SHAPED POETRY.
A Suite of Typographic Prints Chronicling This Literary Form from 300 BC to the Present.
- San Francisco: The Arion Press, 1981.
- 12 x 16 inches
- black cloth, with companion volume, in box, with plexiglass viewer, with original shipping cardboard box
- (2) leaves, 30 prints
Price: $1,500.00 other currencies
Order Nr. 61364
One of 300 copies, the eighth publication of the Arion Press. A fine copy in fine clamshell box / plexiglass mount.
Edited with an essay on shaped poetry & notes on the selections by Glenn Todd and with printer's notes by Andrew Hoyem.
The 30 prints are all on different handmade papers, different types, and, of course, each poem is "shaped." Each page contains a poem shaped through typographical arrangement on the page to reflect a visual image of the meaning of the subject matter of the text. An example is Apollinaire's La Cravate (1914) shaped like a necktie in multicolor type and ornaments. Among the poets represented are George Herbert, F.T. Marinetti, Gertrude Stein, Guillaume Apollinaire, E.E. Cummings, Lewis Carroll, Robert Herrick, Augusto de Campos, John Hollander, and Stéphane Mallarmé. Mallarmé's great poem, "Un Coup de Dés Jamais" appears in text translated into English. The "shaped poetry" in French is a separate printing.
Issued with a lucite frame into which one can insert a separate print from the book. This is a tour de force of printing and page design from one of this country's great private presses.