Review of Ethel Zine and Micro Press by Su Zi

Book making as an art form has a history of centuries, and even the Victoria and Albert Museum in England has hosted an exhibition of artist books. That exhibition’s curatorial essay, in 2008, summarized the presentation of this work with “In all their myriad formats, books continue as among the most potent means of artistic expression” (Watson). And while this exhibition included work by Picasso and Louise Bourgeois, who are “some of the most influential and respected artists of our time” (Watson), those with more than a passing familiarity with small presses have perhaps had the pleasure of holding a handmade book. The experience of a handmade book is a multi-sensory experience, for artists books are physical entities, they are tactile, visual, as well as thoughtful reading experiences.

As machine printing has become within reach of anyone who can get internet access, our vision of books has become somewhat myopic; so much so that some authors shun any presentation of their work which is not a glued western codex spine with a glossy paper cover. Our idea of what looks like a book has become colonized by a narrow aesthetic of similarity, a type of uniform. Of course, mass distribution and the business model of returnable products have contributed to this toxic view, as unusual trim sizes alone can face rejection by bookshops. 

Opportunities to meet artist made and handmade books did exist before Covid in the small press book festivals, and sometimes in the craft shows, that often connected visiting artists to a community. Additional examples of prosaic handmade books might have been experienced through recipe groups, children’s school projects, and heirloom journals. Information on how to make books, the varieties of binding, of process, are legion through both artist and curatorial sites (Etsy, Pinterest), as well as anthologized in books about bookmaking. Yet, a simple stack of small press books will testify to a certain strait-laced convention of machine production. Of course, handmade books are labor intensive, and the impossibility of triple digit editions might daunt both sales-or-status oriented editors and authors. Another consideration might be the funding and the production of the press itself; a university print shop and a club budget might be cause for some influential decisions.

As Covid influences online investigations, certain forms of art lose representation due to the limitations of two-dimensional depiction; we lose the fully sensual experience of interacting with the work; the tactile nature of many art forms, the sense of scale, the sense of physical presence have been negated. We can no longer be won for a moment in an experience with a hand knit angora scarf, or marvel at the fit of a book in the hand. Small presses have been forced to join the shouting on social media, and while they might be inundated with submissions as a result, too few posts exist of happy new owners of small press books. To those who love books, who revel in their physicality, there are some small presses that make handmade books, and bibliophiles ought to be including these odd-to-shelve art objects in their personal collections. 

  Among the most enchanting of handmade, small press books is the work of Ethel Zine and Micro Press. Each book has a collage cover that itself is sewn, and this quilt is then sewn sidesaddle around the hand collated book pages. As a periodical, Ethel is numbered and contains both artistic and literary work—poems and prose, drawings printed on a translucent paper interfaced in the text. While some small presses do revel in unusual, artist grade, or handmade papers, Ethel includes plastic or mylar sheets as cover pages, with bits of other fiber physically sewn on. The sewn aspect of Ethel is overt, as actual graphic elements of stitch type are incorporated into the book design.

As a micro-press, Ethel has had a prodigious output, listing some 30 titles available on their website. The 2019 release of Gia Grillo’s “The Moon Poems” is so physically charming, that the edition itself requires attention: the image of a cartoon astronaut appears on both covers and as a frontispiece, the spine is blue fiber with gold stars saddle stitched to pages that are hand trimmed, and the book itself is maybe four inches square.  A delight to behold as a book, the twenty pages of text seem accessible and inviting.  In ten poems about the title subject, Grillo’s text includes a meditation from the point of view of an astronaut that contains the horrific notion of people dumping trash onto the lunar surface ( “Poem of the Astronaut”), but also includes a scene where the returning astronaut presents a moon rock at customs 

“Do you have anything to declare?”

I said , “Yes. She wanted to know if the sea

remembers her,

and asked that I bring it this.” (17).

The personification of the moon continues in further poems as an entity forlorn, yearning for “ a home/she could never reach”(20), which is a return to earth’s oceans.  Grillo’s poems here are adept, and her biography lists literary publications. From an editorial perspective, both of Ethel’s zine and micro press attest to a keen eye for a literary excellence that is as captivating as the books are beautiful.

The terribly status-oriented seriousness of some small presses is thankfully absent in Ethel. The online submission guidelines emphasize an interest in “the voices of Women, The BIPOC community and the LGBTQA+ community”, while the biography in Ethel Volume 4 is a poem of four prose stanzas that begins with “When Ethel was the true mother of a solitary fish, dirty and enormous, she wrote this with her tongue in the snow” (40).  The cautious bibliophile can order either the zine or a book for an amazingly modest price, given the handmade nature of these books, sewn one by one; however, full year subscriptions are also available that estimate some twenty books for a hundred bucks. 

Because of its odd size, its handsewn nature, its quilty feel, it is unlikely that the owner of a literary library would stumble across Ethel in a safe distance bookshop. Nonetheless, any true book lover, lover of literary writing, or of art as a crucial aspect of our culture is remiss in not owning anything Ethel. To hold such work is to engage in “the myriad functions of books besides transmitting texts”(Watson); it is to experience the book as art object, to go beyond the text itself into the book as an entity of art, but intimately so.

Notes:

Rowan Watson “The Art of the Book” V&A. (apparently excerpted from “ Blood on Paper: The Art of the Book” and available as a pdf “Books And Artists”) vam.ac.uk 

Ethelzine.com 

21st Century Poetry: Poetry and the Internet by Beau Blue #4

The poetry from the discussion boards and in the Ezines of those boards in the mid nineties was all text based. Everyone was emulating print publishers and reveling in the fact that a lit pub was now easier and far cheaper to produce. POD changed things even further. Some very good independent outfits produced some really good non-print print publications. But the vast majority of those first poetry zines, like the vast majority of all things, was homogeneous and bland.

I started pushing the idea of internet poetry right then.

The poetry Ezines of the nineties missed the point of the internet's power. Some pubs and editors started presenting sound with their printed poems, realizing their audiences longed for a return to poetry's roots .. the spoken word performance. So, Poetry LA opened shop and started presenting recordings of poets reading their stuff and performing poetry on the internet.

More and more people are capitalizing on the inexpensive presentation of color graphics and photos. The Ezines keep getting slicker, but most are still caught in the last century. Pushing paper and ink, resisting e-books and e-periodicals, etc., etc. Depending too much on template driven publication software. Needless to say, I disagree with their approach.

But I feel a flash-over is coming. 

So much for a synopsis of how poetry and the internet are intertwined. Now for a call for group participation: I would like it if some of you dear readers would call out your favorite website and their URLs in the comments section of this post. 

It would be appreciated and just might steer this column to exotic poetic places. Thanks, Blue  

21st Century Poetry: Poetry and the Internet by Beau Blue #3

 

It was 1994 and the Netscape browser was born. Guys in commercial internet service providing were no longer faced with having to put up two servers, one for 'text-based' web and one for WAIS. Gopher was about to die, why bother with WAIS? [It was the text based computer server that fed documents to a user on searches. The app interface was called 'gopher' and the server was called WAIS. There was a competition between web servers and gopher servers when this was all text based. Netscape was the Graphical User Interface that allowed the World Wide Web blossom.] And presto the web became gigantic.The graphical user interface for the web was a gigantic starting gun.

Server providers started to provide seminars, live in real space, to tell everybody what was happening and how this THING, this internet, was going to let users be as creative as they could be.

Providers in a hurry started providing their own content. Some members of RAP  (Rec.Arts.Poems) started inviting other members of RAP to help. ZeroCity was born. All before '95.

More than 75 poets from all over the map, mostly found by McNeilley, showed up in ZeroCity.

Internet poetry moved into presentation websites and discussion forums, blogs, and even traditional print pubs making their first steps onto the web. The landscape was diverse and treacherous. And the poetry also moved onto MySpace and Yahoo and eventually to YouTube and Facebook and other social platforms. As creative as they could be became the norm.

We shuttered ZeroCity 18 months before Michael McNeilley died. I started "Beau Blue Presents" with broadsides by Robert Sward, Bill Minor, Ellen Bass, Beau Blue and Michael McNeilley. In 2000, I started making cartoons. By then I was head of web development for the Stanford Business School.

My colleagues and I started producing discussion forum software and other net based tools to facilitate education and make even Stanford professors more productive. Soon, poetry discussion forums were everywhere. So many template based bulletin board systems gave rise to as many template driven discussion forum software packages and hundreds of poetry forums sprung up over the nights of the next few years. Everybody became a 'contestant' and internet poetry turned slightly beige.

21st Century Poetry: Poetry and the Internet by Beau Blue #2

Before the world wide web, was the networking computers of FidoNet and the Crossroads Board of one of those early Fido branches. Eight or thirteen or who remembers .. but it was early. And the board had a poetry group. It was 1985.

    I worked for aerospace and it was hooked into DARPA, or ARPA, or MILSTAR, and a bunch of think-tank universities. Floating around on the net they used was the topic fa.poetry. Teeny, tiny topic hardly ever used and a complete mystery to most of the nerdy engineering types that populated the cyber wires back then.

    In 1987 because of the growth of what we called UseNet and how many people each day complained of the arcane structure of it, the great USENET reorganization happened. "rec.arts.poems" was born out of that reorganization flame war and subsequent re-ordering.

    A few mathematicians, engineers, physicists, teachers and software tricksters showed up in RAP and started to play.

    In the early nineties the 16 million user USENET turned into the more than half a billion member World Wide Web. Lately, I'm told the internet is half the planet. More than three billion.

    Internet poetry is humongous and diverse and dribbling out at every seam the thing has got. But "rec.arts.poems" is one of its roots. In the earth of the web.

Poetry Commentary by Beau Blue

Talk about poetry? Hmmmm. Today's poetry. On the streets,in bars and coffee houses? Slams? Private lists and forums, maybe some blogs as well? And I'll rail against the ink and paper monsters that won't wake up.

But first is an observation and a disappointment. I'm not crazy about this real short line craze. A line should be a breath of expression. Each line must invite the audience to the  next line or it fails to carry the weight of the poem. At least a foot is required. But a foot and a half is still pretty fast.

The more spoken, the more obvious the line. The line is treacherous if you ignore it. Each line must lead to the next and the next or the tongue tip trips. The journey stops.

Makes me wonder how the single word line smiths keep their audience past the exhaustion of racing toward the end of every phrase.

I can understand being bored with pentameter, nothing moves so 16th century as pentameter, but even jazz has riffs, poetry as pizzicato chops of stones? Will more messages get through? Only if the channel is set to cummings and only cummings does cummings well.