#letterprss

Staff Pick of the Week

This week I selected Her Six Difficulties and His Small Mistakes, six poems by Marcia Southwick, with eight relief prints by Richard Bigus, and an introduction by Stephen Tapscott, published in 1988 by Bigus’s Labyrinth Editions in Lincoln, Nebraska. The poems previously appeared in The American Poetry Review, Antioch Review, Field, Missouri Review, and Prairie Schooner, but are published here as a collection for the first time.

The eye-catching relief prints take shape through complex lattice structures. The longer you look, the more forms emerge. Parts of Tapscott’s introduction to Southwick’s poems could easily be applied to the prints. He says:

Each perception is whole but mysterious, becoming more lucid almost retrospectively as it changes to the next. The continuity of these perceptions is not linked or linear sequence but is rather the track of a spiral (a vector of progress graphed against a circling, repetitive pattern).

The relief prints were likely designed and cut in a soft material, like linoleum, and later photomechanically transferred to a magnesium plate and printed simultaneously with the text on a Universal I Vandercook proofing press.

The book was printed in an edition of 123 copies, of which our copy is one of 72 copies printed on Cambersand paper. The rest of the edition was printed on Royal Watercolor Society Cotman paper and includes a portfolio of signed prints. Both papers were handmade at the historic Hayle Mill. The fonts are 18pt. Goudy Bible and Emerson Italic cast by A. Colish, and the titling is Albertus. The binding was done at the Campbell-Logan Bindery. The decorative cover paper was made by the artist Richard Bigus who also did the design, illustration, and presswork. 

This book is the sixth publication of Richard Bigus’s Labyrinth Editions. Our copy is signed by the poet and the artist/printer and is a gift from our friend Jerry Buff.  View more posts on our Fine Press Books

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