FROM THE ARCING AIR

This image is a shot of a broadside by Ugly Duckling Presse, on display as part of a chapbook show, curated by Marina Eckler and Matvei Yankelevich, at the Coburn Gallery at Colorado College. Photo by our new friend Jeanne Liotta.

A valid question: where have I been? I often ask myself that same thing.

There are of course no good answers. I have been away from this space for awhile now, because I am in over my head teaching a class about DIY/small press publishing with Matvei Yankelevich, poet and (one of the) editor(s) of Ugly Duckling Presse. It has been amazing, and as we move into the last week and a half it’s just going to get better. There will be more details about all of that on The Press Blog, eventually.

But the class and the events of the past couple weeks will stretch beyond their casual boundaries. Things are stirring here on the front range. In the next couple of weeks on this blog look out for some more digital editions of out-of-print NewLights titles, in particular the fully realized and downloadable DIY Books.

A good friend who I don’t get to see very often anymore told me about going skydiving, and there was one aspect of the experience that had never occurred to me—the profound quiet of it, of drifting slowly through the empty air. The thought of actually skydiving terrifies me, but there’s something about the idea of that quiet that I can’t let go of. Once I can find the courage to jump everything that NewLights does will emerge from that quiet. It’s always this.