Goose Hill

Franny and Zooey is one of my all-time favorite books. The dialogue is always the best bit. And as I was re-reading that novella last night, I came across a particularly memorable passage that, once I had finished, I turned off the bedside lamp and went to sleep: "'I know this much, is all,' Franny said. 'If you're a poet, you do something beautiful. I mean you're supposed to leave something beautiful after you get off the page and everything. The ones you're talking about don't leave a single, solitary thing beautiful. All that maybe the slightly better ones do is sort of get inside your head and leave some thing there, but just because they do , just because they know how to leave some thing, it doesn't have to be a poem , for heaven's sake. It may just be some kind of terribly fascinating, syntaxy droppings --excuse the expression. Like Manlius and Esposito and all those poor men.'" Well said, J.D .

I recently adopted a typewriter: a 1955 Remington manual typewriter (found and acquired for free thanks to the Kent Freecycle network--see link in right margin). Ever since reading Words In Air: The Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell last year, I have had this desire to write with a typewriter. It is really a magical piece of machinery. I imagine it as being halfway between a letterpress and a word processor, but mechanically it is a very different beast altogether. When I was testing my new old typewriter out, I felt like I was learning to play a new musical instrument. It even looks a little like a piano under the hood. Although the keyboard resembles those belonging to our modern computers, if you try to type as fast as you are used to with a computer keyboard, the letter-legs are likely to become tangled. So my first lesson was to type one key at a time--slow down a bit. Another thing, there is actually quite a bit of space between the keys, e...

As previously promised (in the post before last), copies from the 50 volume edition of Sleight are now available for sale in Emily's Etsy shop ! There are pretty pictures and all. Also, if you happen to live in the Chestertown area, our handmade book project is available locally at both Bookplate and Chestertown Arts League .

gut gaudy glow-worm plumb itch wallpaper organ-eyes margin mantle fortunate

So, the festival was amazing. It was everything we wanted it to be and more. Thank you to everyone who came out and an extra thank you to everyone who made it to the Small and Independent Press Panel at Bookplate--we were certainly feeling the love. A whopping 47 warm bodies! (as Secretary for the Book Festival, I have access to such statistics) Emily and I had a great time and actually managed to sell 9 books on Saturday--more than I was expecting, to say the least. I hope that soon we will have them available for purchase in Emily's Etsy shop . We also got to discuss some of the things I write about on this blog: what draws us to printing and bookmaking, what are some problems we have encountered along the way. One well-intentioned audience member even suggested "professional help" for us poor, misunderstood creatures and my answer to that was that working out these problems on our own is part of the thrill of this field of work. I am so happy that we had the cha...

We have now completed 36 books (including their fashionable fabric slipcases). They're so beautiful side by side by side on the shelf, I think. We need to finish the last 14 to complete this edition, but it's alright if they're not done in time for the festival. Hooray for paper, ink, thread and glue! P.S. This gorgeous fabric came from Buttercuppityfabric's shop on Etsy.

Emily and I have just about finished the 50 book edition of Sleight , a book of three poems and three paintings.  For the past month we have been sewing and gluing whenever we get the chance.  After the book signatures are sewn together, we then tip-in the prints of Emily's paintings on the assigned pages with small amounts of acid-free adhesive applied to a wide strip along the top of the paintings' reverse side, and glue the fragile end papers to the backs of both the front and back covers.  About 20 of the books are completed, only requiring their protective (and fashionable) fabric slipcases.  We will be presenting our first book project at the Chestertown Book Festival on Saturday, November 14th.  We will be participating in the Small and Independent Press Panel, moderated by local printer-poet Jim Dissette of Chester River Press from 12:00PM-1:30PM in the back room of Bookplate on Cross Street.  Emily and I will be sitting on this panel with our illustrator-author frie...