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Tag Archives: poem

Banned! La ligue, ou, Henry le Grand: Poemes Epique

25 Tuesday Sep 2018

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censors, Civil War, France, French, Geneve, Henri IV, king, Mokpap, monarch, poem, Protestant, religious toleration, Rouen, royal, Viret, Voltaire

La ligue, ou, Henry le Grand: Poemes Epique
Voltaire
A Geneve: Chez Jean Mokpap, MDCXXIII (1723)
PQ2080 H4 1723

This epic poem was first published in 1723 as a pirated edition of 216 pages, followed by a genuine first edition of 231 pages. In spite of the imprint, the pirated edition was published in Rouen, at the press of Viret, not in Geneva by Jean Mokpap (a made-up name).

La Ligue, later enlarged to become La Henriade, contained what censors deemed heresy. Voltaire lovingly portrayed Henri IV, the French monarch who brought France’s civil wars to an end. In the poem, Voltaire treats the king as the forerunner of religious toleration, depicting him as a liberal who supported the Protestant cause.

Royal censors demanded suppressions to the poem that Voltaire refused to make. He took the manuscript to Rouen where it was printed in secret.

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KUED’s VERVE features Rare Books in “Artists’ Books”

20 Friday Jul 2018

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accordion, acrylic paint, Alicia Bailey, Alise Alousi, altered books, American Southwest, American West, Arches 90 lb., artists' books, Barry McCallion, Basingwerk, BFK, binding, birch, blankets, bookseller, Bradypress, bullet, Canson, Carolyn Hull, Carrier Pigeon, chapbook, Chinese, CMC, collage, collector, Connecticut, Daniel Kelm, deceit, desert, East Hampton, embossed paper, enamel, feathers, felt tip marker, Ferrum Wheel Press, galley proofs, gelatin, gesso, goatskin, gold tooling, Goudy, Goudy Bold, Granary Books, graph paper, Graphite, handmade paper, Harvard, hatchet, hoax, ink, inkjet, James Turrell, Japanese, Jen Bervin, Joelle Webber, John Van Dyke, KUED, l;oop, Lake City, laserfoil, laserprinted, leather, leporello, letterpress, maps, metal, Middletown, mixed media, Mohawk Via, Nebraska, New York, New York City, Omaha, Owen Wister, paper-mache, pens, photograph, pigment, pistol, poem, Portland, rare books, Ravenpress, Richard de Bas, Rick Moody, rifle, Robin Price, Roden Crater, Rutgers University, Saint Armand, Santa Monica, shovel, silk, stones, suede, sumi, Thomas Ingmire, Timothy C. Ely, trains, VERVE, voyeurism, Walt Whitman, watercolor, Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour, wax, white-out correction, Wide Awake Garage, wooden nickel

“Artists’ books are…a blown-up conference of multiple elements.”

KUED‘s online video series, VERVE, features artist’s books from the rare book collections in “Artists’ Books,” episode 5, season 6, “Its All About the Book.”

Here are some of the pieces chosen by the Rare Books staff for this episode:


ARKA
Timothy C. Ely
Portland, OR: T. Ely, 1995
N7433.4 E35 A7 1995

The book is drawn on BFK gray paper that was brush-sized with gelatin and CMC, then under painted with CMC and acrylic paint. Other materials include ink, Graphite, and watercolor. Each folio is sewn onto four raised cords that, on completion of the sewing, were laced into birch plywood boards. The end bands are silk worked over cores of leather. The spine of the book is goatskin. The board pastedowns are painted paper. The boards have a small amount of gold tooling suggestive of one part of the history and technology of the art of binding. Otherwise the cover boards are painted. The book is contained in a wooden box.



Hunting the Burn
Alicia Bailey
Lake City, CO: Ravenpress, 1998
N7433.4 B22 H86 1998

Two-sided leporello with self in-folded covers and removable spines. One side is Carolyn Hull’s poem “Hunting the Burn,” laserprinted on Basingwerk, overcoated with wax and pigment; the other side is a panoramic painting by Alicia Bailey, digitally reworked and printed with color inkjet on Arches 90 lb. cover and overcoated with wax. Four of the twelve panels have hand-cut rectangular openings with mixed media insertions. Covers are black Canson with hand applied enamel. Title piece is laserfoil on black paper. Spine pieces are black embossed paper laminated to black Canson. The box is paper-mache, gesso and pigmented wax. Box top has metal mesh and hemp-wrapped, wax-covered bullet attached. Inside box are stones and feathers. Edition of twenty copies, signed by Alicia Bailey and Carolyn Hull. Rare Books copy is no. 10.



Surplus Value Books: Catalog Number 13
Rick Moody
Santa Monica, CA: Danger! Books, 2002
N7433.4 M644 S6 2002

Deluxe edition presented as a collector’s box, containing two pens, one felt tip marker, one white-out correction pen, one pencil, one wooden nickel, one photograph with loop, seven photographs of “original artwork for placement only,” and other items. Text is composed in the form of galley proofs. Upon removing the galley holding the text, the reader is presented with a removable panel resembling a hospital release checklist. Holes cut into this panel reveal the objects contained below. The collectible objects in the box act as literal illustrations to the story. The narrator of the story is a bookseller, collector, mental patient. The story is told through the description of books for sale in the bookseller’s catalog. Values are assigned to each item in the catalog according to the bookseller’s inherent personal desire for each item. Themes of value, voyeurism, and deceit are presented as a pathology of collecting through the multiple layering of information and the revealing of objects of desire that are contained in the collector’s box. This work was first published in offset. Collector’s box constructed by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage. Rare Books copy is lettered “H.”



43, According to Robin Price with Annotated…
Robin Price
Middletown, CT: Robin Price, 2007
N7433.4 P753 A15 2007

From the colophon: “Paper maps from locations along the 43rd parallel are bound in an accordion that structurally supports the main text, which is printed on graph paper and also hinged together as an accordion (opening to 20 ft.)…The unusual double-layer accordion, housed in a printed cloth-covered clamshell box, is co-designed and co-produced by Daniel Kelm at Wide Awake Garage…” Edition of eighty-six plus twelve deluxe copies. Rare books copy is no. 23.



The Desert: Further Studies in Natural Appearances
Jen Bervin
New York City: Granary Books, 2008
N7433.4 B47 D47 2008

An altered book is a form of mixed media artwork that takes a book from its original form into a different form, altering its meaning. The artist may take an old or new book and cut, tear, glue, burn, fold, paint, add collage, create pop-ups, rubber-stamp, drill, bolt or be-ribbon the book to create a new work that is the expression of the artist. In this case, it is the text that is altered — by sewing over certain passages and leaving others exposed. The text from which Jen Bervin’s poem emerges is The Desert, written by John Van Dyke (1856-1932), a professor of Art History at Rutgers University. Van Dyke, the author of several books on art theory of the Art-For-Art’s-Sake school, claimed to have spent three years in the American Southwest desert with only his fox terrier for company and a pony for transportation. According to Van Dyke, he carried with him a rifle, a pistol, a hatchet, a shovel, blankets, tin pans and cups, dried food and a gallon of water. His romantic rhapsody of this trip, published in 1901, was a big hit, extremely influential and remains in print. In fact, Van Dyke saw most of the great desert over which he swooned looking out the windows of trains on his way from one first-class hotel to another. The Desert, version 1901, is the fact-faulted, fantastic hoax of a well-bred, well-educated Easterner, in much the same way that Harvard-educated New Englander Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian (1902) is a glorification of an American West culture that didn’t exist. Prose poem adaptation with overlay of zig zag stitches in pale blue thread. Composed and sewn at James Turrell’s Roden Crater on the Wave Books Poetry Bus Tour in October, 2006. Housed in a hinged archival case. Issued in a wrapper of white muslim cloth and white felt stitched together with blue thread.



Justice: What is Justice?
Thomas Ingmire
T. Ingmire, 2009
N7433.4 I48 J87 2008

Handmade paper mounted over board, Chinese Sumi ink, wide-edged pen (Automatic pen), Japanese brush.



Tangent
Alise Alousi
Omaha, NE: Bradypress, 2011
PS3551 L665 T36 2011



The Latest Things in Kites
Christopher Fritton
Ferrum Wheel Press, 2014
PS3606 R58 L37 2014

Artist’s statement: “A chapbook produced for Carrier Pigeon magazine as as tip-in, The Latest Things in Kites borrows language and its title from a chapter in the book, Fun for Boys. The chapbook is a single-sheet, four-page fold-over with rounded corners and a small embroidery thread tail. Handset in 14pt Goudy Bold and 10pt Goudy with antique copper cuts on Mohawk Via vellum. Hand letterpressed.” Edition of 1200 copies.



Whitman Crosshatch
Walt Whitman (1819-1892)
East Hampton, NY: 2015
PS3222 A7 2015

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Book of the Week — Faster Than Birds Can Fly

23 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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birds, Granary Books, Hermetic Press, John Ashbery, Judith Ivry, New York City, Philip Gallo, poem, Silicon Gallery Fine Art Prints, The World, Trevor Winkfield, typography

“But to go on from here
When it has all come back, bread
On the waters, for life is
This emptying and filling the

Rivers big at their head
Swollen as big as at the mouth,
Shall we begin earlier next time,
Push the seeds to the surface?”

Faster Than Birds Can Fly
John Ashbery (1927-2017)
New York City: Granary Books, 2009
PS3501 S475 F37 2009

This poem first appeared in The World #20 (1970). Illustrations by Trevor Winkfield. Typography by Philip Gallo at the Hermetic Press. Printing by Silicon Gallery Fine Art Prints. Binding by Judith Ivry. Edition of forty copies. Rare Books copy is no. 40, signed by the poet and the artist.

April is National Poetry Month.

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Book of the Week — The Saint John’s Fragment: Against the Odds

09 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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Bernard Grenfell, California, calligraphy, Cave, codex, David Annwn, Egyptian, English, Foolscap Press, Frankfurt Cream, Gospel of John, Greek, Hadrian, Hadrianic, leaves, Mark Knudsen, paper, papyrus, pochoir, poem, Roman Emperor, Saint John, Saint John's Fragment, Santa Cruz, script, scroll, sheet, stencils, Thomas Ingmire, Tiepolo, translation

PR6051-N615-S3-2015-spread1

a King I am. For this I have been born
and I have come into the world so that I would
testify to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth
hears of me my voice.” Said to him
Pilate “What is truth?” and this
having said, again he went out unto the Jews
and said to them,” I find not one
fault in him.”
–translation of a fragment of St. John’s Fragment

The Saint John’s Fragment: Against the Odds
David Annwn
Santa Cruz, CA: Foolscap Press, 2015
PR6051 N615 S3 2015

Poem inspired by the St. John’s fragment, a papyrus fragment now in the collection of the Rylands Library at the University of Manchester (Rylands Library Papyrus P52), dated between 100 and 150 CE and thought to be the earliest extant manuscript of a New Testament text.

From the Afterword: “The piece of papyrus called the St. John’s Fragment was acquired in an Egyptian market in 1920 by Bernard Grenfell, an English scientist and Egyptologist…

Written on both sides of the papyrus, it must have been part of a a codex, that is, a collection of sewn and folded leaves, not a scroll or an isolated sheet. That being the case, it would be among the earliest surviving examples of a literary codex. It was written in Greek in a script known as Hadrianic, named after Hadrian (76-CE – 138 CE), the Roman Emperor of the time…

Specifically, the text on this piece of papyrus is from the Gospel of John 18:31-33 and the verso holds a snippet of verses 237-38…”

From the colophon: “Thomas Ingmire’s calligraphy shows the image of the actual Fragment, then the restored page, then the English translation of the restored page. Mark Knudsen made the stencils for the pochoir painting of the Fragment. The poem is printed in Tiepolo type to complement the Fragment…The book is printed on Frankfurt Cream and bound in Cave paper.” Edition of one hundred and sixteen copies. Rare Books copy is no. 41, signed by the poet and the calligrapher.

PR6051-N615-S3-2015-spread2

 

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Virtue and Knowledge

14 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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Alexander the Great Gualterus de Castellione, allegory, battle, Biblioteca Angelica, Boccaccio, Boethius, Bolognese, Bosone da Gubbio, Campaldino, canticle, Canto, Christian, Cicero, Dante Alighieri, destiny, dialect, Europe, exile, facsimile, Florence, gold, Guelphs, hand-treated paper, hell, Holy Trinity, Italian, Jacopo Alighieri, Latin, littera textualis, manuscript, medieval, miniature, paradise, Petrarch, philosopher, poem, poet, purgatory, scribe, soldier, song, tanned leather, tercets, terza rima, The Divine Comedy, Thomas Aquinas, tripartite stanza, Tuscan, vernacular, Virgil

PQ4301-A1-2016-Devil

“Consider your origin. You were not formed to live like brutes but to follow virtue and knowledge.”

La Divina Commedia Angelica
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)
Castel Guelfo di Bologna, Italy: Imago la Nobilita del Facsimile, 2016
PQ4301 A1 2016

Facsimile. MS1102 from the Biblioteca Angelica, this late fourteenth century Bolognese codex contains The Divine Comedy, commentary by Jacopo Alighieri and Bosone da Gubbio, and a fragment of a poem written by Alexander the Great Gualterus de Castellione. Each of the Cantos are introduced with a miniature depicting the contents of the song. Thirty-four other miniatures depict scenes from hell in bright colors on a gold background. The manuscript is incomplete. Empty spaces were left for miniatures for the songs of “Paradiso” and “Purgatorio.” It is likely that only one scribe is responsible for the text. The script hand is littera textualis. The facsimile has hand applied gold leaf before each canticle on hand-treated paper. The binding is hand stitched in a naturally tanned leather.

Dante Alighieri, born in Florence, to a notable family but of modest means, was an Italian poet and philosopher. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La divina commedia (The Divine Comedy), a medieval Christian allegory of man’s temporal and eternal destiny. The poet draws on his own experience of exile from his native city, in which he encounters hell, purgatory, and paradise. Along the way, the poet offers analysis of contemporary problems and spiritual wisdom through inventive linguistic imagery. Dante wrote his epic poem in the vivid Italian vernacular, rather than Latin, using primarily a Tuscan dialect which became the literary language in western Europe for centuries. Dante’s use of the vernacular opened his work to an audience broader than the academy.

Dante was classically trained and drew on the works of Virgil, Cicero, Boethius and others for his philosophical thinking. He was also well aware of more contemporary writers such as Thomas Aquinas. A soldier, he fought in the ranks at the battle of Campaldino in 1289 on the side of the Guelphs — a battle instrumental in the reformation of the Florentine constitution.

Dante is credited with inventing terza rima, composed of tercets woven into a linked rhyme scheme. He ended each canto of the The Divine Comedy with a single line that completes the rhyme scheme with the end-word of the second line of the preceding tercet. The tripartite stanza is symbolic with the Holy Trinity. Later Italian poets, including Boccaccio and Petrarch, followed this form.

Facsimile edition of 423 copies, 25 hors de commerce. University of Utah copy is no. 18.

PQ4301-A1-2016-Lion

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Book of the week — Night feet on earth

05 Tuesday Jul 2016

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Bayeaux Tapestry, comets, conjunctions, firmament, grid, Halley's Comet, handcut zinc blocks, hooves, horse, Ken Campbell, letterpress, linguist, Oxford, pagan, poem, poetry, stars, woodletter, zinc, zinc plate

N7433.4-C36-N44-1987-titleN7433.4-C36-N44-1987-spread2

“Where the hooves touch the ground.”

NIGHT FEET ON EARTH
Ken Campbell
London, England: Ken Campbell, 1986
N7433.4 C36 N44 1987

Artist’s statement: “The recent visitation by Halley’s Comet, and its image upon the Bayeux Tapestry, brought forth a poem about comets and a divine child descending:; a rather pagan Christmas Carol. The poem is set in airily spaced woodletter capitals, and is alternately revealed either in white space or on a dark, starry backdrop. A comet appears. Its form is gained from the back leg and tail of a dark horse that moves about the printed firmament. The horse is sometimes dismembered, and sometimes whole. At a Christmas dinner in Oxford I found a party cracker on the table and opened it and found, along with the necessarily silly paper hat, a little plastic thing like an articulated hat rack. It was a horse that you could open and shut. I asked a lady to my right what it was that she did. After no little thought she replied, ‘My husband is a linguist.’ I thought, ‘I’m going to do a book about these bizarre conjunctions.’ Halley’s Comet, the horse, and this poem in my mind: that is the poem of the book. I cut out a zinc horse in its different attitudes, opened and shut, and moved it around a firmament of stars. The stars were holes drilled at regular grid intervals in a solid zinc plate that was to supply the blue black night sky. The text is given in very few words for each page. At the end of many pages I show the first word of the next page at the foot of the text to give rhythm and to echo the tradition of cueing the eye for what is to come overleaf. Set in capitals about an inch high, the poetry runs from one left had page to the following left hand page. On the right hand side is a big blue firmament of graded colour with yellow printed underneath to give a little light to the dark horizon. Sometimes the stars are white and sometimes yellow, to give a very mechanical but velvety rendition of the sky in regularly spaced stars. Over this disports a horse in black a metaphor for the comet; a metaphor for the divine child descending. In the first half of the book the first half of the poem is shown on the white, left hand page while the second half of poem is pursued in the dark right. After a central spread where the parts of the horse are wildly rodeo-ed around the firmament, the process is reversed and the first half of the poem is pursued in the dark, left hand page, while the second half of the poem is revealed in the now white, right hand pages. On the slipcase and the closing page the horse’s tail has been distorted to give a fiery tail of a comet. This book is where the hooves touch the ground.”

Letterpress printed in four colors from woodletter and handcut zinc blocks. Issued in slipcase. Edition of fifty copies.

N7433.4-C36-N44-1987-spread

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Indigenous Peoples — student response

03 Tuesday May 2016

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accordion fold, American, ancient, animal hide, Ann Wilcox, Antonio del Rincon, Antonio Peñafiel (1831-1922), archaeology, Austria, background, bark paper, Book of Mormon, books, border culture, Brisa Zavala, cactus, Catholicism, Cecilia Vicuña, Chanccani, codex, Codex Tulane, códices, collage, colonial, colonized, colonizer, comic books, context, demographics, dictionary, English, Enrique Chagoya, experience, facsimiles, feathers, Felicia Rice, form, genealogical, genealogy, geography, grammar, Granary Books, Graz, Guillermo Gomez Peña, gum wrappers, handwritten, Incan kipu, indigenous peoples, indigenous populations, interdisciplinary, Isabel Dulfano, Japanese, Joe D'Ambrosio, knots, language, Latin America, library, linguistics, literature, Luise Poulton, manga, manuscripts, Marriott Library, Mary Elizabeth Smith, Maya, Mayan epigraphy, Melissa Gutierrez, Mesoamerican, metallic, Mexican, Mexico, Middle American Research Institute, Miranda Best, Mixtec, Moving Parts Press, Nahuatl, New Orleans, New York, Oaxaca, Pedro Balli, performance artist, Phoenix, pictographs, poem, pop-culture, pop-up, pre-Hispanic, priest, quipu, rare book collections, Rare Books Department, resources, saguaro, Salt Lake City, Santa Cruz, Spanish, surreal, Tulane University, University of Utah, wool, words, writing

These commentaries are excerpts from an assigned project for Humanities4900/6900, “Indigenous Peoples: Social and Cultural Perspectives,” taught by Isabel Dulfano, Spring semester 2016. Students studied demographics, Mayan epigraphy, Incan kipu, archaeology, linguistics and other topics as an interdisciplinary approach to critically expanding their understanding of indigenous peoples, historically and in a contemporary setting.

Dr. Dulfano arranged for two class periods to be devoted to working with pieces ranging from Mesoamerican codex facsimiles to 16th through 19th century books to 20th and 21st century artist’s books from the rare book collections. The students looked at books which reflected the colonized and the colonizer, the perspective of Church and State, and self-referential texts depicting imposed visions of time and place.

From Brisa Zavala:

F1219-P39-title
Nombres geograficos de Mexico…
Antonio Peñafiel (1831-1922)
Mexico: Oficina tip. De la Secretaria de foment, 1885
First edition
F1219 P39 1885

As part of a two-day class activity we visited the Marriott Library’s rare book collections and had the opportunity to interact with facsimiles and original copies of books pertaining to indigenous peoples of Latin America.

On the first day we interacted with pieces dating from the 8th century Common Era to 1899. One of the books that caught my eye was Nombres Geograficos de Mexico, 1885. This book contains names of various geographical places in Mexico, some of which still remain as the names of towns in present-day Mexico. The author, Antonio Peñafiel, was the Director General of the Census Department of Mexico. The book was bound and organized in a traditional western way, is about the size of a notebook, and written in Spanish. The first half contains detailed explanations of the meaning of each geographical name and the second half contains colored pictographs corresponding to each place name.

F1219-P39-pg11

I particularly enjoyed looking at this piece. I have traveled in Mexico and noticed many names of smaller towns in Nahuatl, but never knew the meaning of the name. I am studying Nahuatl at the University of Utah and I have some knowledge on how place names are formed but it was fascinating to not only learn the meaning behind the names but also see corresponding pictographs.

On the second visit to the Rare Books Department we looked at “contemporary” books, also pertaining to indigenous peoples of Latin America. My favorite piece was Codex Espangliensis: From Columbus to the Border Patrol.

N7433.4-G652-C63-1998-cover N7433.4-G652-C63-1998-Noctli
Codex espangliensis…
Guillermo Gomez-Peña
Santa Cruz, CA: Moving Parts Press, 1998
N7433.4 G652 C63 1998
Text in English and Spanish written by performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Peña, collage images by Enrique Chagoya and designed and printed by Felicia Rice.

This piece “confronts realities and surrealities of border culture, juxtaposing examples of graphic art from pre-Hispanic times to present-day Mexico with traditions of Western art and contemporary American pop-culture.” The book is structured as an accordion-fold similar to Mesoamerican codices. However, it is printed on one side only and thus can be read western-style. The print is black and red and the art style has a strong resemblance to Japanese manga and comic books. I plan to visit Rare Books soon and “read” this piece with more time to observe and pick up on the detail.

My experience with the rare book collections expanded my knowledge not only of what kinds of “books” exist, both in past and present times, but also how time periods effect contents and form.

As a student of the Nahuatl language it is very important to me to have access to codices and other material written in Nahuatl, from grammar to doctrines. It is also interesting to experience how the form of older texts, such as the accordion structure, has impacted contemporary texts and how these forms are used to make a statement. It is important to society to preserve these books in order to preserve knowledge and to allow for future studies of past societies. This opportunity was extremely enriching academically and all students should visit the rare book collections.

From Melissa Gutierrez:

At first I thought it was odd that we were going to the library to see old books, to be honest, at that moment I would rather have had a class discussion on the very many topics regarding the indigenous populations we had been learning about. However, going to see the rare book collections was a surreal experience. Having about 40 some books laid out on tables, waiting to be explored was an invitation to me. That invitation was to sit down and dive into history and discover. I found this experience to be powerful and enriching. The old books came to life, helping me picture and understand history on a whole new and different level. When I sat down with the books it gave me the opportunity to ask myself, “Do I value history?”

PM4063-R5-title

PM4063-R5
Arte mexicana
Antonio del Rincon (1556-1601)
En Mexico: en casa Pedro Balli, 1595
First edition
PM4063 R5

One of the books that I enjoyed analyzing was a book written in the 1500’s. This book was written by a Spanish priest who learned the language of Nahuatl. The book had grammar and a dictionary. The book was falling apart and not handwritten. While looking at this book I wondered what the Spanish priest thought as he was learning Nahuatl. Most Spanish priests believed that they were helping the indigenous peoples come to God by converting them to Catholicism. I wonder how it would have felt to be part of that project. Did the Spanish priest have indigenous people help him learn and understand Nahuatl? These are the kinds of questions I asked myself while analyzing the book.

From Ann Wilcox

N7433.4-V536-C48-2012
Chanccani quipu
Cecilia Vicuña
New York: Granary Books, 2012
N7433.4 V536 C48 2012

The piece that impressed me the most was Chancanni Quipu. It was a modern quipu that had writing on the wool, rather than knots in the wool. The writing was of a Chancanni poem. I thought this piece was interesting because it had a mix of the ancient system of writing of the quipu and modern system of writing with words.

The writing was a mix of Spanish and the Chanccani language. Accompanying the quipu was a translation of the poem and a brief history and explanation of how quipu are made.

The important thing about this piece is that it takes ancient culture and practice and puts a modern spin on it. The author, using diverse cultural cues, was able to communicate in a way that people from diverse cultures could understand. I think that it also shows that there are many forms of quipu now and authors can be creative while still connecting with their culture. It is an important piece because it wasn’t a bound book or words or illustrations on paper. This was a new medium that the author found to communicate and still be effective.

The experience of seeing the rare books, especially in the context of indigenous work, opened my eyes to the amount of types of book and recording methods there exist in the world. It impressed me that there were so many perspectives shown through the pieces. I valued that I got to touch and read the book in person and not through pictures. It was a very special experience and I don’t think that it can be replicated. I will always appreciate this experience, especially when I am visiting museums and see works of art and literature that are behind glass. I will think of this experience, when I got to handle the books myself.

From Miranda Best:

F1421-T95-no.61
Codex Tulane
Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck-u Verlaganstalt; New Orleans: Middle American Research Institute, Tulane University, 1991
F1421 T95 no. 61
Facsimile with introduction by Mary Elizabeth Smith (b. 1932)

The first piece I would like to discuss is the Codex Tulane, ca. 16th century. The codex, originally made from overlapping animal hide, is an early Colonial manuscript from the Mixtec-speaking region of southern Mexico. The manuscript presents genealogical information with a list of native rulers of two Mixtec communities. Within this list are contained more than one hundred male and female figures, seated opposite of their spouses.

The piece is beautifully made. Although we were only able to see a facsimile, it is wonderful to experience these pieces in physical form. How amazing it would have been to touch and see the original piece!

Something interesting about the experience I had was that when I approached the codex, the way it was rolled up was in a way so that I would be unrolling it from the bottom and opening it up. When I began to see the figures, they were very simply drawn, but further up, as I unrolled the codex, the figures began to be a little more elaborate. What I observed is that it was the same figures, but something was added onto them as it went up each row. I did not quite understand what was going on until Luise [Poulton] explained that it could be like genealogy and it made a lot more sense to me. I felt like I could connect with what I was seeing. I loved being able to see the advancement of the figures. It made me wonder if it meant that there was a connection with those who seemed to be of higher power (higher up on the codex) and those who were further down (with less details and figures added).

The first day in the library, I had a hard time finding pieces that I could really connect to. All of the pieces were beautiful and I thought they were interesting, but I did not feel anything super exciting about them. I enjoyed this codex after I understood a little more about it and I liked learning about the resources we have available to us. I would love to take more advantage of this and utilize it to learn more about the history of these people. I thought it was very interesting that Luise pointed out the importance of looking at the “who, what, where, when, why and how.” Not because it is something new to me, but rather something that Professor Dulfano is always pointing out to us. We cannot read a piece of literature without understanding the context and its background. It makes for a much more fulfilling experience.

BX8625-M39-1983-cover

BX8625-M39-1983-title

BX8625-M39-1983-2-3spread

Ump’it u yeybilil ti’ u libroil Mormon: hahil t’an Yo’olal Cristo
Salt Lake City: Dza’an ohetbil tumen u Iglesia Jesucristo ti’ le Ma’alob Maco’obo’ tu Dzo’oc kino’oba’, 1983
BX8625 M39 1983

The second day in the library was a real treat. I felt a connection with a lot of the pieces and definitely enjoyed the experience more that day than the first day. Of all the pieces I saw, my two most favorite were the Book of Mormon, written in a Maya language and the 1997 piece by Joe D’Ambrosio, Oaxaca and the Saguaro. It is one of one hundred and twenty five copies made. The University of Utah copy is numbered 19.

N7433.4-D34-O29-1996-cover
Oaxaca (Wa-ha-ka) and the saguaro (sa-wah-row)…
Joe D’Ambrosio
Phoenix, AZ: D’Ambrosio, 1996
N7433.4 D34 O29 1996

This book was hand bound by the author in a brown cloth and Mexican bark paper. The front cover has a beautifully structured cactus with twisted material to give more structure to the cactus.

N7433.4-D34-O29-1996-Feathers

Throughout this book, you will find beautifully crafted pop-up images and real feathers, as well as other illustrations.

This piece made me very excited for numerous reasons. First, I love books made from raw hide/leather, or other natural materials. I find them so beautiful and real. The cactus made it even more exciting to see what was inside. As I flipped through the pages, I really enjoyed seeing the illustration because they reminded me a lot of my childhood. Pop-up books were my favorite as a child, so it was a nice moment to reminisce. Other illustrations in this book continued to remind me of my childhood and some of the art projects I did. There was one page in particular that was decorated with a metallic material. It almost seemed to me to be made from gum wrappers. I used to peel apart gum wrappers and use the silver part to make figures on another piece of paper. This particular page reminded me of that.

N7433.4-D34-O29-1996-pg8-9apread

Generally speaking, it was a beautifully made book and very enjoyable to look at. But it was an even more delightful experience because it had a nostalgic feeling for me.

As I mentioned above, I had a better experience the second day than the first. I don’t know if it was because there were more pieces that caught my attention or if it was because we had more time to look at everything. But it really made me appreciate the resources we have and made me think how privileged we are to have access to such “rare objects.” Many of these books, codices, etc. are completely from “out of our world” and we have the opportunity to step inside the world of others and experience it. If we had had more time, I would have loved to look longer at all the books and discover what they were all about. As it was, I only got to observe a small portion of everything. I would love to be able to go back and see what more there is and learn more.

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Book of the week – De rerum natura

04 Monday Jan 2016

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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afterlife, Alexander Pope, biblical, blind-tooled, blindstamped, body, British, Cambridge, Church of England, classics, Constance, De rerum natura, decoration, engraved, Epicurus, fire, folio, French Revolution, frontispiece, Fulda, Germany, Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, Gilbert Wakefield, gilt, gods, government, Greek, Hamilton, Homer, Horace, Jesus College, Londini, Lucretius, mathematics, ministry, morocco, mortal, nature, New Testament, pamphlets, poem, poet, portrait, punishment, rules, scholar, soul, Titus Lucretius Carus, tragedies, Tuscan, Unitarian, vicar, Virgil, Wa, Wakefield, world

PA6482-A2-1796-v.1-portraitPA6482-A2-1796-v.1-titlePA6482-A2-1796-v.1-pg1

DE RERUM NATURA LIBROS SEX, AD EXEMPLARIUM…
Titus Lucretius Carus (ca. 99 BCE – ca. 55 BCE)
Londini: Impensis editoris, typis A. Hamilton, 1796-7
PA6482 A2 1796 oversize

De Rerum Natura is the only surviving work of Lucretius. Only one manuscript copy of it is known to exist. This manuscript was found in 1417 in a monastery at Fulda in Germany by Gian Francesco Poggio Bracciolini, a Tuscan secretary to a church general council at Constance.

It is a didactic poem of 7,400 lines in six books, in which the poet expounds on the world view of the ancient Greek philosopher, Epicurus. The object was to abolish belief that the gods intervened in the world and that the soul could experience punishment in an afterlife. Lucretius demonstrated that the world is, instead, governed by mechanical laws of nature. He described the soul as mortal and posited that it perishes with the body.

This is the first edition of the “Wakefield” edition, the edition by Gilbert Wakefield (1756-1801). Wakefield was a biblical scholar. The son of a vicar, he entered Jesus College, Cambridge, through a scholarship. He studied mathematics and the classics. Although he took orders, he left the ministry and the Church of England and became a Unitarian. He earned his living as a tutor while writing controversial pamphlets attacking the government. He was imprisoned for two years for the publication of a pamphlet titled, “A Reply to some Parts of the Bishop of Landoff’s Address,” in which he defended the French Revolution. To support himself, he published a translation of the New Testament (1792), companion editions to Horace (1794) and Virgil (1796), an edition with commentary of Greek tragedies (1794), an annotated edition of Alexander Pope’s Homer (1796), and this, his Lucretius. He published his De Rerum Natura at his own expense.

The book established Wakefield as a leading British scholar. The large paper, folio edition was mostly destroyed by a fire in the printing-office in which they were stored.

Engraved portrait of Gilbert Wakefield on frontispiece. Bound in contemporary straight-grained black morocco, panelled covers with broad blind-tooled borders and gilt edges, spine with broad gilt rules and blindstamped decoration. Edition of fifty copies.

 

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DOC/UNDOC — Part 2/6, “A Mouth Full of Ink”

22 Tuesday Dec 2015

Posted by rarebooks in Uncategorized

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acotaciones, Ars Shamánica Performática, art, book, book art, bookmaking, books, Catholic, citizen, citizens, colmillo de coyote, colonial, colonized, commentary, country, culture, desert, Doc/Undoc, documentado, economy, Felicia Rice, Fluxus, Gesamtkunstwerk, Guillermo Gomez Peña, Hispanic/Latino, human rights, identities, identity, immigrants, ink, Isabel Dulfano, Jennifer González, laws, lucha libre, Luise Poulton, mask, media, monologues, Moving Parts Press, objects, obsidian, oils, Open Book, performance art, poem, poems, poetry, racist, rare books, reader, readers, reliquaries, Sam DeMonja, smells, sounds, Spanish, stereotypes, stethoscope, stones, sunglasses, symbol, tastes, undocumented, United States, videos, violence

During Fall Semester, 2015, University of Utah graduate students in SPAN6900-2 Analyzing Texts: Form and Content visited Rare Books. During the third and final session with Rare Books, the students were introduced to late 20th century/early 21st century fine press and artists’ books. The session ended with the premiere viewing of our copy of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, purchased in September. Student response was so strong that managing curator Luise Poulton, in her typical over-enthusiastic way, exclaimed, “You should post your thoughts on Open Book!” Prof. Isabel Dulfano, in her own enthusiastic way, immediately took up the suggestion and made this a new assignment, right then and there. Bless the beleaguered grad students! Rare Books is pleased to present these responses.

From Sam DeMonja

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

Doc/Undoc photo courtesy of Moving Parts Press

This is a brief analysis of DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, published in 2014, by Moving Parts Press. Our class had the opportunity to explore a variety of printed works. Each book carried with it a unique style and background. Many of these books transcended the traditional concept of bookmaking to create works of art.

One such work of art our class viewed is DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática produced by Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice. At first glance, this piece is nothing more than an indiscriminate collection of bric-a-brac thrust into a secondhand gun safe and pronounced “book art” by its creators and curators. This work takes a sizable step away from the paradigmatic, Eurocentric style of bookmaking. This book has obvious roots in both the Fluxus and Gesamtkunstwerk artistic styles wherein books are made to be interactive, exploratory, and incorporate a variety of media (Backstory). All books are interactive, but this piece engages the reader, or participant, through audio, tactile, visual, and olfactory components. Gomez Peña states the piece’s “interactive dimension may be its main contribution to the field of experimental book art, or rather ‘performative book art’” (DOC/UNDOC).

20151201_154828

The reader, to whom I will refer as one who interacts with this “book” from here on, may push buttons and turn knobs to hear commentary on the various items contained therein. Upon pushing these buttons, the reader hears Gomez Peña’s voice providing supplemental musings regarding each object in the box. The box contains mirrors surrounded by lights, in front of which the reader is encouraged by, Gomez Peña’s recorded utterances, to try on various wearable items such a stethoscope, sunglasses, and makeup.

The “book” is accompanied by videos of Gomez Peña’s provocative performance art. The reader sees Gomez Peña pretend to wield a loaded gun, cut his tongue and ears with scissors, place a hot iron on his chest, and make unintelligible sounds with a mouth full of ink which, according to Gomez Peña, sent him to the hospital. The piece also contains printed material with poetry arranged in a fresh format. The reader must scrupulously follow each word in each poem, as the preceding and succeeding words may be arranged in unusual, wave-like, patterns. There are a total of 15 printed monologues that are lyrical in nature and even contain acotaciones, or stage directions, to ensure each is read according to Gomez Peña’s penchant for performance art.

It is one thing to simply describe this piece, and it is quite another endeavor to try to explain what the piece means. The full title, DOC/UNDOC Documentado/Undocumented Ars Shamánica Performática, urges the reader to think about what it means to be documentado in Spanish and what is meant by the term “undocumented” in the U.S. The word “undocumented,” as it is used in the U.S., is politically charged and portrayed as inherently negative. The term is a symbol of racist stereotypes that robs immigrants of their true identity as members of the human family and is synonymous with powerlessness and a lack of human rights. In Gomez Peña’s poem, “What I chose not to do tonight,” the author states “when you cross the border it is as if your identity splits into two and one is permanently questioning the other” (What I chose not to do tonight). The text suggests that upon immigrating, one always possess two identities, an insider and an outsider, as both a documented citizen of one country and an undocumented citizen of another.

The author uses the terms colonial and colonized in his poems to explore this dichotomy of documented and undocumented identities. In one poem entitled “Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression,” the author describes giving an audience member a knife and asking her to cut his abdomen with it. The poem reads “’here… my colonized body,’ I said… and she went for it, inflicting on me my 45th scar, right her on my soul” (Flagrantly stupid acts of transgression). This speaks to the idea of being colonized by a dominant culture. The author insinuates that the U.S. harms immigrants through laws and economic dominance to maintain a distinction between the documented and undocumented.

This poem, and the entire piece, illustrates how undocumented persons are thought of as nameless, faceless, subjects of a colonial economy whose purpose is to suffer the misfortunes of supplying cheap labor to an empirical nation and not participate in it fully as citizens. Gomez Peña states that suffering, such as the suffering demonstrated in the poem, of migrants who “move from their proper place without documents is a direct consequence of a failed global project, but their suffering appears inconsequential. The fact that men, women, and children risk their lives by crossing the desert to escape violence and to make a few dollars to send back home remains insignificant” (On immigration 1). The interactive contents of this piece help to bring significance to the professedly insignificant acts of immigrants.

The objects in the case serve to give prominence to the seemingly unimportant objects that represent aspects of Hispanic/Latino life that contribute to the identity of the undocumented. There are hot sauce packets, Catholic trinkets of Virgins, a lucha libre mask, a colmillo de coyote, oils, obsidian stones, and countless other objects. Each object must carry some personal meaning to one or more person involved in the creation of the piece. These objects may have significance to a wide audience of Hispanic/Latino readers. This could serve to illustrate the fact that there are many parts of one’s life that go undocumented (Commentary). There are elements of identity and worth that are not recorded in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services department.

The packaging of this piece is important also. It’s significant that so much content, such as videos, printed poems, artwork, reliquaries, sounds, tastes, and smells, are concealed within a relatively nondescript box. The box is metallic, cold, and has sharp corners and edges. The only writing on the exterior is: “Documentado Undocumented.” A parallel could be drawn between this and the lives of undocumented persons in the U.S. Labels are powerful in that they mask one’s true identity. Superficially, all that government, or law enforcement agencies, can perceive when they view the Hispanic/Latino population is whether or not they are legal citizens. In actuality, within the cold, metallic container projected on them by stereotypes and sociocultural norms, there is much more to be discovered. Within the box, awaits a world of exploration, emotion, worth, and identity regardless of the label on the box. Guillermo Gomez Peña, Jennifer González and Felicia Rice have successfully pulled off the creation of an intimate medium of expressing these important themes of citizenship, identity, colonization, and cultural disparity through this piece.

“Backstory.” DOCUNDOC. 6 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015 <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz.” Doc/Undoc | Art | UC Santa Cruz. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.
“What I chose not to do tonight.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. <http://docundoc.com/2014/07/02/what-i-chose/>.
“On immigration 1.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015. http://docundoc.com/2004/02/22/on-immigration-1/>.
“Commentary.” DOCUNDOC. 2 July 2014. Web. 17 Dec. 2015.http://docundoc.com/2014/06/06/commentary/>.

Coming soon: Response from Peter Tanner

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Book of the Week – Madoc

20 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by rarebooks in Book of the Week

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America, Azteca, English, engraved, Indians, Lake Poets, London, Madoc, Mandan, marbled endpapers, Missouri River, morocco, North Dakota, Ohio River, poem, poet, poet laureate, Robert Southey, Romantic Movement, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Susquehanna River, United States, utopian community, Welsh


MADOC
Robert Southey (1774-1843)
London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, and A. Constable and Co. Edinburgh, 1805
First edition
PR5464 M2 1805

Robert Southey was an English poet, a follower of the Romantic Movement, one of the “Lake Poets.” He was appointed poet laureate in 1813. Together with his good friend Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834), he planned to found a utopian community on the Susquehanna River in the United States. While this plan never came to fruition, it is probable that Madoc was inspired by this dream. The four hundred and forty-nine page poem, accompanied by one hundred and four pages of notes is the story of a Welsh king, who, around 1169, settled on the Missouri River in America and founded a great race of Indians, the “Aztecas.” The legend of Madoc is more familiarly associated with the Mandan tribe of North Dakota. During the eighteenth century, white explorers and trappers heard stories of a small, peaceful tribe living in Western North Dakota, some of whom had blue eyes, blonde hair and spoke Welsh. It was believed that this tribe was descended from a Welsh settlement on the Ohio River in the mid-fourteenth century. Engraved title-page. Bound in contemporary three-quarter green morocco with marbled endpapers and edges.

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