Pictures of Poets

 Joseph Brodsky

The Rare Book & Manuscript Library of the University of Pennsylvania has digitized and made available over 2,000 photographs of poets that originally appeared in the pages of the American Poetry Review between 1971-1998.

Anne Sexton

Though many poets pictured have faded a bit from view and are worthy of a 'Where Are They Now' segment the archive is still packed with a plethora of "A" list poets of the last quarter-century.

Hayden Carruth

There are also multiple shots of a number of poets, like Hayden Carruth above, that offers one a peek at  poets at different stages of their career.

Carolyn Forche

Clearly a tremendous resource and one in which you can easily get lost.

Thanks to harriet the blog of the Poetry Foundation for the lead

Haiku by the Road

 Roadside Haiku by John Morse is a series of 10 original haiku’s created by Morse and printed on bandit signs.

50 signs for each haiku were created and were placed along the various well-traveled roadways in Atlanta.

“Morse transforms the familiar bandit sign into a delivery device for poetic snapshots of the urban condition presented and consumed within the brief seconds of stop and go traffic.”

Roadside Haiku is the latest from Flux Projects: "An organization supporting artists in creating innovative temporary public art throughout Atlanta. The organization produces new platforms for artistic experimentation that engage a broad  audience in their daily lives, beyond the walls of traditional arts venues."

Google Map of where the signs are located 

Thanks to Neatorama for the lead

A Landmark in Book Design

In 1834 John Murray published  Bubbles from the Brunnens of Nassau. It was the first cloth-bound book ever published with a full pictorial cover.

In his book The Collector’s Book of Books Eric Quayle says:

“By 1834 the battle was won, and it was then that the first fully cloth-bound book appeared which featured pictorial covers. This was a landmark in book design, and must have caused a considerable stir in the publishing world. The idea seems to have been the brain-child of the author, the eccentric Sir Francis Bond Head."

The image above comes from Princeton University's recently acquired copy of the first edition. Interestingly enough, their copy is in full vellum and not cloth leading me to wonder if it also the first book bound in vellum that sports a full pictorial cover.

It's a Book and the first annual Unplug Day

A mouse, a jackass, and a monkey walk into a bookstore....

Well not really, but Lane Smith's latest book, It's a Book, features these three characters grappling with the ever-changing world of books and technology.

The publisher calls it "a delightful manifesto on behalf of print in the digital age" and it is a welcome addition to the p vs. e debate.



To celebrate the release of the book, Macmillan has created the first annual Unplug Day and is urging everyone on August 31st to "unplug. unwind. recharge. read a book!"

click to enlarge

 I'm in.

Facebook group for Unplug Day

Church Plans on Burning the Qur'an on 9/11

 Here they go again.

This time it is the Dove World Outreach Center of Gainesville, Florida who have declared 9/11, the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, "International Burn a Koran Day."

Outside of the guaranteed publicity, The Dove World Outreach Center supplies these ten reasons on why burning the Qur'an is a righteous act. The Church also offers "free shelter and food for women who want to escape from Islam."

Their request for a permit to hold the book-burning has been denied by local fire officials but the church still plans on proceeding. In an email to followers the church proclaimed : "City of Gainesville denies burn permit -- BUT WE WILL STILL BURN KORANS," 

There is no word yet if they are affiliated with the Amazing Grace Baptist Church of Canton, North Carolina who held last year's Halloween Book Burning fiasco.

Article in the Gainesville Sun, Dove World told it can't burn Qurans

Facebook page for  "International Burn a Koran Day"

For more on the leading role religion has played in the death of books I would suggest picking up a copy of  Fernando Báez's seminal book A Universal History of the Destruction of Books which has just been released in paperback by Atlas & Co.

Previously on Book Patrol
A Halloween Book Burning: Only God's Word Will Survive
About That Halloween Book Burning
Church Releases Video of Halloween Book Burning
Thoughts on the Book Pyro
Act 2: Kansas City Book Pyro Ignites Another Batch
The Chinese Book Burner and the Great Wall of Books 
Burning Books to Stay Warm 
Digital Book Burning 

Image via

The Library of America Goes Wordless: The Novels of Lynd Ward

In what just might be one of the publishing surprises and hi-spots of 2010, The Library of America will release a 2 volume boxed set featuring the six woodcut novels of Lynd Ward.

God's Man, Ward's first book published on the eve of the stock market collapse of 1929, was the first wordless book-length novel to be published in the United States. By the end of 1937 Ward would publish five more novels in woodcuts:

 Madman's Drum (1930) 
Wild Pilgrimage (1932) 
Prelude to a Million Years (1933) 
Song Without Words (1936)
Vertigo (1937)

If one is looking for the origins of the graphic novel in the United States one must begin with Ward. His work has influenced a generation of artists, poets and illustrators and continues to inspire those seeking justice and equality for all.

The Library of America edition is edited by Art Spiegelman who also contributes an essay "Reading Pictures." The edition also includes nine essays by or about Ward. All the images reproduced are taken from prints pulled from the original woodblocks or first-generation electrotypes.

Though due out in October, you can pre-order the set at the Library of America website. They are currently offering 20% off and free shipping.

And don't forget the Library of America offers you the tax-deductible opportunity to buy this important book and gift it to a library of your choice.

GPS Meets Ayn Rand

Nick Newcomen really likes Ayn Rand. He believes that if "more people would read her books and take her ideas seriously, the country and world would be a better place - freer, more prosperous and we would have a more optimistic view of the future."

So what did he do to let the world know?

He drove 12,238 miles, across 30 states, using a GPS logger (Qstarz BT-Q1000X) to "ink" the message. He began his trip in Marshall, Texas, and he turned on the device when he wanted to write a letter and turned off the device between letters. The recorded GPS data was loaded into Google Earth to produce the image above.

"The first word I wrote actually was the word ‘Rand', then I went up North to do the word ‘Read' and finished it with ‘Ayn,'" says Newcomen.

Story at Gizmodo, Man Scrawls World’s Biggest Message with a GPS ‘Pen’

Thanks to @brainpicker for the lead

Long Beach, CA installs Poetry Boxes in hopes to boost business

In a move that the local business improvement association hopes will  foster creativity in the community poetry boxes have been installed outside two Long Beach, CA coffee shops. The organizers also hope that the poetry boxes will "bring people to the businesses to boost sales."

There are "no word count guidelines and anonymous submissions will be accepted...We want raw poetry," says Blair Cohn, executive director of the Bixby Knolls Business Improvement Association.

The boxes will remain in place until "about 100 publish-worthy poems are collected" which will then be published in book form.

Flyer for the project

Story at KCAL 2
Video at KCAL 2

Thanks to harriet for the lead

Next Chapter Bookstore: A New Bookstore Worth Celebrating

 Photo: Tom Reed/The Times

These days, the opening of a bookstore anywhere on the planet is cause for a celebration but the opening of The Next Chapter Bookstore in Gainesville, GA is truly a remarkable event.

The bookstore is the latest outreach program from Our Neighbor, a non-profit organization dedicated to improving the lives of physically handicapped men and women. It is the brainchild of the organization's founder Marty Owens and a volunteer and former bookseller D’ete Sewell. 

The store is staffed by young adults with disabilities.

Photo: Scott Rogers/The Times

On how the store came about, Sewell says “We had nowhere for these guys to work, and the only thing I know is books, So I started asking for donations and looked around for a place to put the books.”

And the community responded:

The landlord offered the space at reduced rent.
A local woman donated 2,000 quality books from her husband's collection.
The local transit system, Hall Are Transit, adjusted one of its routes so they can pick up some of the store's employees and bring them to work.


Gainesville City Councilwoman Myrtle Figueras already can see the book store making a difference in lives of the young employees. “You see the joy in the eyes of these young people” says Figueras.

 Story in the Gainesville Times, Bookstore opens to ‘open doors’


 

The Library in Disarray: The Paintings of Wendy Heldmann

The something that you're looking for, 2008. Acrylic on canvas.16" x 18"

Wendy Heldmann lives and works in Los Angeles, a city where many exist in a constant state of earthquake awareness. She has created two striking series of works, of course and never and barricades + libraries, that take the orderly world of the library and turn it upside down.

We just keep taking turns, 2008. Acrylic on canvas. 24" x 20"

Heldmann's post-disaster world is void of humanity. The books are rearranged naturally, landing and resting wherever the last tremor or collapse leave them.

A striking reminder of the underlying fragility of even the best designed and built  structures when up against the forces of nature. 

 I’m doing my best, 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 12" x 16"

The introduction to an exhibit of Heldman's library paintings held at the Jail Gallery in Los Angeles in 2009 looks at the work in another way :

Library aisles appear in Heldmann’s paintings as they are never seen. Tomes slump in their shelves, books lie in unintelligible piles on the floor, and periodicals are strewn across aisles, defying the organizing principles that make their contents accessible...Whether alluding to the obsolescence of tactile information systems such as libraries, allegorizing the innavigable results of an obtuse google search, or simply documenting the varying degrees of disarray left after a thorough ransacking, “Of Course and Never” oscillates between affirmation and negation of each perspective.

 You might get carried away, 2009. Acrylic on canvas. 28" x 22"

Whichever way you choose to look at it, it's hard not to want to volunteer to help clean up!

Wendy Helmann's website

Prints of Helmann's piece Darkness Moves are available at 20x200

Addenda: Life Imitates Art

Not long after I started working on this story news came of an incident at Indiana State University’s Cunningham Memorial Library.

Though caused by human error I couldn't resist. Luckily, no one was hurt.
Story and more photos here

The Rise of the Digital Book Cover

Tintin and The Secret of Literature—The Digital Book Cover 

"I went from assuming the cover might someday disappear completely, to believing that it could take on a whole new life" said Charlie Orr in a post he did back in May on the blog The Hypothetical Library.

As he pondered the digital explosion of content delivery that is currently underway in the book world he "couldn't decide what was worse, the poor quality of covers when the e-books included them, or the fact that most e-books on the Kindle and other e-ink based readers didn't bother with them at all."

This was enough to motivate Orr to explore the digital book cover. 


Wake Up Sir!—The Digital Book Cover

 and I'm glad he did for a digital book cover should be as an integral part of an e-book as the dust jacket or cover art is to the printed book.


Smilla's Sense of Snow—Digital Book Cover


Thanks to Peter Brantley @naypinya for the lead

The Death of a Book Collector

 

On July 31st  Irwin Toby Holtzman, one of the more prominent book collectors and library supporters of the second half of the twentieth-century, passed away.

Over the years Holtzman built numerous collections and the fruits of his labor can be found in 15 libraries around the world.

Here's a sampling of a few of his collections and where they now live:

-The University of Michigan received his William Faulkner collection.

-The British Library received his John Osborne collection.

-The University of Illinois received his American Indian collection.

-He donated the greatest collection in private hands in the world of Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, in addition to an important collection of Isaac Babel to the Hoover Institute at Stanford University.

-His greatest achievement; however, was his gift to Hebrew University. Holtzman donated what is perhaps the the most comprehensive collection of the literature of Israel ever assembled including manuscripts and inscribed copies of every book of original literature in as many as seven to nine languages from 1948 to the present.

Clearly, this is a tremendous loss for the book universe and this request from his obituary might be one of the most beautiful things I've ever read.

"In lieu of any donations, please honor the memory of Toby Holtzman and the values of his life, by supporting a library, buying books at your local bookstores, and reading to your children and grandchildren"

Full obituary here

Image via

The Leaning Bookcases of Leman

Vincent Thomas Leman has been building furniture for as long as he can remember. He grew up working in the shop building fine quality custom cabinetry and woodwork for the family business. In 2001 he went at it alone and began building art furniture. In 2005, with his wife, Jessie, he founded Dust Furniture an began offering a line of abstract traditional furniture.

Stacked Cabinet No.7, 2010.  26"w x 15"d x 74"h.

On his approach:


"A key part of Vincent's creation process is the integration of function into the form.  He strives to create furniture that is functional to the degree that it may be successfully integrated into daily life, yet--equally important--provides a spark to brighten the routine of daily life." 

 Bookcase No.5, 2005. 20''w x 61''h x 16''d

Bible belonging to Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, hits the market for $1.5 million

The family bible of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Jesus Christ of latter-day Saints, has made its way to market.

The book contains the only know full Joseph Smith family tree, which includes a seventh son who died at birth and was never named. The book was was sold by the family in 1979 and has been in private hands since.

The only other known copy of a Joseph Smith family bible, one belonging his brother Hyrum, is in the special collections of Brigham Young University.

The book is being offered by Ken Sanders Rare Books of Salt City who says of its rarity:

This bible is a unique artifact of 19th century LDS history and arguably the rarest Mormon book, because of the Smith family provenance. By comparison, there were 5,000 copies of the 1830 first edition of the Book of Mormon printed, which regularly sell between $45,000-$100,000. There are twenty-nine known copies of the 'The Book of Commandments' of which the last known sale was at $1.7 million dollars.

BTW: This is the same Ken Sanders who stars as the 'biblio-detective' in Allison Hoover Bartlett's recent book The Man Who Loved Books Too Much: The True Story of a Thief, a Detective, and a World of Literary Obsession
  
Story at abc4.com

Previously on Book Patrol:
The Book Wizard of Salt Lake City 

A Look Ahead: The Kindle 9XXXD

"Kindle skips ahead 9 models to bring the biggest, highest powered e-reader ever conceived"

Here's a little gem from LandlineTV , a hysterical one minute spoof on where the Kindle might be headed.

It was done in May 2009, soon after the Kindle DX was announced.


Thanks to TeleRead for the lead