ink-smudged hands and faces

I've been taking a printing class this term, in which we learn all about historical methods of printing: how paper was made, how expensive paper, vellum, parchment were, how books were bound, how the printing press works and how it changed the system, all the way through how digital printing affects the industry. You have no idea how complicated paper folding can be: folios and quartos are simple enough, but once you hit octavo it all becomes a bit incomprehensible, and most books in my time period were published in duodecimo. Eep. That might sound boring (though I like it), which is why I haven't written about it. But now we're doing something that is SO FREAKING COOL that you're wrong if you think it's boring.

Starting yesterday, the rest of the term is us actually printing. We each get to pick a text (sonnet length is ideal) and set it ourselves in type, make our own proof, and ultimately mix up the ink and print it. Then we have to fold the pages up and it'll make a little book! 

Here are some of the workstations: the one nearest is mine. Each person gets an upper case and a lower one--the white pieces of paper above each set of cases is the map of where the different characters are. 

First, though, the setting-of-type bit takes awhile. I take the printer's stick in my left hand and, with my right, grab each tiny character individually and slide it in, remembering to put spaces in between each word. Between the lines we put little lead spacers, too. It takes awhile: we worked for two hours straight yesterday and some people only got three or four lines, though a couple of people have made it hard on themselves by choosing works written in a foreign language (and one in a foreign alphabet!). Apparently my years of crafty doings, sewing and crocheting and the like, have prepared me for the repetitive motion of type-setting, as I'm a good twice as fast as most of the rest of them. I got fourteen lines down, and I didn't see anyone else with more than eight. Still, fourteen lines in two hours' time is a little depressing when I think about how the poem took me significantly less time than that to compose. 

Once we've filled up our stick--for me that was eight lines--we have to very very carefully slide it off and onto the plates. Then we start over! The printer's sticks get quite heavy before we really notice, but the little metal characters' weights really add up when you've got several lines down. My wrist hurts a bit this morning.

Here's my stick right before I slid off my first set of lines. I've got eight lines on here, and each character, including the spaces, is its own little piece. The words are backwards here, of course, but if you look closely you can read a couple of words--the word "ground" in the sixth line seems to be in particularly sharp focus. At the end of the line, we fill the rest of up with spaces. The lines have to be really tight, and finding the right size spaces to perfectly fill the line is often the hardest part. We even have to use hair-spaces made of paper (or equally thin metal, so basically razor blades) to get the right fit sometimes.

Most people picked poems that they just happen to like, though a couple of us chose things we'd written.  If you're curious about what I chose, it's my poem "Curiouser and Curiouser" from the Alice cycle of poems I did for Dr. Johnston's class last semester. The poem's full text is after the jump, plus a bonus picture of a smiling Jen setting her Baudelaire poem. 

Curiouser and Curiouser

I’m ever so clever but ever so lost,

I’m pond’ring to my tiny self.

But whatever the weather, whatever the cost,

I’ve got to reach up to the shelf.

After sinking and shrinking and blinking all day

down here ‘neath the ground in the dark,

I’m thinking—   I’m thinking I’m winking away!
How I long to be back in the park!

“Quick, grab it!” A rabbit: “That cake—nab it, you!

before your head reaches your feet!”

The rabbit says grab it, so grab it I do

and since Rabbit says eat it, I eat.

Up slowly I grow—but oh, I can’t stop!

The panic in me starts to rise:

I know that it shows when my bow hits the top

and the stinging beads come to my eyes.

Oh my—so high!—         I cry my fears,

bulky drips in a flood all around.

The crying rises: “dry your tears,”

gasps dear Rabbit, already half-drowned.

On the table: a label. I’m able to think

that perhaps I should read it: “Drink Me.”

I cradle the bottle. Unstable, I drink

and I’m down to the height of the key.

I pick it up. Quick I stick it in the lock

revealing a garden, the sky light and clear,

with lilacs for picking and brick for the walk.

I’m sure that my life will get normal from here.