R.B. Lemberg's Blog, page 38
February 5, 2012
The Making of "Between the Mountain and the Moon"
I promised to tell you about my magick4Terri Metamorphosis auction, which was won by Izzy (Hani) Jamaluddin. . So I wrote a longish thing about my family, the never-ending quest for perfection, and folk art – but today I’m thinking it doesn’t really matter; so let me just tell you about my process.
shining woman, still woman,
skinwild woman, dreaming-fast woman -
I will go in, where they keep fire captive
in the deceitful embrace of glazed brick.
I will gift
garnet and oystershell to your kinswomen
and ask for their unmarrigeable daughter.
At just under 1400 words, it is one of my two longest pieces; the other one would be the Cycle. Like the Cycle, “Between the Mountain and the Moon” is a queer epic poem.
the eight soft block prints for Izzy's book, with printing tools (baren, ink, brayer, spoon for ink, tape)
The second challenge was printing text and art on the same paper. Since there was a lot of text, and a lot of art, the paper should in principle be able to go through an inkjet printer, and at the same time take ink well; and I wanted the look and feel of artist’s paper. I discovered that some half-rag art papers would in principle go through the printer, and thanks to Jenn received a beautiful Canson Johannot, which I felt was a tad too thin for printmaking. I then purchased a lovely 150lb rag, which I felt would be better suited for the images… I cut that up, and the Johannot, which took forever. And then I started printing.
Gals and guys, don’t try this at home.
Countless paper jams, two printer malfunctions, and one empty cartridge later, I was no closer to producing a two-sided booklet print of “Between the Mountain and the Moon” on artist’s paper. And I was also out of paper. *
* The attempts to print the text at home lasted for two weeks (though I was sick for one of these weeks). I did not mention that Word would collapse every time I tried to print a double-sided manual feed booklet; my husband’s would collapse after printing once, so we were both constantly restarting things. I also attempted to do a transfer, with transfer paper, which kind of worked, but produced a lot of smudges. Both the ink printer and the transfer paper would work fine on a smaller project, but this was so large something always went wrong.In despair, I went to Kinko’s, where people looked at me as if I had horns. Eventually I found a small local print shop that had nice paper choices, among them an ivory-colored 80lb bristol that was lighter than cardstock, but thick enough for double-sided printing and imagery, and within fifteen minutes my booklet pages were ready. Sometimes it pays off to be less stubborn.
Setting up the pages for block printing:

preparing the pages for printing
Pages with freshly printed images:

drying pages with block printed images
I printed a few more pages than I needed for the final product, to make sure I could choose the best images. In a project this complex (and double sided!), quite a few things were bound to print wrong, and did. But after some work, all the pages were printed from both sides. After the pages were thoroughly dry, I folded them into four signatures – two that I thought were excellent (one for Izzy and one for Terri), one signature with some flaws, and one that I consider to be ‘artist’s proof’, since one image was printed backwards.
gluing the marbled paper onto the leather
Finally, I sewed the signatures and the cover together. Et voila: book!

title page!
One of the inner pages:

inner pages
And another inner page:

The Panther girl and her Mountain suitor from the Duet
cover!
And here are Izzy’s and Terri’s copies side by side: the leather pieces differ a bit in shape. Note the mountain shape at the tie of the books!
I am really happy with how this came out.
But this is not all! I want to tell you about Jenn, in case this experience will be useful for someone. The capping image of the book was supposed to be two panthers (black and spotted) making the moon together. When I made the block print, it looked like this:

The first version of the panther moon
I sent this to Jenn, and she gave me a thorough critique of the piece, with details what needs to move where. I asked, “Do you think I need to recarve this?” She said, “ I’m sorry, but, as the final piece, I think you need to recarve it, and even on the interior I’d probably vote in favor of [keeping it].”
It was not the message I wanted to hear.
Nevertheless, I did it. I think you will agree that this is better:

The final version of the panther moon
I have sent “Between the Mountain and the Moon” out, and there’s still some leftover inspiration. Leftover inspiration from epic poems is a familiar thing by now (I had written “Held Close in Syllables of Light” on inspiration leftover from the Cycle). After the Panther poem I wrote two small poems already: a snakey poem for Shweta (“After the Mistress of the Copper Mountain,” forthcoming at Fantastique Unfettered), and a badger poem for Jenn (“Badgerwoman of the Raspberry Ridge,” on submission). But there is yet more. So here is my deal for you: if you’ve bid on my auction but did not win, and want to play, please leave me a comment with your animal and element. I make no promises, but if the inspiration/magic works out, it might result in a poem. Please note that 1) these poems are likely to be short, and 2) it might not work out, so no hard feelings, ok? and 3) the work may come out queer, so please be ready for that.
Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.
January 31, 2012
Metamorphosis has shipped! :-)
Early in the morning I went to the USPS, but I got the "what are you doing sending a package" treatment. Not to draw the story out, I decided to go elsewhere, so during the lunch break I went to the local printing/mailing store, which works with UPS. The lady who works there is not very friendly, but professional - and they had free packing materials. However, I had forgotten my wallet in the office. So I went back there after work, and finally the package was ready just in time for the UPS guy to pick it up.
Hurray! I documented the making process and will be posting a long entry with pictures once Izzy receives her book. Meanwhile, a teaser:

Why yes, it is a soft leather cover backed up with marbled paper, thanks for asking :D
I've been rather Wittgensteinian about the process, but it came out really well. I am happy.
January 27, 2012
Assorted poetry news
My long poem "In the Third Cycle" received a Rhysling nomination. I am glad. The Cycle is the first queer epic piece I wrote during the epic "Ten Days in December" (2010), and to see it recognized (first via the Rannu competition win, and now the nomination) makes me feel that people really do care about the work that comes from my very core. Not that I ever cut corners with poetry, but this one is just… if I had to choose only three poems of mine to survive, this one would be on the list. If I had to only choose one poem, this one would probably be it. Many thanks to Strange Horizons, and to Sonya Taaffe, for publishing it.
And speaking of Sonya Taaffe, I got a package in the mail from Erzebet with this most beautiful book:
A Mayse-Bikhl, Yiddish for "a little storybook", is full of Jewish-themed speculative poems (in English ). It is wondrous, and can be purchased at the Papaveria press website.
The next two items have been announced on my Livejournal, but not on the official blog, so here goes: my poem "After the Mistress of the Copper Mountain" (dedicated to Shweta Narayan) sold to Fantastique Unfettered, issue 5; and an interview with me about the Queer issue of Stone Telling is up at the Outer Alliance blog (thanks, Julia Rios!). There's still plenty of time to submit your work, and we would love to consider it!
Last but not least, I now have an author page at the Aqueduct website. Yay! The Moment of Change is scheduled for May 2012.
Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.
January 25, 2012
inkscrawl, and Stone Bird Press
Some of you might remember inkscrawl, a magazine of minimalist fantastical poetry launched by Mitchell Hart in 2011. Unfortunately, it closed after just two issues, after having published some wonderful short poetry in such a short period of time. This saddened me; though I rarely write very short poetry, I have been well aware that there is a dearth of markets for it. So after some soul-searching and waiting and more soul-searching, I wrote to Mitchell… and as of today, with Mitchell's blessing, inkscrawl is alive again. It will edited by Samantha Henderson. The guidelines are here; please send us your stuff for the third issue. Oh, and we raised the payment to $3 from $2, and we are open to all kinds of speculative poetry, including science fiction. (Sam is reading and making decisions; I am publishing).
While I was contemplating reviving inkscrawl, it occurred to me that since I now seem to be publishing two magazines, I might as well launch a micropress. So voila – a micropress: Stone Bird Press! It is so tiny, there is nothing in it. Yet. But there will be a few things there in the upcoming months, and I will let you know when it happens.
Originally published at RoseLemberg.net. You can comment here or there.
January 22, 2012
Thought of the day
January 18, 2012
Kruchenykh and the Russian futurists
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Aleksei Kruchenykh is most well known for his invention of zaum', literally 'beyond the mind', a word that in Russian came to denote a language and discourse so convoluted as to be nonsensical. Today zaum' is often used to describe especially gratuitous academic prose (which is especially piquant since Kruchenykh, in his early theoretical period, authored a pamphlet entitled "The Secret Flaws of Academics"). The original meaning of zaum' (zaum' poetry especially) for Kruchenykh and his circle was producing words and sentences which seemed nonsensical or senseless, but which resembled 'real' words or sentences/constructions, and thus could be processed by analogy. This actually works and is rather neat, though the meanings extracted from zaum' by analogy tend to be vague.
For example, Kruchenykh authored the following five-liner, which happens to be one of the most famous futurist poems:
дыр бул щыл
убешщур
скум
вы со бу
р л эз
Let me transliterate:
dyr bul schyl
ubeshschur
skum
vy so bu
r l ez
There is not a single recognizable element in this poem, yet it sounds familiar to a Russian ear. I cannot tell you what it means, though Kruchenykh himself claimed that those five lines contain more Russian national spirit than the totality of Pushkin's poetry.
Kruchenykh was also an artist, and it is his artistic endeavors that intrigue me the most. During WWI and the Revolution Kruchenykh lived in Tiflis (Tbilisi), where he founded an incredibly curious futurist collective - together with the Zdanevich brothers and some others - titled 41°. While other futurist groups were more politically inclined, this one was doing things for the benefit of the future cognitive scientists, or something along these lines. Kruchenykh and the Zdaneviches collaborated on some books. It is in Tiflis that Kruchenykh's interest in twisted letterpress really blossomed. Look:


Now, some of you will tell me that you can as easily do this in Adobe Photoshop or Gimp or whatever. Sure. But how many do? Kruchenykh did crazy things with the letterpress. I don't know anybody else who did anything like that. Yes, many futurists experimented with the placement of words on the page, but they all drew by hand. This is letterpress. If anyone of my readers here ever worked on a letterpress, you can imagine exactly how easy it is to do something like that; it requires great ingenuity. He was not afraid to do such things. He invented things that seemingly couldn't interest anyone, and then he did them. If you think about the historical/technological context, then either words can go every which way - if you draw them - or they can go straight and be mass-produced on a letterpress. But here is Kruchenykh in his letter-manipulating glee.
I need to go to sleep, so this is going to be it.
January 17, 2012
Poem sale
EEEE!