Tag Archives: literature

Looking forward towards 2018

09 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by in Authors and Translators, Books, Breon Mitchell - Franz Kafka, Education, Future Projects, In the Penal Colony, Judith Minty, Letterpress, Mad Parrot Press, The Hunter Gracchus, Workshop

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Here we are, a new year. I’ve been remiss updating this blog but I’ve not been fully idle in my absence so allow me to update you to some of the exciting projects underway here at Deep Wood.

Franz Kafka  —  In the Penal Colony

I will not attempt to summarize In the Penal Colony, it’s a brilliant and important part of Kafka’s canon. But if you are curious here’s a wikipedia link.

I am pleased to present this new previously unpublished translation by the acclaimed Breon Mitchell which will be lavishly illustrated with six etchings by Dellas Henke. This very limited edition is set at 30 copies  divided between Dellas, Breon and myself and will be sold in sheets primarily. I will bind my third of the edition and also produce some presentation bindings.

Dellas has been working on editioning the intaglio prints and is closing in on his end of the project while the rest of the paper lies here at the press waiting as I fuss with last minute layout adjustments.

The book is large a format 10×13 inch (25×33 cm) page size with the text being composed in Janson and printed on Somerset Book White, 175gsm. The intaglio illustrations are “bled print” to the edges. 40 pages. $1000.00 unbound. Advanced inquiries and sales may be made.

Here are some of the image proofs from Dellas, 10×13″ sheets. It should be noted that these are proofs – works in progress – and also were not printed on Somerset stock.

Breon Mitchell has translated major works by Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Siegfried Lenz and other leading German authors.  His retranslation of Kafka’s Trial received a special commendation from the American Translators Association. His other awards include the ATA’s Ungar Prize , the ALTA Translation Prize, the Kurt and Helen Wolff Prize,  the MLA’s Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize, and the British Society of Authors’ Schlegel-Tieck Prize. He is Director Emeritus of the Lilly Library and Professor Emeritus of Germanic Studies and Comparative Literature at Indiana University, Bloomington.

Dellas Henke learned printmaking a S.U.N.Y. Brockport from Robert Marx. It was there that he saw his first artist’s books- collaborations Marx had made with the activist priests the Barrigan brothers. Henke continued his education at the University of Iowa where he worked with printmakers Mauricio Lasansky and Keith Achepohl and had the remarkable opportunity to learn about letterpress printing from KK Merker and Kay Amert. It was in Iowa that Henke first illustrated with etchings Samuel Beckett’s, “Waiting for Godot” – an edition sanctioned and signed by Beckett. Over the next few years there were further collaborations with Merker and the Iowa Center for the Book where Henke illustrated Beckett’s “Company” and H.D.’s “ Within the Walls and eventually making an illustrated edition of Beckett’s, “Ill Seen Ill Said”. In the intervening years Henke has been the coordinator for the printmaking department at Grand Valley State University where he continues to make prints, paint, and draw. Henke has been involved in more than 200 exhibitions and has been collected by dozens of public institutions.

I would also be remiss mentioning that Dellas was my professor for printmaking in college long ago. Great to be working with him again and his visits north have been a lot of fun fishing, hiking around with his dog Lazlo and telling stories.

Further, it is a thrill to be working with Breon on this project and a fortunate stroke of serendipity with my own project though rather mind bending to be working on two Kafka manuscripts at a time.

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Dellas, working on print arrangement for the book.

Additionally

  • My own Kafka project The Hunter Gracchus  is also coming along but has been completely redesigned to a larger format. More to come soon with that progress.
  • I sadly note the passing of Judith Minty in November. Judith and I produced her short Killing the Bear in 2011 with wood engravings by Glenn Wolff. In her 84 years I hope I amused her for at least one of them….
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Opening spread, Killing the Bear by Judith Minty

  • James Dissette and I have continued planning our new projects for our Mad Parrot Press (formerly Chester River Press) and plan to bring you E.M. Forster’s strange and prescient science fiction story, The Machine Stops. We are also in the planning stages for the iconic childhood rhapsody, Wind in the Willows which will be illustrated by the brilliant linoleum cuts of Vladimir Zimakov. Here’s a taste of his concept art for Badger:

Badger c

Residency and Instruction

One of my distractions lately from making books has been finishing the guest house above “studio B” which is now listed on AirBnB. The space will be used to host collaborators, limited artist residencies and, of course, some additional income…

Use of the studio spaces and instruction can also be negotiated with a stay. Fully (and nicely) appointed letterpress and intaglio print spaces as well as a complete bindery. Visit my main website for much more information about the facilities here.

Airbnb pic

View On AirbnbStudio on the Cedar River ~ A Bibliophiles Dream

Progress on Qin Guan

15 Thursday Sep 2016

Posted by in Letterpress, Moon as Bright as Water, Oak Knoll Fest

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Printing is coming along nicely on Moon As Bright As Water with all but a few pages of the introduction and the color runs to do.

I’d forgotten how dusty Hahnemühle Biblio is, after 3 runs of 100 sheets the press must be cleaned up completely – new ink and vacuum the whole thing down. It doesn’t help that I’m running it with one natural deckle on the fore edge of the page. Such a nice soft sheet though with a nice heft at 150gsm that takes ink and impression so well.

I should have copies ready for Oak Knoll Fest coming up the end of the month on September 30 – October 2nd in New Castle, Delaware. Jim Dissette and I will be there as usual with books on the table and enjoying the camaraderie of our fellow printers and enthusiasts from around the globe.

Previous apprentice Daniel Schneider, Bonnie Loukus and another former apprentice, Erin Murray, will be here in the studio next week to assist in the bindery as loose sheets turn into folios and are sewn into book form ready to be covered in some sage Asahi book cloth and a lovely cotton indigo Shizen batik paper with a hint of gold highlights. Stock I found at Hollander’s in Ann Arbor last weekend as I once again presented at the Kerrytown Bookfest.

There is already high demand for the unbound copies of the edition so if you are a bookbinder looking for books in sheets let me know soon as they will ship upon my return from Oak Knoll.

Looking forward to wrapping up this project and getting back to my Kafka madness.

Here is a photo of some of the piles of sheets taking up space in the bindery. The wood engraving on the left is for another project. More updates next week as things head into the bindery side of the shop.

progress

Moon as Bright as Water by Qin Guan

08 Monday Aug 2016

Posted by in Books, Letterpress, Moon as Bright as Water, PR and Media releases

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The Hunter Gracchus is currently undergoing a major redesign. I was unhappy with the format and size of the book so have undertaken a new approach which includes a larger folio size, heavier paper stock to better accommodate the intaglio prints and new layout for the text.

So in the interim:

 

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I am pleased to announce the impending publication of Moon As Bright As Water: Seventeen Poems by Qin Guan under the imprint Chester River Press that I share with my partner James Dissette.

Translated by William McNaughton, former chair at Hong Kong University, and poet David Young at Oberlin College, these poems showcase Qin Guan, a relatively unknown 11th -century master of Chinese verse whose company could include the likes of the esteemed Li Po (Li Bai) and Du Fu. Praised by the illustrious Wang An-shih, Guan was a disciple of Su Shih (Su Dongpo) one of China’s masters of multiple literary forms, and who strived to loosen the poetic conventions of the day.

As an acolyte would, Qin Guan blew out the conventional even more by writing about his encounters with courtesans, a subject considered to be a major indiscretion by Chinese society in Keifing. He wrote is a style called t’zu, a lyrical form that McNaughton likens to “cabaret songs” or “words to music” often chosen by the courtesans to sing during their professional entertainments.

Quong lived a tumultuous life during the Northern Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1127) Political clashes led to a string of banishments and exiles, his poetry was shunned for its sensuality, and he suffered from the vicissitudes of love—all of which moved him to write these brief, incandescent poems of departure and “long goodbyes.”

A streak of his poetic melancholy and gift for imagery appears in the poem “Eight Six”:

the pleasures of love run off

with the flowing streams…

the sound of the white silk string breaks off

and the stick of incense — kingfisher green —

burns up

This limited edition of Qin Guan’s poetry eschews the temptation to use ornament. Instead, Dissette and Pastotnik serve Guan’s voice by offering it an open, breathing page without distraction with the feeling that the poet’s imagery is enough to engage us.

The text is set in Dante and printed in two colors on Hahnemühle Biblio paper, 8×10.5 inch page format. Cover treatments are still being worked out but the edition is set at 100 books with 10 deluxe copies and 5 sets of folios reserved for hand binders. Printed by Chad Pastotnik at Deep Wood Press and hand bound in his studio.

The book is designed by James Dissette and Chad Pastotnik, whose collaboration in the past included John Barth’s Browsing, The Chesapeake Voyages of Capt. John Smith and are Hertzog Award recipients for Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

William McNaughton (1933-2008) studied with Ezra Pound 1953-1956 and established the Chinese language programs at Oberlin College, Wabash College, Antioch College Denison University and Bowling Green State University. He was the founding Program Director of the University of Hong Kong’s BA Translation and Interpretation program where he worked until his retirement in 1998. He has written ten books on Chinese language, Asian literature and Russian literature.

David Young has been Longman Professor of English at Oberlin College since 1986 and an editor of FIELD magazine since 1969.  He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Field of Light and Shadow (Knopf, 2010); Black Lab (2006); At the White Window (2000); Night Thoughts and Henry Vaughan (1994), which won the Ohio State University Press/The Journal Award in Poetry; The Planet on the Desk: Selected and New Poems 1960-1990 (1991); Foraging (1986); Earthshine (1988); The Names of a Hare in English (1979); Work Lights: Thirty-Two Prose Poems(1977); and Boxcars (1972). His translations include Out on the Autumn River: Selected Poems by Du Mu (2006) and Clouds Float North: The Complete Poems of Yu Xuanji(1998), both with Jiann I. Lin; Selected Poems by Eugenio Montale(2004), with Charles Wright and Jonathan Galassi); The Poetry of Petrarch (2004); The Book of Fresh Beginnings: Selected Poems of Rainer Maria Rilke (1994), Miroslav Holub’s Vanishing Lung Syndrome and The Dimension of the Present Moment (both 1990),Five T’ang Poets (1990), Pablo Neruda‘s The Heights of Macchu Picchu (1987), and Rilke’s Duino Elegies (1980).

Moon As Bright As Water was edited by Richard Kent, Professor of East Asian Art History at Franklin Marshall College. He received his B.A. in English from Oberlin College and his M.A. and Ph.D. in Chinese art and archaeology from Princeton University.