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Thursday, October 27, 2011

Broadside of "The Poet is the Priest of the Invisible" Available from The Peasandcues Press

About a year ago Joseph Green, a fine poet and also, with his wife Marquita, a broadside-creating wizard, asked if they might use one of my poems for a limited-edition broadside. Needless to say, I was very honored and excited by this invitation.

The hard part for me was coming up with a poem that was not only appropriately short (14 lines is about right; I didn't want Joe losing his eyesight typesetting a 30-line poem), but also one that I like enough to have it committed to a beautiful piece of art. In the end, I asked him if he would please use "The Poet is the Priest of the Invisible," a poem that appeared earlier this year in The Kenyon Review Online. Joe thought it a fine choice.

Joe and Marquita began working on my broadside this past summer. I received regular updates from them about the typesetting and artwork. When I learned the artwork was going to be a man's hand holding a lug wrench, I was particularly pleased.

Joe and Marquita live in Longview, WA, but Joe has a son living in Seattle, so I was lucky enough to visit with him and receive in person my twenty copies while we sipped sparkling pomegranate juice in my living room and talked about music, childrearing, future projects (including an accordion book of his pool poems, one of which I provided a link to above), and mushrooms, among other things.

If you'd like one of these limited-edition gems, you can order them for $25.00 each from The Peasandcues Press, 930 Cascade Drive, Longview, WA 98632. Joseph and Marquita can also be contacted at greens_tossed@yahoo.com.

My sincere gratitude goes out to Joseph & Marquita for offering this broadside at a reasonable price "because it deserves to be seen."

3 comments:

Maureen said...

Congratulations on the beautiful broadside.

Martha Silano said...

Thanks, Maureen. The great thing about working with Joe on this project together is that we ended up become closer friends, more appreciative about the others' creative process. Making broadsides is an altruistic labor of love--it reminded me that part of being a writer is what you give/contribute to your community without asking for anything in return. Joe's work in this department speaks volumes about his commitment to a larger realm than his own work--an admirable attribute, for sure.

Michael said...

An overall idea about the poet's expression for a artwork.

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