San Diego State University Press

Today we're spotlighting Karen An-hwei Lee, one of our marvelous writers from Issue #1.

Karen An-hwei Lee is the author of several collections of poetry, including The Beautiful Immunity (Tupelo 2024), Duress (Cascade Books 2022), and Phyla of Joy (Tupelo 2012). She is also the winner of the Norma Farber First Book Award. Lee's work appears in over 100 different venues, including our very own West Coast Review. Currently, she is working in the administration of Wheaton College in Wheaton, Illinois.

Seated in the foreground is Esther Bruton; Helen Bruton is wielding the brush; while Margaret Bruton stands.

Margaret Bell Bruton (February 20, 1894 – August 29, 1983) was an American painter, muralist, and printmaker known for her contributions to the Californian art scene. Via Wikipedia

Lawrence Weiner, (postcard invitation), Kabinett für aktuelle Kunst Bremerhaven, Bremerhaven, March 1 – April 3, 1975 [Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller, Inc., New York, NY. © Lawrence Weiner]

These images come from Catoptrum microcosmicum by Johann Remmelin, a copy of which can be found in the John Martin Rare Book Room at Hardin Library for the Health Sciences.

Earlier works had incorporated flaps of various kinds to demonstrate layers of anatomy; however, Remmelin was interested in creating a complete anatomy using flaps. His Catoptrum microcosmicum was originally published in 1619 (also in the JMRBR collection) and included nearly 120 flaps (although a version of this book was initially published in 1613 by a printer friend of his, even though Remmelin did not think the book was ready). Interestingly, Catoptrum microcosmicum demonstrates a moral conflict with the presentation of bodies, adding modesty flaps, sometimes in multiple layers, over genitalia.

A Dada Moment

Perhaps the most elusive of the dadaists, Julien Torma supposedly lived from 1902 to 1933 and published four books during his purported lifetime. However, there is no firm documentation of his life, and it is widely assumed that he never in fact existed.

Around 1952 the College of Pataphysics, a tongue-in-cheek institution founded in 1948, issued a broadside offering all four of Torma’s books for sale in honor of the 50th anniversary of his “birth,” caling him “the greatest pataphysician of the XXth century.”

We have recently acquired the complete set of four, and the inclusion of the broadside in one of the books strongly suggests that our copies came from the “Collège de Pataphisique.”

Concretismo '80, Museo de Bellas Artes de Sevilla / Facultad de Bellas Artes, Facultad de Filología, Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, February 11-29, 1980 [Libreria El Astillero, Cantabria. Art: © Pablo del Barco, Andalucía (1980)]

XIII, Type Directer Club, 1966 [typoswiss]