FIGHT FIRE WITH LITERATURE: A BENEFIT SALE

[UPDATE: As of July 16, 2012, the sale of everything on the NewLights Press site has ended, but money raised from the sales of the Day 8: Waldo Canyon Fire broadside will continue to be donated.] 


As I’m sure many of you know, our home city, Colorado Springs, has been fighting a very serious wildfire since Saturday. The fire tripled in size from Monday to Tuesday. Parts of the city have burned. Over 32,000 people have been evacuated from their homes. Team NewLights is luckily, thankfully, away from the danger zone (though we are much closer to the evacuation zone than I ever thought we would be when this thing began). And this is just one of many fires burning in Colorado and all over the western US. So always the question: what can we do?

The answer: what we do—make & distribute books. And so on that note, effective today, is the FIGHT FIRE WITH LITERATURE BENEFIT SALE. All money from the sale of all NewLights books & broadsides will be donated to the local Red Cross to help them help people who have been displaced by the fires.

The main item for this sale will be fellow Colo-radical writer J.A. Tyler’s fittingly apocalyptic book ZZZZZZZZZZZZZ [an island]. The price has been reduced to $10.

You can find all of the info about the book here. Again, the benefit sale is for all NewLights books & broadsides. Please help spread the word about this sale. This is a small thing, for sure, but every little bit helps. And hey, books are neat too.

If you’d like to donate directly, you can do that here.

FAKING IT & MAKING IT (3)

& it’s also important to note that a well-made physical facsimile has many advantages—the most important one being that the reader actually gets the sense of a book as an object: its size, weight, materiality (sometimes), how it moves, etc. A physical reproduction definitely gets closer to the real thing, but that’s one reason why I’m not interested in making them—they’re too close sometimes, and the closer they get the wider the gap between the facsimile and the real thing becomes, like listening to an MP3 that is slightly “pixelated”—it’s frustrating—you can hear it enough to know that you’d like to hear it clearly. Sometimes it’s just better to listen to the MOOG version, the electronic translation, and appreciate the difference.

FAKING IT & MAKING IT (2)

I remember at least two books where people asked me if I was considering the possibility of making a “mass-market” version—Art Into Life (an altered book) and The Drownable Species (a variable edition printed book). My answer was “no,” though I saw the advantage of both. I still think that was a good decision—but why are the digital versions acceptable, even desirable, and a mass-produced reproduction not?

I think that it has to do with the difference between the idea of “archiving” versus the idea of “reproduction,” the translation that has to occur from one media to another, and the object that each ultimately produces. Both a physical reproduction and a digital archive create an image of the book, but how that image functions is different in each case. The physical reproduction creates an image-in-multiple, a surrogate meant to stand in for an “original.” The reproduction is explosive, outward-reaching. The digital archive creates an image-of-multiplicity, a document of the object (book) in question. The archive is implosive, inward-drawing, and allows for the original multiplicity of the object-in-question to be maintained.

The Drownable Species can provide us with a specific example. That book is a printed work, made in multiple, but the edition is variable—every copy is different. There is no “original” or even a “match” or BAT that each copy tries to emulate. The difference in the repetition of the individual copies was part of the process of printing, created by pouring and brushing water and ink wash onto still-wet inkjet printed images. So, if one was to make a physical reproduction of the book, how does one choose which copy to reproduce? The “best” one? The “most average” one? And, is it possible that if there was a more accessible reproduction (more numerous, more affordable) that only replicated a single copy, that that single reproduction (the image-in-multiple, the surrogate) could supplant the variable edition and create the false idea that there is an “original” or a “best” copy? Would the reproduction actually create an aura for an original that was never supposed to exist in the first place?

The other, more mundane problems that would come along with a physical reproduction are the problems that come with every book—how to pay for it and how to get it out in the world. Ordinarily those are good challenges, but they are less enticing to take on when the book being produced is just a shadow-copy of one already made.

How would a digitally archived version of The Drownable Species be different? First of all, the digital version doesn’t have the same problems of distribution and expense to produce. It’s more about time than anything else. And, because of that efficiency, other opportunities are allowed. When The Drownable Species is finally archived (& it’s in the works) there will actually be three different copies posted—the multiplicity of the original will be built-in, and readers will be able to look at all three copies and see how they are different. (The idea of which came from The William Blake Archive, where one can compare the same page from all of the copies of one of Blake’s books.)

But what about a unique book? How can the identity of the original be embedded into the digital version? The image files for the digital version can be built in a certain way that alters their “transparency”—they can be constructed to show their construction. More on that soon.

FAKING IT & MAKING IT (1)

Lately I’ve been spending a great deal of time on making the digital versions, the archives, of the out-of-print NewLights books. I’ve been doing a small amount of scanning, file correcting (color balance and straightening), and assembly of the PDFs that are uploaded to the Issuu site every day, trying to chip away at the large project that is the archive. It feels good to be doing it, to finally be able to put those books back in circulation. But of course nothing is simple, and the process is not as straightforward as I initially thought (hoped) it would be. The conversion of Art Into Life, the first NewLights altered book, has highlighted many of the issues that come with this project.

First of all: why archive in the first place? The answer seems obvious—so that more people can read the books, and so that there is some accessible record of the work that the press has done. But I resisted the idea of producing digital versions for a long time, for two reasons: I had yet to find a technical system that I thought worked really well, and, more importantly, I was worried that the translations of the books into digital form would compromise their “integrity,” by breaking apart the (sometimes) carefully considered relationship between form, content, processes of production, and processes of reception.

I like the way that the Issuu reader works. It’s not perfect, that’s for sure—it can be clunky at times, it’s based on Flash which makes it problematic with Apple devices that don’t support it (How will the whims/wars of tech companies determine the future of our cultural memory? I guess we’ll have to wait & see, but, Apple, Google, et al, please remember that we have to remember.), and the way that the books are indexed on search engines (or not indexed in many cases) is less than ideal. [These problems were all brought to my attention by this blog post by Devan Goldstein.] I also dislike the “effects” to simulate three-dimensionality that are automatically applied to the files. But there are some distinct advantages to the Issuu reader: it’s relatively inexpensive (free if you’re okay with ads), and it’s very shareable—the books can be linked to, posted like YouTube videos on blogs and Facebook, emailed, downloaded and printed out. When I discovered Issuu via the Ugly Duckling Presse website I got really excited because at some point I had made the decision that archiving the books was a good idea.

Why the change? Perhaps because I work in a library now (The Press at Colorado College is part of the (fantastic) library at CC), and my colleagues are a bunch of militant radicals when it comes to access to information. Or maybe the digital world is gradually eroding my reticence/resistance to its heady simulacra. Or maybe I desperately want some more mileage out of the first 12 years of NewLights. But more on all that tomorrow….

NOW (NON)LIVE ONLINE: WHAT YOU WILL by KYLE SCHLESINGER

I've been spending a great deal of time with these digital "reprints" lately, and there are a few issues with them that are becoming more apparent—small ones, tiny details—but things that can change the entire experience of reading/viewing the books. Something about verisimilitude. But we’ll save that for later in the week. And now:

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

Poems by Kyle Schlesinger
44 pages, double signature pamphlet stitch with folded jacket
4.375” x 8.75” (closed)
Letterpress printed in three colors from photopolymer plates
Edition of 100
All copies are signed by the author
2011

THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME

A preview of one piece that is being assembled for the digital archive. There will be others sooner than this....

COMMONPLACING

From the essay “The Mysteries of Reading,” part of The Case for Books by Robert Darnton (New York: PublicAffairs, 2009), 149-150:

Time was when readers kept commonplace books. Whenever they came across a pithy passage, they copied it into a notebook under an appropriate heading, adding observations made in the course of daily life. Erasmus instructed them how to do it; and if they did not have access to his popular De Copia, they consulted printed models or the local schoolmaster. The practice spread everywhere in early modern England, among ordinary readers as well as famous writers like Francis Bacon, Ben Jonson, John Milton, and John Locke. It involved a special way of taking in the printed word. Unlike modern readers, who follow the flow of a narrative from beginning to end (unless they are digital natives and click through texts on machines), early modern Englishmen read in fits and starts and jumped from book to book. They broke texts into fragments and assembled them into new patterns by transcribing them in different sections of their notebooks. Then they reread the copies and rearranged the patterns while adding more excerpts. Reading and writing were therefore inseparable activities. They belonged to a continuous effort to make sense of things, for the world was full of signs: you could read your way through it; and by keeping an account of your readings, you made a book of your own, one stamped with your personality.

It will be interesting to see (this will be a while, maybe this will just be a blip) how the “networked commonplace book” of contemporary people will be archived and studied. Blogs, tumblrs, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. all show one way in which we move through, read and write through, the world. Social media are, perhaps, fundamentally different than the traditional commonplace book in the sense that they are inherently public, and the material gathered and broadcasted there is used to create an image of ourselves (however subconsciously) through “communication.” The traditional commonplace book was essentially private, meant only for the maker (although who is to say that they were not composed with a future reader in mind). But regardless of intent, of how “honest” they are, all of these social media broadcasts will be useful to researchers in the future.

I know that some libraries that have purchased the archives of still-working artists are making copies of hard drives and emails. I assume that someone has found, or is trying to find, a way to (efficiently) archive social media. I wonder if there are already papers being written that document and analyze the construction of a public figure through social media. We are, perhaps without even being fully aware of it, creating a collective treasure trove of information for researchers in the (near and far) future.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (48): THE HEADS (7)

Now we’re getting somewhere. Not sure where that where is yet, but we’re almost there.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (47): THE HEADS (6)

Fig. 05.12.09
A detail from the initial series of type sketches (see previous Production is Reception post), showing some beginning display letters, potentially for use on the title page of The Heads.

Oh, it’s so much fun not to have any idea what I’m doing. Well, sometimes it’s fun, other times it’s nerve-frying and soul-twisting. But that’s part of the fun too. So here we are with another post of me bumbling through “lettering design.”

Fig. 05.12.10
First of new series of drawings specifically for the title type. The regular alphabet letters at the top show a brief flirtation with the idea of lowering the crossbar on the “A.”

These letters began with a slightly taller version of the regular alphabet (see Fig. 05.12.09), but as I recreated these digitally and enlarged them, I realized that they should be drawn at actual scale (using the same base grid) as that would allow for more variation in the design (like having a stem with a width of 3 blocks instead of a multiple of 2).

Fig. 05.12.11
Figuring out the shapes and trying out decorative elements—the “serifs” or “beaks” on the “T” and “E.”

So more drawings, then. No need to bore you with the details. I’m still not totally happy with these, but we’ll see where it goes. And of course the position on the page, along with any other text (the rest of the title, author name, press name, etc.), will play a huge role in how they look at the end.

Fig. 05.12.12
The final? Perhaps….

I’m still sorting out, still thinking through, what this kind of activity means for the larger process of making books (for NewLights—so the large but local sense), of making books strange. & of course this is just the design stage—setting these things in lead, manipulating and printing them, is going to be another matter entirely. But the activity in & around & through these letters is energizing and informing the whole process in a new way for me. Which is always the point when figuring out any new book.

MORE DEMOCRATIC MULTIPLES

On this mind-blowing tumblr.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (46): THE HEADS (5)

& The Heads will contain my first (somewhat) legitimate foray into type design. As you may have deduced from earlier “digital sketches” that were posted here (here & here), the design of the book is tied to the idea of RGB color, in particular to the RGB phosphors that allow our precious & pernicious & delicate screens to show color.

Fig. 05.12.01
First sketches. The grid was set up on the computer and printed out so that I could work by hand. 12 pt. en quads, a 1:2 grid.

So, a grid, then, in red, green & blue. And type for the titles composed of, built out of, that grid. Letterpress printed from spacing material, flat rectangles of lead, ordinarily the physical component that makes a blank space on the printed page, now arranged in a pixel grid, raised up, inked and printed. The trace of the non-space, the brilliant color of the mutable absence.

Fig. 05.12.02
Working with variations on the letterforms.

The design of a modular typeface is a pretty basic typography exercise. But since I don’t know much about type design it seemed like a good place to start. (Thinking with Type by Ellen Lupton and Lettering & Type by Bruce Willen and Nolen Strals, have been my guides.) & it has certainly been instructive. Even within a rigid system there are many variations of a letterform that can be created (see Fig. 05.12.02).

Fig. 05.12.03
The top alphabet contains some lowercase forms. The bottom is closer to the final designs, with each letter being made up of an odd number of “pixels”—1, 3 or 5. Except for the ampersand, formed from an “E” and “t,” and four “pixels” wide.

The titles for the poems are in all caps, so the designs are only for those letters (& the ampersand), done at actual size. These initial drawings were done by hand. I think that when they’re actually printed, they will rest somewhere between the unevenness of the drawn versions and the cleanliness of the digital renderings (see Fig. 05.12.08).

Fig. 05.12.04
Drawings for the potential “decorative” letters for the title pages. Some tests of kerning the letters, and variations of the “Y” in context.

I liked some of the earlier versions with a “modulated” stroke, but after conducting a few tests with the actual titles I determined that the best option would be a “condensed” typeface. And then it was a matter of refining the system and looking for workable, related shapes for the letters. I experimented with lowercase forms for some of the more problematic letters (B, D, R, K), but eventually settled on only using the lowercase form for the “N,” while the “Q” is both capital and lowercase (see Fig. 05.12.03).

Fig. 05.12.05
The final alphabet at the top, and renderings of the actual titles.

But there is always the title page(s) and cover as well. So maybe there will be a more decorative version (see Fig. 05.12.04). Bigger though.

Fig. 05.12.06
More renderings of the actual titles. Playing with word spacing and the “TT” and “TTT” ligatures.

Putting the letters into use in the actual configurations of the titles yielded new problems. The form of the “Y” was determined by how it looked in a specific title (YSYSYS, see Fig. 05.12.04), as that title was the most heavily patterned. Problems of spacing also became apparent, particularly with the “T,” so I decided to use ligatures when there was more than one “T” in a row (see Fig. 05.12.06).

Fig. 05.12.07
More titles. Some redrawn with the ligatures. The letterspacing is still not perfect on the grid, but the ligatures work better.

These letters, honestly, are the put of the book that I am most unsure about at this point. Partly the design of the letters themselves, partly the technical aspects of actually printing them, and partly how they will drive the overall design and feel and experience of the book. Too much? Too weird? Too bright? Too big?

Fig. 05.12.08
The clean, digital alphabet with some title tests. The printed versions will not be this clear and consistent.

But these are the risks that come along with a challenge.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (45): THE HEADS (4)

& that’s when things started to get strange (any Thing that is strang).

I always wonder about how much I want to detail in these process posts, about how much of the book I want to show before it’s done. But here we go again, anyway, what else can we do?

One of the primary concerns whenever a NewLights book is being developed is how to make the book GO—how to reach into the text (whatever that “text” may be maybe) and pull out its strangeness and translate that to the physical-temporal book object itself.

This process often terrifies me, because it runs the real risk of real failure.

But hopefully that means that I’m on something. Still, the doubt is always there, twisting in my stomach. What follows is an example, the first nervous part of The Heads.

All of the poems have bizarre titles, in all caps, like:

IMATAYM
ATTWD
WAPAUSHTGOWYLD
NSIILTOBIGOTB

I am very intrigued by these titles. I don’t know what they “mean.” But I do know that I want to draw attention to them, and that they could or should be a major design element of the book.

“Design element?” Maybe that doesn’t go far enough. I struggle with the word “design” in this context. It’s too removed, too after-the-fact. Too much about “presenting” the text. What we want is to produce the text(-book-object), enact it. Not to make a crystal goblet, but to distill the complex, intoxicating drink itself.

A writing alongside the writing. A writing underneath the writing. This process often terrifies me. The book twists in my stomach.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (44): THE HEADS (3)

It is not so much a case of determining the success (or in this case FAILURE) of the experiment—it is a matter of bringing to light problems not seen in the original hypothesis.

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (43): THE HEADS (2)

THE HEADS

*

OF MY FAMILY:

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

OF MY FRIENDS:

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

OF MY COLLEAGUES:

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

For Rodchenko/For Travis/For J (again):
Working Notes Toward The Heads #FFFFFF
NewLights Press: Justin Sirois & A. Cohick
3 digital books, 64 pages each, 8” x 12” (open)
Pure RGB colors
Edition determined as viewed
2012
Free

ALMOST ADOLESCENT

A recent acquisition, as we gear up to print The Heads by Justin Sirois. This is the theme of YEAR 12.


This past Saturday (05/05/12) was the twelfth birthday of the NewLights Press. To be perfectly honest, the anniversary came and went and I barely noticed. Always too much to do in the day to day, and always too many year cycles to keep track of—the “real” year, the academic year, the NewLights year, the year of the lease, etc. But this seems like an appropriate time to ruminate on what happened, and what will happen….

Not a bad year! The one before, 2010, was the slowest (read: impossible for me to find time & energy) for NewLights ever, so last year, and a whopping two publications, makes me feel like things are heating back up again. In some ways this work moves glacially slow, but in other ways I feel like I can never keep up. I learned a great deal last year—I’m sure I will always be “figuring this out” for as long as I am making books.

I still have no idea what I’m doing.

But the most important question is, as always: what is NewLights doing?

More books! Definitely this year The Heads by Justin Sirois, and hopefully something by j/j hastain, Divya Victor, and a New Manifesto. More other things! A new (non-delaminated) broadside/poster series called “Words to Live With.” Maybe some short run chapbooks in conjunction with a still-forming reading series here in the Springs. Maybe a little magazine. Definitely a presence at the Codex Fair in February 2013, and it looks like a gallery show, the first for NewLights since 2007, in March/April. Which brings back the question of just which “art world” this work participates in….

And more digital archives of out-or-print books, including redesigned, re-edited, and newly accessible versions of the DIY Books.

That other press is coming along too.

I’m getting nauseous just thinking about all of this. This kind of fun is so unsettling.

Thank you all for reading. Thank you all for giving this a purpose.

NOW (NON)LIVE ONLINE: THE BOOK 1: THE MOVEMENT-IMAGE

Open publication - Free publishing - More artists books

Text and images by Aaron Cohick-Gilles Deleuze-Eadweard Muybridge

56 pages, softcover with printed dustjacket,
double signature pamphlet stitch, 8” x 5”
Letterpress printed dustjacket and covers with digitally printed text pages
Edition of 50 

2007 
Out of Print

You might notice a bit of strangeness in the middle of this one. The double-signature pamphlet stitch puts a flap form the covers in the middle of the book. They turn like pages in the real thing, but I had to “fake it” for this digital version.

LUCKY ME

that I ended up on the analog mailing list of Pointed Press. Here are some images of their latest postcard:

PRODUCTION IS RECEPTION (42): THE HEADS (1)

I sat down here today (it’s early here today)

& said, “I’m going to write something

powerful!” & then I said, “That’s the

worst fucking idea I’ve ever had.”

The lines above are the first stanza of HTAYKSSS, a poem by Justin Sirois, that will be in his new book, the next new NewLights book, The Heads. Yesterday as I retyped those lines they made me think of my own early morning writing, the writing that often ends up on this blog.

And so we begin to collect the brilliant pieces of the last month, a month engaged in intense discussion and thought about the thing, the usual thing, the every-thing, the making of books. We will see if we can make this last month into a “turning point.” I have a feeling now that those can only occur retrospectively. The most important thing is the follow through.

Work has begun, in a real way, on The Heads. I spent the weekend retyping the poems. Retyping wasn’t necessary in terms of efficiency—I was retyping them from the printout of the text doc that is already on my computer. Retyping is a way to really, almost literally, spend some time in the poems.

Retyping is an activity that grows out of my experience of setting texts in lead type. It allows me to get to know the texts in a way different from the (often too ephemeral) experience of reading, even of close reading. One has to look at how the poems are built—how is capitalization handled? Just how much space is there between these lines? Just how far should those indents go? Etc.

Editing and designing a book tend to be more “big picture” activities. Retyping the poems is a way of getting to know the forest by looking very carefully at the individual trees.

Retyping also turns the poems sharply towards me, as I prepare to reproduce, to multiply, them. The first imprinting of the book occurs in my consciousness. The trick now is to make that individual experience and imprinting many, multiple, public, shared, accessible, wondrous, etc.

Going carefully through the poems again this weekend also made me remember how much I believe in them, how excited I am to have the chance to help make them a part of the world. They were made strange. I couldn’t believe them.

& so it begins again &

CHAPBOOK LECTURE & POETRY READING IN DENVER ON SAT. 4/21

Anyone on the front range interested in small press biz/poetry/art should go to this event at Counterpath in Denver:

Saturday, April 21, 2012, at 7 p.m. at Counterpath (Denver), join us for “Buy, Sell, Trade: The Chapbook Press in the 21st Century, and the Story of Ugly Duckling Presse,” with a talk and presentation by Ugly Duckling Presse founder Matvei Yankelevich and a reading by Ugly Duckling Presse author Noel Black.

Full info here.

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.

SPACE TO WORK

A couple of years ago a good friend let me borrow a copy of Lawrence Weschler’s Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), which is about The Museum of Jurassic Technology in LA. I recently bought my own copy, mainly because of the following passage, mainly because I think a great deal about finding or making the necessary space to do the necessary work. The passage in question (p. 59 – 60) talks about Hagop Sandaldjian, a microminiature sculptor from Armenia:

[…] I ended up speaking with the master’s son, Levon, who explained that there was in fact something of a tradition of such microminiature art back in Armenia (he knew of two or three other such instances), although, as far he knew, his father had been the world’s only microminiature sculptor. “He would wait until late at night,” Levon said, “when we kids were in bed and the rumble from the nearby highways had subsided. Then he would hunch over his microscope and time his applications between heartbeats—he was working at such an infinitesimal scale that he could recognize the stirrings of his own pulse in the shudder of the instruments he was using.” […]

That is an excellent description of what it takes to find the necessary space. I often think about, try to imagine that infinite quiet, just a brief interruption in the unstoppable flow of the world.

FIRST STEPS

Towards what will be a long (and hopefully significant) project. These images are of some very quick tests—the same image/text printed twice on the same piece of paper, run through a laser printer two times. The question: is there poetry in that dislocation?

A PORTRAIT OF FALCONS ON THE FLOOR AS ST. BARTHOLOMEW

Flayed. Get your complete copy here.

A FEW THINGS THAT I WOULD LIKE YOU TO KNOW ABOUT, ABOUT INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING AND BOOK ARTS AND WAR AND WHAT YOU WILL

Texts/essays about independent publishing have been on my mind a great deal lately, probably because I will soon be participating in a class about independent publishing, probably because that’s what I do. The librarian in me wants to archive these things, but this is the best I can do for now. Two texts, one a post by Roxanne Gay on HTMLGiant, the other from Derek White of Calamari Press (brought to my attention via HTMLGiant). These are a bit old now. They are still good, of course, and worth sharing (and archiving):

Roxanne Gay on Tiny Hardcore Press
Derek White on Calamari Press

The fifth anniversary of the bombing of Al-Mutanabbi Street in Baghdad just passed, and there has been a lot of activity among the members of the Al-Mutanabbi project, which was recently expanded to include artists’ books. You can read about and see some of the books here. Here is an article in The Huffington Post about the project as a whole. In the article Beau Beausoleil, the driving force and organizer, talks about why he felt it was important to do the project, and why he thinks it is still important. Sometimes it is crucial not to look away.

In other news about the intersection of book arts and war, the Combat Paper Project is trying to raise some money through Kickstarter. The drive is almost over, and they have already reached their goal, but every little bit helps. Here’s the link to the site and the video:




And finally, finally, speaking of war, speaking of the end, speaking of peace, there are only THREE COPIES of Kyle Schlesinger’s What You Will left for sale. And then that’s it & that’s it.

WAKING, CATCHING UP, WAKING

My apologies for the lack of posts lately. The NewLights Press has been very busy, to the point where these silent mornings of writing had to be used for catching up on sleep or for going in to work early. But now a new book is done, the book labeled As-Of-Now Untitled in the last few “Production is Reception” posts, the book made to be an insert in JAB 31. It has a title now: Clerestory. The images above and below are from the binding. 600 copies, our largest edition yet. They should be going out with the new issue by April 1st.

Maybe it’s Daylight Savings Time, or maybe it’s the winter slowly receding, but I feel like this somehow marks a turning point for NewLights. A subtle one, for sure. A turning point that will almost certainly only be perceptible to me. We shall see. Somewhere in here is a new beginning. Maybe because that last book was essentially about new beginnings, the new beginnings given to us all each day. We all have our own ways of marking time.

The tests that I conducted for the printing of Clerestory were also secret tests for the next book, The Heads by Justin Sirois. The tests determined that my idea for the book was not going to work (see above). So it’s back to the beginning on that. Always these new beginnings, but what a great place to be.

And it seems appropriate to leave this morning’s meditation with the message that has been sitting on my desk for a few weeks now, that will soon be added to the wall in front of my desk so that I can see it everyday. It’s from the ILSSA, and it speaks for itself:

[A quick note about the image above: the scan doesn't really do the actual object justice, as that orange you are seeing is actually fluorescent ink on the real thing. These screens have their limits.]

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.