In poetry, small is often most beautiful: The poignant four-line lyric that bears more emotional weight than an entire novel. Ancient Chinese and Japanese poems that transcend centuries and cultures. And the poetry bungalows â€" not near large enough to be called publishing houses â€" that quietly make small-seeming books full of big-souled poems.
Those books are as irresistible to me as the spooky porch-sitting girls of my boyhood who somehow made August dusks complete. And as these modest chapbooks and svelte volumes congregated in my study on the handsome oak desk that my wife’s grandfather built, I realized that most of the books I loved best were handmade and came from micro-publishers in the state of Washington. It was as if I’d discovered a previously unremarked atoll of poetry.
The names of the presses roll light and easy off lips and tongue: Brooding Heron and Grey Spider, Wood Works and Copper Canyon.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times So, why these books? Well, there’s a pure joy in reading and beholding a handmade volume that defies our mad, mass-producing culture. And it pleases me to sense the other human beings that pulse behind the pages. These books own the plain beauty of fresh-planed two-by-fours, all complemented by well-made papers, proper and elegant typefaces, delicate spot illustrations. Winemakers talk of micro-climates, the nature of terroir, when they speak of their wines. And I suspect the same phenomenon is at work when it comes to the poetry produced by these Washington poets and printers. Here’s a sampler of a few of my favorites among these verse vintages:
Since the early 1980s Sally and Sam Green, who’s also a fine poet (and a former Washington poet laureate), have run Brooding Heron Press, making books of austere beauty by poets like David Lee, Jane Hirshfield, Ted Kooser and many others. “Eleven Skagit Poets†(1987), dedicated “to every berry picking kid on dusty Skagit farms saying poems along the rows to pass away the time,†is a homey introduction to a broad family of poets gathered about the Skagit River in Washington.
Jean Marie Haight’s “God Grant the Practical Shape of Our Days†could serve as an ars poetica for these writers. Here’s a yeasty slice:
These things make us
day by day: colanders filled with new potatoes,
griddles and breadbowls, crockery smelling of brine,
the canning kettle, hose and froes and scythes,
rasps, levels, drawknives, stones:
no room for trinkets.
Sonny Figueroa/The New York Times Before it became one of the country’s most important trade publishers of poetry, Copper Canyon started out as a small specialty press. And “At the Home-Altar,†by Robert Hedin, just might be my favorite from those early days. It was designed and printed by Sam Hamill and Tree Swenson, who were among the founders of Copper Canyon.
One of the pleasures of this book, and all the others here, is learning what they’re made of: “The text is Jan van Krimpen’s Spectrum, a modern face in the Aldine tradition. The display type is Palatino Italic, designed by Hermann Zapf. The paper is Rives, a French mould-made rag paper.â€
I bought my copy of “Home-Altar†second-hand (100 copies were originally published in 1978) and it arrived signed and with pressed flowers in it â€" someone before me had treasured this book â€" not to mention the unruly serpents in this excerpt from “Rattlesnake Bluffâ€:
That night the lack of rain brought them
Down off the bluff,
All we saw was the grass
Fluttering where we’d burned…,
Wood Works is just one of the labors of love of the poet, printer and musician Paul Hunter, and “Rembrandt, Chainsaw†(2011), by Clemens Starck, is one of the many gems he’s published. Mr. Starck, not well-known outside the Northwest, is an essential plainspoken poet of work. Here’s the second stanza of his “Late Octoberâ€:
I’m thinking how Rembrandt
over the course of his lifetime created
nearly a hundred self-portraits, and also I’m thinking
how one of those pictures
of everyday life in Holland in the 17th century
might include
a carpenter in his workshop filing a saw.
Some things don’t change.
Paul Hansen, who has also been published by Brooding Heron and Copper Canyon, is one of my preferred translators of ancient Chinese poets â€" but also a strong poet in his own right. His 1978 collection “Rimes of a River Rat†was printed by Clifford Burke, also a poet and the author of the exquisite and unequaled guide “Printing Poetry.â€
Listen here as Mr. Hansen channels his ancient poets in the opening of “Going Home to the Riverâ€:
My house on the Skagit stands empty and quiet.
Its visions envelop and everyday diet
Of sunsets and logfloats, the snow-geese migrations,
Paintings and firewood, Chinese poems and translations.
Grey Spider Press was founded by the late C. Christopher Stern and Jules Remedios Faye, and “The Only Time We Have†(2002), by Samuel Green, is a perfect synthesis of well-wrought poems and well-wrought book. Here’s a too-small taste of Mr. Green’s verse from “The Work That Is Givenâ€:
her hands had work in them always,
having come from a time that believed
hands are the tools of the heart,
that you do the work you are given.
These books and their sturdy and humble sisters and brothers make me feel like Bob Rose. The poem “Heart Lake,†by Mr. Burke, appears in “Eleven Skagit Poets,†and it’s about Mr. Rose:
Who stepped up to a venerable fir,
stretched his arms
a third of the way round, no more,
and hugged that tree
and kissed it, or tasted it,
took a bite of it or just breathed in
its ancient fragrance …
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Dana Jennings is an editor at The Times.
