ELM Press, Ars Botanica

sold

Enid Mark’s very beautiful book of poems on flowers

(ELM Press) Ars Botanica. [A Compilation of fourteen poems] with Lithographs by Enid Mark. Wallingford, Pennsylvania. MMIV. [2004.] n.p. 15.5″ x 10.75″. Fourteen 12″ x 8″ duotones created by scanning plant material directly onto a flatbed scanner and manipulating the resultant digital images with Photoshop software. These digital files were used to prepare film positives that were transferred photographically to lithograph plates. The duotones and hand drawings, realized as hand-lithographs, embody both state of the art digital technology and traditional print-making strategies. Papers are mouldmade English Somerset and Denril drafting vellum. Type cast by Michael and Winifred Bixler and printed by Arthur Larson, Horton Tank Graphics. Lithographs hand-pulled by Timothy P. Sheesley. Calligraphy by Susanne Moore. Hand bound by Barbara B. Blumenthal in green Italian cloth lined with green Japanese Echizen Saiko - giving the feel of grass. Recessed square of the Japanese Echizen Saiko with gilt decoration on front cover. A/P in an edition of 40 numbered copies, and 10 artist’s proofs. Fine.

The edition is sold out - only one copy remains for sale.

Poems by Diane Ackerman, Betty Adcock, Nathalie Anderson, Annie Boutelle, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Daisy Fried, Celia Gilbert, Maxine Kumin, Heather McHugh, Constance Merritt, Alicia Ostriker, Susan Snively, Susan Stewart, Eleanor Wilner. Inspired by along tradition of herbariums and botanical books, especially those published in Europe from the 7th century onward. In this contemporary edition the scientific description of flora presented in such early volumes is replaced by poetry. Enid Mark invited the various poets to participate in the book. Each was asked to write a poem in which a flower or plant served as the central image or metaphor. The collected poems, with one exception, were written specifically for Ars Botanica. … The poems reflect the broader concerns of each individual writer.

” … the images … describe more than one aspect of the featured plant specimen. Facing each poem is a photo-based duotone litho-graph of the plant, printed in warm gray and black tones. A second lithograph, derived from a hand-drawing of the same plant, printed in glowing floral colors that vary from page to page, appears on a translucent sheet tipped into the gutter between the duotoneand the poetry.”

Susan Stewart wrote The Elements, this long poem in four parts, in collaboration with artist Enid Mark, who created the book’s visual form. The poet, author of three previous books of poetry and a MacArthur Fellow, called on the long Western history of myths and literature on air, fire, earth, and water; in the end she created a sequence unified by the themes of love and strife traditionally associated with the elements. … The poem unfolds in time as a meditation on time and mortality.

“Each of the sections of The Elements -Air, Fire, Earth, and Water - is defined by a visual image. This image is introduced as a horizontal band that has its own rhythm, fading and increasing in dimension and intensity as the pages turn. On the final page openingwithin each section, three-color lithographs bleed over the four edges of the … spread of the book. Throughout the work, the concreteforms of the sections of the poem, unique to the volume with its wide format, become an integral part of the visual imagery.” Prospectus.

Susan Stewart received the 2004 National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, for Columbarium, a trade edition published by the University of Chicago Press. Columbarium features Air, Fire, Earth, and Water from The Elements.