PRESS HISTORY (1997-2004)
Red Dragonfly Press, press-in-residence at the Anderson Center since the fall of 1999, is a small literary press that produces letterpress printed limited edition books of poetry. The press has now been around for eight years, still mostly beginning it seems-though much has happened through these first years. The following is a brief account of the journey so far.
To start with, in the pre-press days, having in my possession unpublished manuscripts written by poets who were mentoring me at the craft of writing and knowing that they had given up on the task of finding a publisher, I set about putting them into book form. I was cursed with a somewhat innate urge to do this. That's the best explanation I can put forth. So I toyed and experimented with printing small batches of books (usually less than a dozen) using what means were immediate and inexpensive, namely a desktop computer & printer, late night runs to Kinko's self-serve copiers, and off-the-shelf papers. I was happy, at that point, to construct books that had a slight resemblance to books. This led directly to an interest in the craft of handmade books and the tradition of printing. Then came the idea of launching a small press. I have a hard time remembering, but I think the name may have come a few seconds prior to the idea of a press.
Red Dragonfly Press began in 1997 with the publication of Hunting My Home Town by Dale Jacobson. The pages of this book were set using a word processor, printed, then photocopied to make an edition of 100 books. Japanese block-print paper was used for the cover. It was bound using the traditional Japanese four-hole binding. I remain quite fond of this book, knowing the strength of the poem printed carries far more than its share of the burden in the marriage.
Since then the press has printed many books. These range in size from pamphlets containing a single poem to a full-length books-the majority fall somewhere between, at the chapbook size, a size that seems perfectly fitted to letterpress work. Additionally, the press prints broadsides, bookmarks, cards, and other ephemera.
The majority of the work that the press undertakes is solicited from writers. Only on rare occasions have I been swayed and excited enough by work sent to me out of the blue to undertake its publication. There is something tyrannical about manuscripts that arrive un-asked for, something of the undistilled & presumptuous ego. And I have come to feel that having to judge and make the decision to reject or accept this unbidden work leads away from the dream & vision I had in starting the press, that there is a threat of weathering or erosion. And I know from experience that the energy it takes to make books in this manner dissipates when (for whatever reason) I don't choose work that I love or have long admired. All this makes little sense to people familiar with typical small businesses or those who are thinking of publishers like Random House or Reader's Digest. So a small digression on the economics of publishing poetry might be helpful at this point. First off, it could simply be said that there is no economics. Simply ask yourself, or five people at random on the street, when it was you last bought a book of poems. Alan Swallow, in an essay entitled 'The problems of printing poetry' (1957), puts forth three ways of staying in business and continuing to print poetry. He suggests that the author could be asked to help defray the costs or that the press hunt for "angels." His third suggestion is "to substitute work for money." This has been the premise from which I have approached publishing and is the reason for pursuing letterpress printing (not for aesthetic or artsy reasons, at least not at the beginning). Here is Alan Swallows elaboration:
"This has been the method by which I have continued to publish poetry, with an interval of two years for Army service, for seventeen years. My original premise was that if I could reduce the out-of-pocket expenses to payment for materials and work which I could not perform, I could sell enough copies to pay that out-of-pocket expense and a royalty to the author. This has worked fairly consistently. I taught myself to print, I printed at first from hand set type on a hand press, thus reducing costs to paper, postage, and, usually, binding."
Many of the poets I have chosen to publish have some connection to the late poet Thomas McGrath. As McGrath's work is so important to me, personally, I've always felt fortunate to have a hand in the propagation and preservation of this eclectic and maverick group of poets. In addition, the press has published the first collections of several emerging poets-Vicki Graham's Alembic (a finalist for the 2001 MN Book Awards in poetry), Michael Walsh's Adam Walking the Garden (2003), and Larry Gavin's Necessities (due out late this year). Poetry in translation is another major interest of the press. In 2000, a bilingual collection of poems by the Chilean poet Gonzalo Rojas was printed (a finalist for the MN Book Awards in fine press), Horace's Poem on Anger translated by Robert Bly, and Death Searches for You a Second Time by Romanian poet Carmelia Leonte (her first collection in English) was finished recently. Future volumes of translations include: The Wavering Scales, a long poem about the German occupation of Greece by Yannis Ritsos; an illustrated edition of poems by the Norwegian poet Olav Hauge.
Beyond my own dreaming and labors, the press took shape thanks to the gifts and generosity of many people. First and foremost among these supporters is my wife who has gone so far as to encourage me in this rich but exceedingly non-prosperous life. Other individuals and organizations have played key roles in sustaining and helping the press.
An early and fateful gesture was the gift of a Chandler & Price Pilot press from the retiring printer Don Olsen and his Ox Head Press in Browerville, Minnesota. This changed everything of course. With a small box of pied (dumped) Century Schoolbook type and enough printing odds and ends to get started on this little hand press, I was soon printing. The very first item I printed was a bookmark with text excerpted from one of my poet-friend Roger Parish's outlandish, abbreviated, and often surreal email messages. Every once in a while I happen to take down a book from my shelves that has one of those bookmarks in it-always a great surprise. This all took place in our tiny Burnsville apartment late summer and fall of 1998.
It wasn't long before I learned of the handful of typefoundries still selling newly cast type and my first font of type arrived-small fonts of 10 pt. Garamond Roman & Italic from the Quaker City type foundry. Also about this time I made my first visit to Bill McGarry in Chaska. McGarry, a retired newspaper man, traffics in old printing equipment and type. I remember bringing home a small metal type cabinet that held 20 plastic type trays full of type.
Because of the expense of type and because of the challenges of learning how to use a specific typeface properly, it was somewhat obvious that I should choose a single typeface and start procurring the different sizes needed for text and for display. The decision to use a single typeface was reinforced by Don Olsen who used Goudy Old Style exclusively for over thirty years! After some deliberation and perusing of type catalogues I settled upon Kennerley Old Style as the house face. Kennerley was designed by Frederick W. Goudy for the printing of The Doors in the Wall by H.G. Wells. The first book printed in Kennerley was printed the summer of 1999 in the basement of our Northfield home. This book was a collection of haiku by Sid Gershgoren entitled The Wandering Heron. 100 hundred copies were printed, set in 14 pt Kennerley Oldstyle Italic with an introduction by Thomas McGrath set in 8 pt Kennerley Oldstyle. The 8 pt type was sorted from coffee cans of pied type I had bought for something like a dollar a pound. Luckily my eyes weren't ruined by this endeavor.
In 1999, Red Dragonfly Press was incorporated as a literary non-profit- qualifying the press for certain grants. Because so many people ask about this I feel I should say that this doesn't mandate that the press operate at a loss, nor that it is free of paying its share of taxes. A board of directors was chosen, and I was appointed as executive director-the white collar title for the blue collar job of running the press. I often joke that my title would be more accurate if it also included bookkeeper, paper cutter, printer, type setter, book binder, and janitor for Red Dragonfly Press. Also around this same time, Robert Hedin suggested the Anderson Center as a possible home for the press. This was timely. I had the opportunity to purchase a large platen press which could not be moved into my basement. And my wife, when she saw me measuring up the garage, said quite definitively, "Sorry-no!" So I moved the 2000 pound press (purchased from Gaylord Schanilec, a fine press printer and wood engraver in Stockholm, Wisconsin) to the Anderson Center with the help of a strong crew of people. I remember needing to take down a wall and put it back up in order to fit it into my original space there.
So, all of a sudden, Red Dragonfly Press was press-in-residence at the Anderson Center. The press left the seclusion and secrecy of my basement for a much larger and more public basement. And then, after little more than a year, relocated several hundred yards into one of the newly remodeled studios-at ground level and with windows. The role of press-in-residence is fulfilled by hosting poetry readings twice a year at the Anderson Center art shows, by production of a pamphlet for the annual A. P. Anderson Award, demonstrating the press to the children who attend the annual Children's Book Festival, and by an open invitation to resident poets staying at the Anderson Center to spend an afternoon setting type and printing one of their poems. The press has also had two apprentices: Anik See from Calgary (who has gone on to start her own press, Fox Run Press) and Adrian Smith from Ohio.
These first few years have been largely growing years, years of accumulation. Type cabinets and a paper cutter were purchased. A Challenge proofing press was donated by Beverley Voldseth of Goodhue. Cases of various type were picked up now and then. Another type cabinet and a steel composing table were donated by Peg Hansen of Red Wing. And when the press had any extra money it was invested in new type or paper.
Just over a year ago, the press purchased over a thousand pounds of type from Chad Oness of Sutton Hoo Press (a printer of fine literary editions in Winona) who insisted he was simply tired of moving it. The majority of this type consisted of a grand range and variety of Caslon faces from 10 point to 72 point, even some Caslon Old Face cast in hard steel at the Stephenson Blake type foundry in England. But there was also a run of Goudy Text and large amounts of text sizes of Janson and Cochin. With this aquisition, I feel, Red Dragonfly Press suddenly came of age as a small press. So, with printing presses, paper cutter, and a growing hoard of good type the print shop is near complete, and full attention can be turned to books.
Handsetting metal type is as strange a labor in the current world as, perhaps, harvesting grain with a scythe and processing it on a threshing floor. Not longer than fifty years ago there was a large population of compositors in all parts of the printing industry-from Gutenberg until the invention of offset printing and computers, books were printed from metal type. I find setting type both jarring and therapeutic due to the great discrepancy between the plodding movements of my hands and the furious spooling of my thoughts as I first come to this work. Though soon I settle in at this task of holding words in my mind until my hands can spell them. The eye, as time passes, becomes witness to the building of a block of text, and the arms feel the accumulation of weight letter by letter and line by line in the composing stick. So, the hours go by, entire symphonies play themselves out into the quiet until the page is standing.
The knots in the shoulder, the tired fingers, and the ebbing eyes all lead up to and are rewarded by the magic of putting the type to paper with ink. No matter the thousands of sheets I've fed into the platen press or pulled through the proof press, I still have a great urge to lift and inspect each one. This is at the heart of the charm of letterpress printing, an approach to an answer to why this tradition continues in an era of computers and lightning printers. Warren Chappell sums this up nicely (as quoted in Harry Duncan's The Technology of Hand Printing: a burden for the craftsman): "A good page of letterpress is an original. It is not a picture of a page of type, it is not a reproduction, it is an impression made from the type itself..."
The big platen press, with its thick cast iron arms and oversized flywheels, reminds me of the ancient tractors and farm machinery I grew up knowing. And there is as well the aura of the age of steam engines and older times about the press and the tools of this trade: the steel key worn to a polish by my hand tightening and loosening the quoins, the composing stick and type gauges, the shining heft of well worn galley trays, and, of course, the pieces of metal type, some close to 150 years old. There is a fascination with these items that, to me, is linked to the leftover brass parts, the harness and trace, the mysterious tools I would often discover stored away in the shadowed corners of our barn and sheds, bringing a scent of history and dust. And there is a satisfaction in putting these outmoded presses and tools to their proper work.
From conception to finish a book can take well over a year to bring to completion. Many decisions need to be made before any printing can begin. A familiarity with the manuscript is crucial to making the right choice of page size and shape, what typeface to use, what the binding should be, what paper should be used-all these choices have something to do with how the text is carried across to the reader. There are always compromises to make. For instance, it is expensive to buy new type, or invest in a new typeface because it would be the most appropriate for the text, and, because there are so few foundries around, many important text faces are no longer available any more. The same goes for paper. Because there are so few letterpress printers, there is no market for good letterpress paper, there are no mills that make paper for letterpress printing. Luckily, there are a number of papers produced for other purposes that work well for letterpress-handmade papers (expensive, really expensive), lightweight watercolor papers work well if dampened, some of the high end book papers manufactured for offset printing, and here I'm thinking of the mould made papers of France, Italy, and Germany.
I seldom have enough type to set an entire book, so I have to procede a few pages at a time by printing then cleaning and distributing the type back into its case then setting the next page or pages. A familiar cycle. Often there is the added labor of printing on dampened paper. The sheets for a day's printing are dampened in advance by interleaving sheets that have been dipped through water between dry sheets and placing weight onto the pile. After being printed these sheets are dried by placing them in blotters. There are two very good reasons for doing this: 1) the type prints better & takes less ink (& the type is less likely to be over-inked) 2) the dampened paper is soft and does less damage to the type. An additional nicety is that the texture of the paper is enhanced by this process.
Once the pages are printed and dried, the pages are folded and collated into signatures and bound. For some books, this step can easily take more time then all the other steps. For others, such as the single signature chapbooks, it's a breeze. I often sit with a little table watching football and stitching books. Some people knit, I sew books. Then comes the most difficult step of all-trying to find people to buy them. Because the edition size is so small, 100 to 500 copies, and because these books are just not like mass-market paperbacks, they rarely find their way into bookstores. That's just fine. But, because of this, the burden of handselling is taken up, in part, by the authors themselves. The press does its share by printing announcements and getting the word out, but it is crucial that the authors do some readings and literally carry their books to their readers.
Beyond the truly satisfying labors of book design, the meticulous setting of type by hand, the slow repetitions of printing, and the solace of binding-the poems and their words which I grow so familiar with day by day, the unfolding study of the history of printing, and the friendships made with poets and other printers are a continuing reward. This is what sustains me, this learning, this richness of experience. I find I'm more excited by each next book, by the sheer possibility that dwells in this equipment and the knowledge of this craft. The current and upcoming projects include collections by local poets Diane Jarvenpa, Joyce Sutphen, and Louis Jenkins, as well as a short story by Barry Lopez and a bibliography and tribute to Ox Head Press. What could be better than that?