PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (41): AS-OF-NOW UNTITLED (7)

The book is very far along now, ready to go to press. But still there is no title, even this far into it. In fact, I keep forgetting that it needs a title until I write these blog posts. (I always just refer to it as “the JAB book.”) There is no title yet because there is no front matter, no title page, no spine, no cover, etc. So no to place to put a title means no title. Perhaps it is “no title” instead of “untitled.” We’ll see.

The last post about this book talked a bit about the colophon, which has been difficult to write. That difficulty was mostly caused by uncertainty about the form and the length. For awhile I thought that I needed a much longer colophon than I had originally anticipated, and spent days trying to add to it. But then it got too unwieldy, too bloated. So for the sake of the text, of the writing, I reconfigured the form of it. I think the new form (pictured below) is actually much more effective. And the whole thing is shorter, much more “to the point” while still maintaining the “poetics” of the “main” text. Everything always comes together in the end, but it’s important to remain critical and flexible until that moment when it all comes into focus.

Here is some more of the text, from the “end,” but there is no end really, as this thing is just really getting started now:

—what comes next; the world, the world; pushed up and trembling; shabby thing that it is; the morning; and waking; again; here; here; here; here; here; here; like that; just like that; but different this time; this time it’s different; this light; changed; but suspended the same; the color; different now; and thin; congealing; bare; and projected; the objects; the world; the same; lovely just the same; lovely just the same; lovely just the same; lovely just lovely in the light like that; as it changes; as it is suspended; and projected; and above; and folds beneath the hands; always folding; always turning; turning bare and scraping; the text of this; a new scar for every new day; every new day a new scar in this holy book; the surface shimmers, is broken; but there is always this pushing through; always this light; this color; never the same and very rarely different; but it congeals, hopelessly; joyfully in this bursting light; the world is filled with it; unbelievable; it can hold up so much; so much fragility; always there; hanging; about to dream again; about to wake again; the world is filled with it; bare and scraping—

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn, turn constantly, like the hands of a clock. The reading of the text is the most subtle, slight turning of the pages. We barely see it. And then when it really happens it happens so quickly. We barely see it. We were asleep after all. And just waking, now, in this new page. But it did not begin here. But it always begins here. We barely see it. We love what we know comes next &

—suffused with the holy work of the morning; unstoppable in the reaching paleness of this light; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this home; this page; this work; this joy; this love; this home; this light; this bareness scraping always against the text; this home; these books; these mornings; this morning; this joy; this bursting; this book; this writing; this unbelievable light; never would have thought; this joy; every; every; every; every; every; every; day; love; terror; this joy; this holy work; this holy work; this is the morning; this is the morning; this is the morning; this is how it should be; wants to be; always; this holy morning and this holy work; this pale light and warmth reaching through; this home; this page; this work—

& this is where we can begin, thankfully. The pages of the book turn &

NOW (NON)LIVE ONLINE: THE INFERNAL METHOD

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

Text/object by NewLights Press: Aaron Cohick, et al.
12 pages, no cover, saddle stapled, 7” x 5.5”
Letterpress printed on newsprint, with additional elements added by hand
Edition of 350
2009
Released as part of Issue #3 of Mimeo Mimeo.

MORE THINGS TO SHARE: DENVER ZINE LIBRARY

The Denver Zine Library is running a fundraising campaign. It’s a library for zines. This is a small, important, importantly small thing. Below are two videos. The first is their intro video, and the second is their 2 week update, just posted to the fundraising page today. And here are some links—one to the fundraising page where you can make a donation, and the other to the Denver Zine Library main site.

MIMEO MIMEO #6 IS OUT & AVAILABLE, and AN INTERVIEW

Issue number 6 of the great magazine Mimeo Mimeo is out and available for purchase. Here's the official description from the Mimeo Mimeo blog:

Mimeo Mimeo #6: The Poetry Issue will soon be on newsstands everywhere featuring new work by eight poets who have consistently composed quality writing since the golden era of the mimeo revolution. Contributors include Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young.

Beat the crowds and have a copy delivered to your door hassle free. Each copy packed and personally addressed with care by the editors of Mimeo Mimeo. Just click on the "Buy" button on the right and select your location. It's as easy as that.

Buy it here.

& I am very honored to be included in Rob McClennan's series of interviews with small press publishers. He asks some good questions. You can read that here. Thanks Rob!

POEMS & PICTURES AT COLUMBIA COLLEGE CHICAGO

Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book (1946-1981)

Opening Reception
Thursday, February 9: 5 - 8 PM


Poems & Pictures features books, paintings, collages, periodicals, and ephemera that explore fundamental relationships between form and content; seeing and reading; writing and drawing; and the extraordinary occasions when these things and activities fuse, introducing a third element.    

Poets, artists, and collaborators in this exhibition include Wallace Berman, Joe Brainard, Robert Creeley, Jim Dine, Philip Guston, Joanne Kyger, Emily McVarish, Karen Randall, Larry Rivers, George Schneeman, and many more [including NewLights!]. Together they share in the common objective of bringing bold new writing into print where commercial presses fear to tread, and to do so with imagination and intelligence. 



Poems & Pictures originated at The Center for Books Arts in New York and is curated by Kyle Schlesinger.

More details here.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (40): AS-OF-NOW UNTITLED (6)

A big challenge in the writing of this new book has been the colophon. Ordinarily NewLights colophons are very simple—just the info that seems important, without too much “ornamentation.” But this one will be a little different, as I want to integrate it with the main text. The book, theoretically, will have no clear beginning or end, no cover, no endsheets, no title page, and no front or back matter. But it needs to have a colophon, particularly because it’s a collaboration, printed partly by other people in another place. It’s important that their work is acknowledged.

The image above shows the current layout for the pages and colophon (sort of). The colophon is the larger text running around the perimeter of the pages. The pages will literally be framed by a description of their own production. I’m not sure if it’s all working yet, either textually or visually. But here’s the newest colophon text. It’s not long enough yet. It doesn’t fit right. But here it is:

It might also begin here. Every book has its edges, its boundaries, tracing its body in the morning. Somehow, like this morning, this book was made. By hand, by machine. By a persistent light in the morning, once barely there, now stronger, now struggling with its fullness. Most often we should just let it sleep. But the light accumulates, answers fitfully, in pieces, layers. These photographs were taken by the author, in the morning, with its light, its edges, its fitful sleep bashful and lying, now standing, in the light. They were built up, printed, layer upon impossibly thin layer (thinner than these pages, these sheets in this crawling winter morning), offset by Brad Freeman and Print Production Fellows Jenna Rodriguez and Claire Sammons. How could these mornings happen in Chicago? The book is always many places, times, stutters. These mornings are everywhere, but accumulated, printed at The Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago, as an insert for JAB 31. Unbelievable then, how these mornings were quietly made in the rushing of machines. The text happened later, piled up in the days, piled up like all of our other crumbs, written, designed and printed, made with light, made with photopolymer plates and scraped against these sheets at The Press at Colorado College in Colorado Springs. Every morning new, the light just beginning to trace us, these books coughing in the dark. Every morning new, NewLights Press: Aaron Cohick, et al, the text, these piles of it, kicked over like sheets, and folded, stapled, wrapped. 600 times, almost two years, if the numbers of our days ever matched up with time. Impossibly thin, this light, this world. We need more layers, more fullness, here in the bare winter morning. We pull the sheets closer, and the books fall back to stuttering and dreaming. Our days, our homes, our places of repetition, of joy, of new light all the time. We love what we know comes next.

OFF TO IOWA

To talk with some people about books. Go figure. See you on Monday.

NOW (NON)LIVE ONLINE: 7:8:1

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

7 one word poems of 8 letters or less by various authors 
Including contributions from: Lauren Bender, Anselm Berrigan, Aaron Cohick, Jeremy Sigler, Hunter Stabler, Nate Wilson, and John Yau

24 pages, softcover, saddle stapled, 4 ¼” x 9”

Letterpress and screenprinted cover with photocopied text pages

Edition of 100 

2003
$3 – currently unavailable

This is an older book, from 2003, before I really had a clue as to what I was doing but having a good time trying to figure it out. The roughness of this and the other older books has a certain kind of charm, at least for me. But perhaps I’m just getting nostalgic.

You’ll notice at the end of this book that it says “tin woodsman editions” along with “NewLights Press.” Tin woodsman editions was a second imprint that I was using briefly, that was supposed to be for cheap, fast books in large editions. At the time, I think I was thinking of NewLights as making “nicer” books and thus felt the need for a second imprint. Tin woodsman was abandoned when I came to the conclusion that NewLights is and was a press that produces many different kinds of books.

I do like this “one word” idea though, and it may be making a comeback very soon….