Carrying on in Cuneiform: An Interview with Kyle Schlesinger by Charles Alexander
In previous columns I have explored some past practitioners of poetry and the printing and publishing arts, and wanted, now, to turn attention to some things happening at present, among printers, poets, and bookmakers, beginning with the profoundly thoughtful and innovative practice of the proprietor of Cuneiform Press, Kyle Schlesinger. Schlesinger has worked with poets and artists including Jim Dine, Gil Ott, Alistair Johnston, Trevor Winkfield, Ron Padgett, Johanna Drucker, Lisa Rogal, and many more. By “has worked with” I mean a range of practices, but mostly pushing toward, and often becoming, full collaborations. In his poetry, too, he has tended to collaborate with others, though his individual volumes, such as A New Kind of Country (Chax 2022), show his decidedly individual, independent, and bold practices in the arts of the word. His version/vision of the arts (and life) embodies uncertainty and poses questions. The last stanza of the title poem reads:
Motion as a verb
Sound not a word
Like wild jasmine
A long way here
Which way is America
Sound not a word
Which way is America
I posted a set of questions to Schlesinger about his work and about inhabiting the roles of poet, printer, and publisher. Or, in truth, I sent these questions to him and asked him to simply “hang out” in their spaces, and while doing so, write something in response. He did that, and more. Here are those questions and his responses.
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1. Metal, paper, ink—what do these elements have to do with your work, and with how you think about printing? Do they creep into your poetry, too?
Metal, paper, and ink are the bedrock of civilization as we know it. Without the printing press, literacy would still be a privilege of the aristocracy alone. It is easy to forget that just a few hundred years ago a book was a rare, valuable, mysterious object. As a reader, writer, and printer, I am grateful to be a small part of that glorious tradition. Of course I’ve never been one to adhere to any particular purist lineage, nor am I interested in period pieces per se, but there is a reverence for words, materials, and their construction ingrained in me.
As a poet I have an insatiable curiosity about the materials of writing, the embodiment of ideas. I’m interested in the tools poets used, artifacts and artifice. As a scholar, I need history to anchor literary theory, “no ideas but in things,” like Williams said. The practice of typography taught me an economy of language in my poems, which I get from Creeley and Dickinson as well. When I read a poem, I want to know all about the poet, printer, papermaker, artist, typographer, publisher, et cetera, to see the book as a unique form of collaboration, a sum far greater than a disembodied text.
2. I think you are self-taught as a printer/bookmaker. Is that true? Can you talk about your beginnings? What sparked you? What did you have in mind? What surprised you?
Yes and no. I’ve never had any formal instruction in bookmaking, but I have learned a lot from the community by sending books I’ve made off to people I admire such as yourself and attempting to glean any pointers I may. Early on, people like Johanna Drucker, Paul Romaine, Phil Gallo, Steve Clay, Terry Belanger, Walter Hamady, Clifton Meador, Kathy Walkup, et cetera would read and often send constructive criticism my way. Not that they had any sort of unified vision for the book as they all come from different schools of thought, but their encouragement and pointers, “lay off the impression” or “tighten up your colophon” or “try using lithographic ink” were extremely helpful and generous.
I started printing in the nineties around the time that I got my first email address, so there was an interesting confluence in technology. The personal computer (that morphed into tablets and smartphones) had an irreparable impact on literacy as we knew it, and some feared the demise of the book completely—no libraries, just computer labs. Anyway, I was introduced to letterpress by a man who went to Black Mountain College who explained the basics of how to operate such machines. This is the nineties, so all those great videos and forums we have online today for printing did not exist, and in some ways I think the revitalization of letterpress is fueled by all the access to information new media provides, to say nothing of all the boutique printers peddling their wares on Etsy and such. I was mesmerized by the machine, very nostalgic about Black Mountain College and utopian experiments in living and learning. In some ways I still live there.
3. Are you a better poet, or a different sort of poet, because you print and make books? Why do you think so? Are you a better bookmaker, or a different sort of bookmaker, because you are a poet? Why do you think so?
Ha ha—I don’t think so. Though there may be different tendencies between poets who have a professional perspective and those who are more self-directed. I was just reading about the plight of an MFA-certified poetry professor whose manuscript has been a finalist for a poetry contest numerous times but has never won. She doesn’t know what to do with her poems. As a maker of poems and books, it would never occur to me to enter a contest. I write and make books for people I care about, and I am fortunate that so many do the same for me. Shopping for prizes or prize-winning books just seems so . . . arbitrary?
To your question about poets making books, I’d suggest that, as you say, books design themselves from the inside out. I know many poets who make books, but there’s no correlation between the integrity of the book itself and the integrity of the poems it contains. In other words, I have beautiful books designed and printed by poets and many that are not well done at all. More generally, a careful reader, that is, a good listener, is far more capable of designing a well-made book than one who does not engage with the content.
4. Who is a printer/poet or printer/publisher/bookmaker/poet you admire, older (even possibly centuries) than you, and what is it you have learned from their work?
Years ago I started an oral history project with poets who are also letterpress printers. Happily, Ugly Duckling Presse published that collection under the title A Poetics of the Press (2021). There you will find interviews with Keith and Rosmarie Waldrop (Burning Deck Press); Tom Raworth (Matrix and Goliard Press); Lyn Hejinian (Tuumba Press and Atelos); Alan Loney (Electio Editions); Jonathan Greene (Gnomon); Alastair Johnston (Poltroon Press); Johanna Drucker (Druckwerk); Philip Gallo (The Hermetic Press); Steven Clay (Granary Books); you (Black Mesa and Chax Press); Annabel Lee (Vehicle Editions); Inge Bruggeman (Ink-A! Press); Matvei Yankelevich and Anna Moschovakis (Ugly Duckling Presse); Aaron Cohick (NewLights Press); and Scott Pierce (Effing Press).
There are many other contemporary poet-printers I would have liked to interview who are deceased or otherwise unavailable, like Piero Heliczer (Dead Language), Wallace Berman (Semina), and Asa Benveniste (Trigram), who are all heroes of mine. Then there were fabulous bookmakers I did not interview, such as Emily McVarish, Peter Koch, Clifford Burke, Walter Hamady, and Claire Van Vliet, who I think of as poets whose work exists primarily in their own handprinted editions rather than crossing over into the world of trade publishing. Inge’s and Johanna’s work basically exists in that realm as well, but what I was striving for was a representative spectrum of poet-printer approaches to the book (narrated by fabulous storytellers!) rather than a comprehensive anthology.
5. Who is a printer/poet or printer/publisher/bookmaker/poet you admire, younger than you, and why are you drawn to their work?
Crane Giamo is a poet and printer who means the world to me. We met years ago when I gave a talk at Colorado State University, and became friends. We spent three summers together working on a collaboration entitled Vast Acid West, a book that incorporates many experimental printing techniques, handmade paper, rare wood type, and so much more. Each copy is a unique meditation on the acid Western films of the seventies, each page more a monoprint than a traditional print. It’s really out there.
6. William Blake or William Morris, and why?
Blake! How much time do we have left?
7. If you could make the dream book you really want to make, who would be the author, what would be the paper, what would be the font, and how would you bind it? Answer any part of this you wish.
They are all dream books in a way. I feel extremely fortunate to have had the opportunity to work with so many great poets and artists—Jim Dine, Bill Berkson, Anne Waldman, Trevor Winkfield, Richard Tuttle, Robert Creeley, yourself . . . It would be a dream to take time off with a fine collection of foundry type, enough to do a whole book, and let the manuscript dictate the paper, binding, typography, et cetera.
8. If you could ask a question of any printer/publisher/poet, living or not, what would that question be, and to whom would you ask it?
I’d ask you to join me for lunch so we can continue the conversation.
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Note: One disclaimer, or perhaps “claimer,” I should state is that I have collaborated with and published Kyle Schlesinger’s work, and I have followed it, as a colleague and friend, since I met him when I was a guest poet and he was a graduate student at the State University of New York at Buffalo. —Charles Alexander
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Trained in bookmaking and letterpress, Charles Alexander (with ink on hands) is the founder and director of Chax Press. He has taught at Naropa University and the University of Arizona. He lives in Tucson with the painter Cynthia Miller.