East Side.

I am very pleased to announce that this book is at the press now and will be available in time for "A Tribute to George Schneeman" at the Poetry Project on November 11th. Produced in an edition limited to 500 copies, the dimensions of this oversized hand-bound book are true to the original (13 inches tall x 10 inches wide). Includes afterwords by Berkson and the publisher.

Pre-order a copy today by sending a check for $20 (includes postage) made out to Kyle Schlesinger to:

Kyle Schlesinger

Cuneiform Press / UHV

3007 North Ben Wilson

Victoria, TX 77901-5731

You can also use PayPal to direct funds to kyleschesinger at gmail dot com

YORKTOWN, TX

2009-10-24T10:55:00.002-04:00

This is a photograph of the only traffic light in Yorktown, Texas. Make a left, and on your left, between the feed store and the bric-a-brac, you'll find the old printery of Mr. John Janacek. Janecek started the printing newspapers over fifty years ago. He began with letterpress, eventually moved on to offset, computers, and everything in between. He's also an authority on Czech history and culture in Texas. The shop was a maze of amazing stuff, just enough space to sort of slip between machines and boxes piled high. The beautiful old tin ceilings were damaged by fire some years ago, and I could see where the rain was coming in.

He has a couple of C&Ps, an Intertype, casting box, small offset press, trimmer, perforator, composing stones, lots of dies, rules, slugs, and leads. After an hour or so, we took a spin up the road to his home, where I met his wife and saw pictures of their nine children. On the 40-plus acres of property, there were a number of sheds and barns, some containing more type and letterpress odds and ends. I came away with a few cases of type, and a couple of Mr. Janacek's publications.

Mr. Janacek asked me to come visit after reading an article about my interest in printing in the local newspaper. His thought was that I might be able to use these presses in my typography classes, but I'm afraid that the insurance company would frown on platen press operation in the classroom, to say nothing of the Intertype. If anyone wants to establish a printing museum in Texas (I'm serious) this might be the place to start.

UDP AUTUMN EVENTS

2009-10-21T22:25:00.001-04:00

Tuesday, November 3, 7:30pm
RELEASE PARTY
Rachel Levitsky, Neighbor
Rick Snyder, Escape From Combray
Garrett Kalleberg, Malilenas
With music under the command of Jeffrey Joe Nelson
@ Soda Bar
629 Vanderbilt, Brooklyn, NY
Free

Wednesday, November 18, 7:30pm
6X6 PARTY
Presenting readings from 6X6 #18 & #19
with live music by Frank Hoier
@ Shelton Walsmith Studio
267 Douglass St., Brooklyn, NY
Free

Thurdsay, December 3, 7:30pm
RELEASE PARTY and PERFORMANCE
Kristen Kosmas, Hello Failure
(No. 1 in UDP's new Emergency Playscripts Series)
@ Old American Can Factory
232 3rd St. at 3rd Ave., Brooklyn, NY
Free

JULIA DRESCHER READING IN LA

2009-10-21T22:04:00.001-04:00

c/o: Harold Abramowitz

JOHANNA DRUCKER AT CBA NYC

2009-10-21T21:25:00.003-04:00

Artist Talk with The 2009 Bishop Faculty Fellow

Writing and/the Wor(l)d: Johanna Drucker

Friday, November 6 at 6:30PM

Every year the Center for Book Arts invites an artist/instructor from outside of New York to teach a master class and to give a formal lecture in New York City. The Sally R. Bishop Master Faculty Fellow for 2009 will be Johanna Drucker, who is internationally known as a book artist and experimental, visual poet. In addition to her artistic work, Johanna Drucker has published and lectured extensively on topics related to the history of typography, artists' books, and visual art. She is currently the Martin and Bernard Breslauer Professor in the Department of Information Studies at the Graduate School of Education and Information Studies at UCLA.

WHAT:

2009 Bishop Faculty Fellow Talk: Johanna Drucker

WHEN:

Friday, November 6, 6:30 pm

HOW MUCH:

$10 / $5 members (suggested)

WHERE:

The Center for Book Arts

28 West 27th Street, Third Floor

Between Broadway and Sixth Avenue

Subway: N, R, W to 28th Street; F, V to 23rd Street; 1 to 28th Street

www.centerforbookarts.org

For more information please contact: Corinna Zeltsman, 212-481-0295

MOVING DAY

2009-10-21T11:30:00.003-04:00

I'm expecting an 18 wheeler to pull up to the new home of Cuneiform Press sometime between two and three this afternoon. Yesterday I made the rounds at the hardware store picking up a few necessities as well as some supplies to clean it up later in the week. Moving a press is never easy, but it can be a nightmare if one isn't prepared. Paul Moxon has a pretty good checklist of dos and don'ts in his Vandercook maintenance handbook.

There's a gravel driveway leading up to the workshop from the street, and one small (4.5 inch) step we'll have to tackle. Since the truck is too long to back into the drive, and we don't have a loading dock, my first choice is to use a hydraulic lift to wheel it up the slightly inclined drive. I bought two 4 x 8 ft. sheets of plywood to make the surface smooth and level, as well as two smaller sheets to make a wee ramp.

If the driver isn't willing to let us use the lift, plan B is to put skids on the press's feet and roll it up using three wooden dowels. This technique usually takes three people, or two fit pros. In order to do this, I bought a Johnson bar, some sturdy bolts, and a couple of six foot 2x4s. Scott Pierce (Effing Press) is bringing a jack that may come in handy (thanks Scott!). This will take a little more time and energy than using the lift, but should be no trouble.

Of course, the weather report calls for rain, so I also bought a 9x12 foot tarp and a bunch of shop towels. Water is a press's worst enemy, but in some cases (like today) perhaps unavoidable. Chris Martin (Dos Press) will be driving up from Lockhart to lend a hand as well (major thanks Chris!) and Dale Smith should be dropping in with the kids.

Once we've got that Vandercook in its proper place, the next step is to figure out what to print....

FUTURE HOME OF CUNEIFORM PRESS

2009-10-16T12:50:00.003-04:00

This morning I signed a lease on a new home for Cuneiform Press. Level concrete floors, nice wide doors, even a couple of skylights. Dan Morris has generously housed my Vandercook (major thanks Dan!) at The Arm in Brooklyn throughout the summer, and if all goes according to plan, it will be up on skids, out of his hair, and in the back of an 18-wheeler this afternoon by 2 o'clock headed for Austin.

Dan and I picked this press up together in Massachusetts in the spring when I bought it from Michael Waltuch of the legendary Whale Cloth Press. I know the motor needs some work, and it will take a little time to get it polished, tuned, and ready for action. I'll post some progress notes here, as well as information on forthcoming books, ephemera, and events. I'll also be offering one-on-one lessons for people in the area who want to learn the art and craft of letterpress printing.

Ahoy Austin!