MORPHO
TERRESTRE
Edition of 50, completed in 2006.
$600.Seven poems by Emily Wilson, with four companion images by Sara Langworthy
Poet’s Statement by Emily Wilson:
The poems in Morpho Terrestre come from a manuscript presided over by diverse genies, particularly, Robert Hooke, whose 17th century treatise, Micrographia, contained some of the earliest and most influential studies undertaken with the new technology of the microscope. Among other influences are painters—Winslow Homer, J.M.W. Turner, Neil Welliver—and poets—Marianne Moore, Robert Frost. I guess the common thread has to do with “seeing” and then pressuring that activity through another medium, like paint or language, or something else. I like to think of the poems as the result of some imaginative transit or trade taking place, back and forth, between a moment of physical observation and remembered residues of it, its associative promptings and grabbings after other strands, the delight in the “things” of the words themselves. But the sound is what sets the whole thing going.
And about the rest of the book, by Sara Langworthy:
The
prints are multi-layered, employing both relief printing and hand painted sumi
ink washes. The printed elements were made from a series of photopolymer
plates, which were from plants, stems, and sticks. All printing was done using
a Vandercook proof press; the printing process itself has more in common with
drawing or collage than with strategic letterpress printing. The end goal was
an edition of 50 books, so I began with enough paper to print 100 of each
image. The editioning process was done concurrently with the print
experiments. The images are hidden behind gatefolds, giving the viewer the
opportunity to experience the text itself, without my own visual interpretation
getting in the way.
Book is soft covered, sewn with silk in a Japanese Multisection binding, and
housed in a clamshell box. The type is
digitally composed Janson, printed from photopolymer plates on Sakamoto
Lightweight paper. The box is oversize, providing a safe viewing area for the
fully extended book.
