CUNEIFORM PRESS: May 2011

TERRACE FENCE by BILL BERKSON

While living in Bolinas, poet and critic Bill Berkson producedTerrace Fence, a minimal, conceptual, yet intimate book of black and white photographs in an edition of ten or fewer. This seminal piece of conceptual photography doubling as a small-town protest gesture was reproduced in the summer of 2012 in an edition of 100. The text was printed letterpress and the photographs were reproduced from the original paste up and tipped in by hand. Each copy has been signed by the author.

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHY by ZEPHYRUS IMAGE

Spirit Photography: A Fireside Book of Gurus (1973) by Michael Myers and Holbrook Teter is arguably the greatest book produced by Zephyrus Image. Spirit Photography is essential reading for anyone interested in photography, conceptual art, artists’ books, and the unique cultural climate of the Bay Area in the '70s. This facsimile was printed letterpress and is faithful to the original in every way, right down to the errata slip.

MIMEO MIMEO #7

MIMEO MIMEO #7: THE LEWIS WARSH ISSUE is the first magazine ever devoted in its entirety to poet, novelist, publisher, teacher, and collage artist Lewis Warsh. Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, co-founded Angel Hair Magazine and Books with Anne Waldman in 1966, and went on to co-found United Artists Magazine and Books with Bernadette Mayer in 1977. He is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction and autobiography, the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and as you’ll soon discover, so much more. Includes an introduction by Daniel Kane, an interview conducted by Steve Clay, 10 new stories, 5 new poems, dozens of photographs and collages, and an anecdotal bibliography. Please visit Granary Books to see a selection of striking collages and collage books created by Lewis Warsh.

THE BOOKS TO COME by ALAN LONEY

Of Alan Loney’s long-anticipated collection of essays entitled The Books to Come, 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." Foreword by Jenni Quilter. Paperback.

COMPLETE FRAGMENTS by Larry Fagin

Complete Fragments is Larry Fagin’s first trade edition book of poems since I’ll Be Seeing You (1978). 112 pages. Cloth and paperback available.

Fagin is the author of 14 books of poetry. He is the co-publisher of Adventures in Poetry books, and edits Sal Mimeo, a little magazine. He lives in New York City, where he teaches privately.

BUMPERS

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.

HANGING QUOTES by ALASTAIR JOHNSTON

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 and Robert Creeley. He discusses the transition from cast metal to digital type with the prime movers in the field: Matthew Carter, Sumner Stone, and Fred Smeijers; and he takes stock of the field of artists' books in wide-ranging conversations with Sandra Kirshenbaum and Joan and Nathan Lyons, while his groundbreaking interviews with Dave Haselwood, Holbrook Teter, Bob Hawley, Walter Hamady, and Graham Mackintosh shed new light on the history of the book in the 20th century.

MIMEO MIMEO #5

PUSHING WATER by CHARLES ALEXANDER

"'[T]hrough 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. 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."

CHARLES OLSON AT GODDARD COLLEGE

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.

MIMEO MIMEO #4

MIMEO MIMEO #4: focuses on the poets, artists, printers, and publications of the British Poetry Revival, a particularly rich period of activity that ran roughly parallel to the New American Poetry of the post-WWII era. On both sides of the Atlantic, the dominant modes of poetics, publishing, and media were being thought anew. Featuring: wide-ranging interviews with Tom Raworth, David Meltzer, and Trevor Winkfield; insightful essays by Richard Price, Ken Edwards, and Alan Halsey; a selection of letters from Eric Mottram to Jeff Nuttall providing a British perspective on the Lower East Side Scene; and a long out-of-print statement by Asa Benveniste, poet and publisher of London’s legendary Trigram Press.

DETERMINATION by KIT ROBINSON

Of Determination, Ted Greenwald wrote: "For anyone wonders what’s it doing out, don’t stick a head out the window, open, stick a nose into, Determination, is an end result where language’s weather swings ear in and ear out in Kit Robinson’s daily great expectations works’ beauty elegant in its math, and after, as ever."

Kit Robinson is the author of The Messianic Trees: Selected Poems, 1976-2003 (Adventures in Poetry, 2009), Train I Ride (BookThug, 2009), The Crave (Atelos, 2002) and 16 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, California, where he works as a freelance writer and plays Cuban tres guitar in the Latin dance band Bahia Son.

TED BERRIGAN by BILL BERKSON & GEORGE SCHNEEMAN

Ted Berrigan is a classic collaboration between Bill Berkson and George Schneeman, and an homage to the poet and painter's mutual friend produced as a unique book in real-time at George's studio on St. Mark's Place on March 5, 2006. Continuing in the tradition of New York School collaboration, Schneeman and Berkson's Ted Berrigan is a high-quality reproduction comprised of eight spreads where image and text fuse, bleed off the page and cross the gutter. Includes an afterword by Berkson and a note from the publisher.

MIMEO MIMEO #2

SUDDEN ADDRESS by BILL BERKSON

In this stunning collection of lectures spanning twenty-five years, poet and critic Bill Berkson addresses subjects as various as Walt Whitman, Frank O'Hara, Philip Guston, Dante, and the Sublime. Ron Padgett writes: "Bill Berkson's writing is witty, musical, daily, and deep, underpinned by a bracing integrity and shot through with gorgeous abstraction and other brilliant hookups between eye, ear, mind, and heart."

TO ORDER

Kyle Schlesinger, proprietor of Cuneiform Press (est. 2001), publishes and lectures on topics related to poetry, visual communication, and typography. He is the author of six books of poetry and three critical works, most recently, Poems and Pictures. He is an assistant professor of Communication Design and English at the University of Houston-Victoria where he designs Cuneiform books with the graduate students in the MS in Publishing Program. For information about guest lectures or letterpress tutorials, please contact: schlesingerk [at] uhv [dot] edu

5.09.2011

BERKSON ON THE AIR

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