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 

Su Zi's Review of CYBORG DETECTIVE by Jullian Weise

 

It’s vogue now to show diversity awareness, but as we step forward in our social discourse, we ought to consider the act of the step itself: we do not all walk the same, and some of us roll. Literally. When we go out. In Covid, we are your high risk: the woman on your daily stroll with the great garden, the woman in the chair you see sometimes in Walmart, the older guy at the pharmacy in today’s fashionista moment—do you see us?

Well, Jillian Weise makes sure she’s seen. If you think to hashtag #Disability in your scrolling. And therein, call yourself out. As we move forward into our own history, and we feature bipoc lgbtq intersectionality, has even a thought fluttered by for those of us whom even a venture for essentials is literally a life risk? For how can we ignore Covid? We are scrolling more, reading more and those who are not are causing death in their wake. Some long haulers will never again be as abled. It is in our own and in social interest to give voice to those for whom our presence was, a best, ghostly. We turn to our social media, and there she is suddenly very present on Twitter and Instagram, and always glamorous, with wry and interesting posts. We find out she has written things, and it’s poetry and we love poetry. Disabled poetry: imagine.

Cyborg Detective , Weise’s 2019 volume (BOA Editions) has some interesting reviews, and those with a more literary bent to their reading out to note Weise’s work for that sake alone. Diane R Wiener in a review on wordgathering.com , views the text as a reading challenge:

“[…]what is the degree of our engagement with ableist poetry and other writing’s norm,and what’s to be done about this pattern? No one is innocent.” And Wiener further states” Albeism, as infuriating as it is commonplace, is far too often taken for granted, or, if remembered at all, is last on a list of priorities” As further evidence of positing this text on disability written as poetry at that point of  literary intersectionality, is an essay by Anthony Madrid for Rhino posits Weise as a satirist of the highest caliber and mentions disability as “the writer is, page after page, sticking up for the humanity of disabled people, of which she is one (she has a robotic leg). She is everywhere fierce; she is not afraid to name names” except for those who would prefer to continue shadowy misdeeds, our public collections and our epicurean reading have evidence to posit Weisse’s work firmly within both academic and popular cultures.

But not every text that claims disability has disability credibility and we ought not to have to bring a note from the doctor: nonetheless, there are poseurs, there is glossy black vinyl and people who will throw scraps, our theoretical allies. For this, the work must speak. If we read the book backwards, because maybe we are that way,  the poem “ Anticipatory Action”  directly features a collective voice with terminology established in previous, and widely published poems as referencing disability: the cyborg. 

       […]sometimes you all  / come in and need us to assert/our powerlessness//.

       Of course, we trust you (75)”

In “ Biohack Manifesto”, Weise establishes herself firmly within disability culture,  “here I am at Walmart //Please, please can you make/ your children stop following me(70)”.  For while it might seem to be diversity inclusion to have pretty people of all genomes modeling trousers, the disabled are the unsightly, the don’t stare at stare, the high risk you hear about but might see as a peripheral blur.

    For anyone who looks, Weise can be seen. Her arguments are posed as poems, as posts, as a contributing voice to those of us who are maybe heard more so as our communities learn the forever effects of this horror that beleaguers us. As we reconsider who we are, we ought to move to include the voices of the disabled in our discourses, even down to the poetics of language, as Weise here proves. 

Jillian Weise was born in Houston, Texas, in 1981. A poet, performance artist, and disability rights activist, she studied at Florida State University, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, and the University of Cincinnati.

Weise is the author of three collections of poetry, including Cyborg Detective (BOA Editions, 2019) and The Book of Goodbyes (BOA Editions, 2013), winner of the 2013 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets, which recognizes a superior second book of poetry by an American poet

A Review of Wilson Loria's STRANGE PERFUME by Su Zi

Buy here.

    It’s been painfully obvious for awhile that the large publishing companies are not particularly concerned with marginalized voices beyond tokenism. One of the many results of this profit-only view of literature has been the necessity of the small press. Unfortunately, the hierarchical view sweeps even into small press consideration, and there are teensy presses fighting against university-funded presses for readership, and sometimes just for pure status. The reader is left to happenstance, or to reading in genre and the wise small press will posit a title within a genre or topic. Within the topic of written works on LGBTQ considerations are histories and memoirs, poetry and fiction, and sometimes works of a more intersectional nature. Strange Perfume by Wilson Loria ( Breaking Rules, 2018) is such an intersectional work, as the first-person, memoir-toned narrative concerning the life of a gay man is augmented by five letters that speak of a separate topic, of the Cuban revolution and life under Castro.

    Told as the matter-of-fact recollections of the protagonist, Nelson, we first encounter a teenage boy listening to opera in Havana, Cuba in 1960, who then escapes to live life as a gay man in New York. The book’s opening chapters alter in structure between this narrative and letters which detail life back home: “Our people wish to live in peace and all this week, they celebrated Fidel and his guerrillas entering La Habana in the first days of 1959. That was when he took hold of the city, changing radically everybody’s life on the island. Forever ( 25).”   Further letters detail civil changes that usurp individual rights: “Do you remember the Castillo del Morro built by the Spaniards to defend themselves against the pirates at the port of La Habana? That’s where all political prisoners, mentally ill and homosexuals have been taken, and eventually sent to either the camps of the fields (59)”. By positioning these letters against the narrative of gay life in New York, the reader is brought to greater sympathy for Nelson, who can never go home again.

 

  The narrative structure of this work is fast-paced, and a mere few pages after the horror that has become Cuba, the reader and the protagonist discover one lover who had “ on his left shoulder, a bluish bruise, magically in the shape of a rose(64)”. A paragraph later, “the little bluish rose had, like an amoeba, divided and given birth to lots of them, taking over Dino’s back.(65)” until “Dino’s blue roses had taken over his whole body. It was as if the stems of his blue roses had gotten tangled up in such way[sic] on his back that there was no space left, clogging up his weakened lungs (66)’. Loria never names the disease itself, referring to it as “the most-talked-about-four-letter word plague in this century (154)”, and the work’s structure tends to emphasize the protagonist and his doings—a visit to Rio for Carnival , partnership is a drag bar and the protagonist’s relationships.

 

  In the thirty-year period covered in the work, the reader experiences one life lived, yet this is not a strict memoir, it is posed as one: the author is not the protagonist, he is choosing to posit the work as if he were. Thus, we have a historical document written with a conversational style, the confession of a friend. The intimate style of this book, the unfamous protagonist and author, would not make this text one that looks profitable to global publishing corporations, and so such works become the realm of small presses. History from thirty years ago is both necessary for today’s readers and for special collections on LGBTQ topics. Because small presses often do not have reach, the inclusion of such work as this into special collections (private and otherwise) is the work of the bibliographic connoisseur. Let us hope that as we celebrate the loud voices of celebrities from marginalized cultures, that we honor these quiet ones as well. 

The Poetry of Su Zi

Su Zi is equal parts writer, artist, and badass eco-feminist.  She holds an MA in English and has published in such places as Driving Digest, Exquisite Corpse, and Blue Heron Review (where she was nominated for The Pushcart Prize).  She resides in Florida with her horses, dogs, cats, and turtles where she runs The Red Mare Chapbook Series.

Below is an interview with Su Zi in which she reads a long poem first read at a 100,000 Poets for Change event.

In the video below Su Zi reads a long poem she originally read at a 100,000 Poets for Change event.

Su Zi's newest book, Chicago Poems, will be available from Breaking Rules and on Amazon.

Su Zi also appears in GAS 9.