small press social action

Buy the 3rd selection in The White Quartet: Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin.
Review by deb Ewing

grail in a plain manila envelope from Dick Martin

Poet Richard Martin is connected to me via the constellation Peter Kidd, founder of Igneus Press. I heard the love in Pete’s voice when he told me Dick was coming out to Canyon for a visit. They planned to look over some of his poems for a project. Now there’s a lesson for everyone: even the guru needs another set of eyes.

Cells of Fancy is a rare publication of Peter Kidd’s works. While I’m waiting for The Human Condition to come into being, I started fishing around to see if I could find a copy of Cells for myself. Mr. Martin messaged me via Facebook to say he’d make me a copy. But that’s not why were here, exactly.

hear Sophia Kidd read Peter Kidd’s piece, “The Human Condition”

My envelope of grail included not only a staple-bound copy of Cells of Fancy, but several tiny publications by Richard Martin himself. I am fascinated and inspired.

Democritus Highball is a tiny book of micropoems printed on one carefully-folded letter-size sheet of printed paper, courtesy of Rinky Dink Press. It’s adorable. Fungo Appetite is an Unarmed Chapbook – 24 pages equalling six sheets of paper cut in half.

I reached out to these publishers of Dick’s microbooks in advance of writing this post. Michael of UnarmedJournal wrote back the most heart-wrenching email, both good and bad. He uses proper punctuation but no capital letters.

“i’m not sure what to answer,” he said, “since i’m in a quandary as to the continuation of unarmed…” He mentions COVID, doesn’t exactly call it an obstacle, but we already know, don’t we? It’s been an obstacle beyond explanation. Decades from now, historians will parse it for us.

Michael says of Richard Martin: “i am pleased to hear that you are to give attention to richard, the author of THE essential piece of americana, boink!” I got me a copy of boink! but I haven’t read it yet. It’s busy over here.

debora Ewing reads Rehearsed in Oblivion by Richard Martin. The cat is unrepentant.

I’m inspired. I see two ways to serve the greater good here: We, too, can make tiny books and we can disperse them by mail. Our society is so conditioned to instant response. Let’s bring back the anticipation of real paper envelopes coming in the mail from far-off places.

I’ll wrap up with the words of our Fearless Leader, Dr. Sophia Kidd, from October 2020:

I was talking with Richard Martin over the phone today, and he spoke of decades of collaboration with American small presses. At the end of his narrative, Dick said, “Everyone’s gotta have a church, man. Small press is MY church!” And I thought about how my dad, late publisher of Igneus Press, Peter Kidd, used to speak of small press as a form of tithing. My mind was going click. Click. Click. And my soul is going vroom. Vroom.

Further Reading:

We’d like to announce our latest Igneus title: Sighting Icarus: Poems by Richard Martin. This title is available in our online Igneus Bookstore, along with the first two chapbooks in the White Quartet: Hard Labor and Cosmic Sandbox. #4, Hobo Return, will be out early 2021.

Rinky Dink Press presents ten new poets twice annually in their fantastic tiny earth-friendly format. Submit your work Here. You can purchase Series 5 – ten poets for $10.00, including Democritus Highball – here.

Boink! Lavender Ink – You can purchase the .pdf version. Boink! is also currently available in paperback.

Vincent Ferrini, A Tale of Psyche (1st edition) English (buy this book)
Review by deb Ewing

Poetry is infinite aiming toward finite, distillation of the poet’s mind, conveyance of a specific image which wasn’t given in words. Sometimes, and these are some of my favorite times, poetry is words sprinkled onto a page – a dance, performance art in two dimensions instead of three.

I sat in the virtual audience as Igneus Press interviewed poet/performance/artist Elizabeth Gordon McKim on Facebook. She knew Vincent Ferrini, and she told us (and by us I mean me) about him.

EGMcK: Vincent Ferrini…well, you knew Vincent, too, didn’t you?

Sophia Kidd: I met him. I knew him through my father for decades, and then I met him, I rode my bicycle down to see him.

EGMcK: Okay, he was a very instrumental person for me…He grew up in Lynn (Massachussetts); he was Italian, he came from anarchist roots, and he grew up in some of the tenements here. And his parents were shoe workers…(laughing) we recognized each other. We definitely recognized each other.

Stories of Lynn Mural, photo courtesy of davidfichter.com

~let me, the narrator, interject here: Is this not an important aspect to poetry as well? Don’t we peek inside these chapbooks hoping to recognize another one of us, a kindred spirit, free or tortured, attempting to translate what doesn’t fit well in society’s language?

EGMcK: …he was just a big force; he took up a lot of space, it was always kinda good space, it was great space with Vincent. There was so much history there, and poetry, and learning, and sexuality; inquisitiveness and curiosity and barbs…”my life is a poem…life is a poem…”

SK: (arms outstretched) “I AM THE POEM!” My dad used to tell this story, and I can’t really do it well, because you need to be able to see my feet…Vincent stood up one day and said to my dad, he put one foot over here, and one foot over here, and said “I HAVE ONE FOOT IN THIS WORLD, PETER, AND ONE FOOT IN THE OTHER WORLD. AND I CAN TELL YOU ONE THING. I AM THE POEM!!!!”

~and this is when I knew I had to go back and read A Tale of Psyche from the top.

EGMcK: (laughing) That’s Vincent. And it’s so wonderful to see where I live here, in Lynn, if I just walk down one block this way, it’s this big public mural and we have people like Frederick Douglass and various people that lived in Lynn…and there’s Vincent! He’s on the mural with his black hat and everything, sort of peeking over everything…he’s so much part of the spirit here. And just as for all of us, we’ve had people who have influenced us, some of them well-known, and some of them familial; you know, from our everyday lives. And Vincent was a person, certainly, from a time in my life…there were so many questions I had about who I was, and Vincent helped for me to feel myself as an artist and as a poet, and to be just part of that big stream.

~ and here we come to the point, don’t we? We want to feel ourselves for what we are, and also to feel ourselves part of that big stream.

This bigger-than-self drawing of Vincent Ferrini translates onto the pages of A Tale of Psyche. He plants a foot firmly on this part of the page, and another here, and another over there. A Tale of Psyche is unconventional – it comprises eight poems, but some of them cross several pages like rabbit-tracks in fresh fallen snow. Ferrini talks a lot about dual states: in and out, between, like a shoreline.

I keep A Tale of Psyche in my purse these days – poetry living my life with me. It has crumpled pages, dog-eared corners, food stains. This book has to be lived, breathed, moving, because to read it aloud for you (and I will) doesn’t give the whole picture. Here, let me show you how he nearly draws a tree’s purpose:

from ‘Adytum’, *A Tale of Psyche,* Vincent Ferrini

…and how he approximates a wandering, wondering psyche:

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is ferrini-a-sm-1024x745.jpg — from ‘Adytum’, *A Tale of Psyche,* Vincent Ferrini

…so when I read the poem, I cannot just convey to you the words used to create it, because a space creates it, too.

debora Ewing reads Mirandum by Vincent Ferrini

Vincent Ferrini is the poem. With this in mind, you can read the words of a shoemaker’s son as they perform on each page and understand it’s true

for

all of us.

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: