by debora Ewing, Igneus Press editor
We love pages. The smell, the feel. The font is a tongue rolling out of a poet’s life, laying out everything they’ve tasted.
When I’m presented with a manuscript to be laid out for print, I become a forensic investigator. This is the scene of a crime; the words are a confession of…what? There’s music here, but I have to dig to hear it. I’m looking for the poet’s soul. As is the case for my musical collaborators, prosody is my responsibility. As is the case with designing an art exhibit, applying the wrong frame treatment, placing pieces in the wrong order, can ruin the narrative.
The manuscript is sent to me as a wildling, unpruned. I have to find ways to fit its true nature within the size of a poetry book. I read each word carefully, several times. The baby in front of me represents a man’s several lifetimes. He doesn’t say that in so many words, of course – this is poetry from a master. It’s like looking at a photo album made of words. I want to feel what he felt as he made decisions as to what, whom, would be included. He shared key events in his life, some painful, some beautiful, all of which made him somehow stronger.
When I’m working on a piece of art, I choose a “soundtrack” – sometimes it’s a song, or an album, or a movie. It’s an incredibly useful device for the times when life intervenes. I can regain my groove fairly easily if I know which song I was using. For this book, this man’s life which was lived in part before I was born, I decided not to find the music that was important to him, but what was important to me – what I listened to when I was a wildling, learning to be strong, falling often, finding strength.
