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Colorless Odorless Tasteless
by John Albert Casey
1993. Edition of 136
10 x 5.5" bound in black cloth with paper title label on spine. One of 36 in the edition signed by Casey.
A short story about mortality and our view of time. "As Mrs. Lennox chewed at her egg, she thought about time slipping past like the cars she would see rolling by an Old Dixie Highway. Endlessly rolling ... She imagined it, time, as a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas she breathed in and out all day long." Time, so precious, and so easy to slip by unaware.
$150
Walking in the Footsteps of the Dead Man
By Marvin Bell, noted poet, longtime professor of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, and recently named Iowa's Poet Laureate. Bell sees the infinite in the topical, moving seamlessly between apparently disparate subjects: a spider one the wall and a tractor, a man on a chair in the lamp light, Tibet and Hamlet. The consistent music of his lines weaves the sequence together. Yet each poem, or pairing as that is how they are presented, can stand alone. His considered lines invite contemplation. Thus, " . . . he has an artificial heart but he still feels love," stops us in our tracks. His prescription for poets—"Our job is to let things have their say and to tune the music of the spheres."— is well-fulfilled here. Bell's formal decision in writing these poems was that every line should be a sentence. When published in trade editions, the lines were broken to be scrolled around the margin. This is the only edition that literally makes space for the full impact of that formal decision. It is a welcome presentation. Impressive work from both poet and press. Impeccably letterpress printed from handset Lutetia types on dampened Somerset paper. Bound in full cloth over boards. Illustration on half-title page by Lisa Schoenfielder. The design decision that groups the colophon with acknowledgments just after the title page was well made. It leaves a full, blank spread at the end of the book that invites the reader to linger over the last lines, the poems themselves, and what they have evoked. Edition of 100. (Book is roughly 13.5 inches square; longest line is 63 picas.) 2000.
$190
Sutton Hoo Press Out of Print Titles:
Praise
A Brief history of Punctuation
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