Quelquefois Press ~ California
(Mary Laird)

Kindred Flame
Six Poems
By Anita Barrows
Berkeley, California: Quelquefois Press, 2008. Edition of 101.

6.75 x 10"; 34 pages. Letterpress printed on dampened Johannot text. Illustrated with abstract woodblocks. Bound with Barcham green Chatham endpapers and cover papers. Covers lined with masa then hand-stenciled on the Chatham side. Laced binding. Sewn on double cords with red kangaroo laces from Australia. Handsewn headbands in red and white.

Mary Laird: "Over ten years has flashed by since I first asked Anita for poems. The Bixlers set them during the first year. I was busy working to finish other books, got side tracked, and so on. Life interrupted art, so to speak."

Anita Barrows, introduction: "It was not until Mary Laird set these poems in type and showed me the book that they might be, that I realized that the central image recurring throughout the collection was flame. As I write this, I am acutely aware of the flames that threaten, in so many forms, to destroy our world. But there is also the searing, purifying energy of flame, which, as it did for Dante climbing the mountain of Purgatory, demands that we challenge our comfort and our fears; and, there is the light that exists within all beings and which, in many traditions, is understood to be lit from a single flame that does not diminish as it continues to offer itself.

"At a moment of great transition in my life, I dreamed I was handed a bowl of water on the surface of which was a living flame. My task was to hold the bowl, as I moved through my days, carefully enough so that the flame would not be extinguished. But the dialectical nature of flame asks also that we confront Tagore's line, 'Evidently the only way to find the path is to set fire to my own life' — that sense in which there are things, within us and outside us, which we must burn so that a more deeply creative and authentic way may be revealed. We are continually called to distinguish between that which must be preserved and that which must be transformed by some process initiated by destruction. All authentic relationships demands that choosing, as does all development and, indeed, all revolutionary change."

Penguin.com (USA): "Anita Barrows, a prize-winning poet and a clinical psychologist, is the author of four books of her own poetry and the recipient of an NEA grant as well as the Quarterly Review of Literature's Contemporary Poetry Award. She has been a professional translator for more than thirty years."
$665

Remember the Light
By Mary Laird
Berkeley, California: Quelquefois Press, 2007. Edition of 7.

26.5 x 19 x 5 cm (10.4 x 7.5 x 2"). Printed letterpress. Text papers: Arches BFK and Somerset. Endpapers and Concertina guards: Nefertiti Laid. Overprinted relief-roll etchings, laser-print, egg tempera, assorted colored pencils, polymer plates, Xerox, cut-outs, sewing. Laced-cords wooden board binding. Hand-planed covers. Fitted with brass ornaments. Bas-relief of right and left hand, carved into front and back covers. Leather straps match the outer covers. Brass hand filed knobs on the fore-edge. Housed in drop spine box with tray goatskin lined with white deer. Copper disc inlay on the front cover. Debossed crescent moon at base of front cover.

Ralph Dranow, "Book Artistry," The Monthly (April 2008): "Of all her books, Laird is proudest of her recently completed Remember the Light, which she feels is her most adventurous project. She built leather boxes made of ostrich, goat, deer and elk skins and used an eighth-century-style binding, with linen cords inserted into boards. The book is held together by leather straps and brass rings. Laird handplaned the wood cover from maple and cherry wood, making a bas-relief drawing of her hand on the inside covers. Poems she wrote in 1986 after traveling to Tibet are printed in the book. Accompanying them are chopped-up etchings Laird did based on the 1989 Bay Area earthquake, as well as watercolor paintings and words such as 'life,' 'death,' and 'birth,' mantras from world religions, seven quotations on light, and the peace prayer of Hazrat Inayat Khan, an early 20th-century Sufi master. The book took two years to complete ...

“'I got to play and put things together in a beautiful form, things that were important to me—my poetry, art and spiritual life,' Laird says. 'When I went to Lebanon in 1972 and later Tibet, I saw all the pain and suffering and hope, the struggle for life. On a small level I wondered, how can I find peace in myself? On a large level, how do we keep the vision of hope alive in the world?'"

Mary Laird, excerpts from interview with Kyle Schlesinger, originally published in The Ampersand (Summer 2007, vol. 24 no. 3): "In my book, Remember the Light, which have been working on for over 15 months, there is a signature wrapped in Mylar with a hurricane photocopied on two sides. In the etching I was working on in ‘89, I wrote in Tibetan (which I still remembered then), 'How’s the weather.' So I guess I have John Muir and his escapades up pine trees in storms with his pocketful of tea and oatmeal in my Scottish gene pool psyche. I love the outdoors. I also love contrasts of chaos and order, life and death. Symbols of sun, moon, lightning—the elements (earth, air, fire and water) all work their way into my poetry, drawing, etching, and binding. I am deeply engaged in pursuit of the alchemical process re: light, evanescence and our temporary existence here. Lest that sound too pretentious, the age-old question, 'why are we here, what is it all about?' ...

"My maternal grandfather was a cabinet-maker. I thought about this while I hand-planed those cherry and maple boards for covers for this latest book, and carved bas-reliefs of my hands into the inside covers, I felt the presence of my grandfather. I should also mention the wonderful artist and binder Laura Wait, in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, who kindly shared her studio with me for four days, teaching me how to plane the wood and drill the covers and to make the prototype for this edition. When I visited Sheridan, Wyoming, in May of this past year, I came across two incredible ostrich skins, lavender and teal, colors I couldn’t resist. They will serve as the outer covers for some of my drop spine boxes housing Remember the Light. I really enjoy the bookbinding process. Filling in the hole where the tail was, with a different tad of leather, drawing attention to it… like that! life has holes. How we smooth over the rough spots—that makes it worthwhile to me. Perfection is elusive. May it stay that way! ..."
$9,600

The Cost of Gold: Twenty-two poems
By S. R. Grosslight
2001. Edition of 96.

4.5 x 6.5". Letterpress Sabon Antiqua with Goudy Engraved and Dante types on Fabriano Vergatona paper.In an Edition of 96, copies A–Z are sewn coptic-style through wooden boards; copies 1–70 are walnut paper covers with exposed sewing on leather straps.

This book has an immediate presence in the hands. It is of intimate size, like a small journal promising secrets. The walnut covers are sturdy, yet supple, like leather. Curiously, a gold ladle bisects the front cover and signals that as we open, we will be dipping in, taking nourishment. Reading these carefully crafted poems is akin to reading private pages. Grosslight's perceptions reach into our own closely held memories, wishes, thoughts. We are captivated. Designer/printer Mary Laird so ably and aptly renders poetry to page that this elegantly printed collection is a pleasure to read and handle. The rounded folio corners recall a composition tablet and the size fits comfortably in the hands. Laird anchors the poems to the bottom page margin, as she did so successfully in her last edition, The Affirmation of Shadows. Deep red titles at the top corners are echoed by the red binding cord at the signature centers. A centerfold drawing by Kim Vanderheiden renders the initial poem into image and is printed in offset.

This is a handsomely composed book, a carefully crafted container that aptly conveys the text therein.

$185 Standard version in walnut covers

The Affirmation of Shadows
Poetry by William Cirocco
Artwork by Mario LaPlante
2000. Edition of 75.

5 x 11.25"; 32 pages. Letterpress from Dante type on Lana Laid paper. Drop-spine binding (attributed to Gary Frost) with linen spine and Japanese silk over boards. Handmade slate endpapers.

Twelve poems form a coherent textural whole in the sense of a Bach suite. The physical arrangement of poetry and page suggests deepening and development. The book itself and the first poems have epigraphs printed in light gray, a dropping in of other voices whose words repeat and themes reverberate in the bodies of the poems. Poems are anchored to the page bottom leaving a changing margin at the top like the rising and falling of hills or waves. For the first six poems, titles are on the left-hand or verso page with poems to the recto. Then mid-book, a fusion—the movement of the poems condenses to title and text together on the page, evoking a sense of urgency that overtakes space. The last poem reintroduces the original page spread layout, offering breathing space again, quieting to close. The dynamic design evokes emotion and suggests approach. It is the score that underlies the individual play of words on page and ear as it supports the inherent music of Cirocco's texts.

Beautiful book, moving poetry.
$225

Nine Poems
By Denise Levertov
1996. Edition of 90.

The stiff brown paper of the handmade covers appropriately recall a monk's robe and are handsewn with vellum-like straps in a mostly non adhesive binding. Walnut crinkle endpapers. Letterpress printed in Spectrum and Sabon with black and red inks.

Poems of spiritual presence serenely presented in a slim volume. An epigraph from Nicholas Herman of Lorraine, a lay brother with the discalced Carmelites at Paris in the 1660s, whose letters and some account of his life have been preserved as "The Practice of the Presence of God," gives a sense of the book's themes.
$240 (Last Copy)