The Old Now by Michael Bazzett

Read the full text of the poem by clicking on the image, or purchase it here.

The Poet:
Michael Bazzett's poems have appeared in West Branch, Beloit Poetry Journal, Best New Poets, Green Mountains Review, DIAGRAM, and Guernica, among others, and his work was recently nominated for a Pushcart Prize. He was the winner of the 2008 Bechtel Prize from Teachers & Writers Collaborative, and new poems are forthcoming in Carolina Quarterly, Pleiades, Smartish Pace and The Literary Review. He lives in Minneapolis with his wife and two children. 

The Poem:
Imagine all the moments of your past (both those you’d love to relive and those you’d rather forget) intent on happening again. They haven’t really “passed thoughtlessly away” at all. They’re just “in a back room… hold[ing] vigil/ elbows propped on the windowsill” looking for a way into the present moment. They might take the form of a memory or a dream, or maybe just a vague feeling that the same things happen over and over. Bazzett’s speaker is haunted by it all, but gently so: the poem’s closing image of rabbits munching clover is all springtime possibility, and isn’t that why we hold our memories so close? It’s hard to know which has the stronger pull, the possibility of renewed happiness or the chance to set a wrong to right.

The Design: 
Title & Name: 24 & 18pt Optima roman
Body: 12pt Helvetica roman & italic
For a poem that addresses the transition between moments, the typefaces needed to be similar enough to suggest a continuum but at the same time distinctly different. Helvetica is a classic modern sans serif – ubiquitous in public signage, helping people get from here to there – but somehow timeless. Optima is ever so slightly serifed, more distinctive but less famous, a first cousin.
Using digital design to create printers plates allowed me to reverse the type of the title for a true mirror effect – something that's impossible with lead type. It seemed appropriate for a poem that loops back on itself "sensing [its own] seeds of return."

Editorial & Design by Architrave Press, St. Louis
Letterpress printed on the Heidelberg at All Along Press, St. Louis

Woodmere by gaye gambell-peterson

Read the full text of the poem by clicking on the image, or purchase it here.

The Poet:
gaye gambell-peterson believes in layers. She seems compelled to pile words on a page, or stick bits of stuff onto a canvas. Her two books feature her poetry and her collages: pale leaf floating (Cherry Pie Press) and MYnd mAp (Agog Press). Her poems have been published here and there, and awarded locally. Her collages have been juried into national shows and have been used as covers for many book publications. Travel inspires her—whether it’s to other continents, to one coast or the other, or simply spending a weekend at a Missouri B&B where the screened porch overlooks the pond. Member of Loosely Identified (a collective of women poets) and the St. Louis Poetry Center. www.gayegambellpeterson.com 

The Poem:
Our world is faster and louder than ever. The result is a fragmented, cacophonous experience that can feel meaningless. But gambell-peterson insists it's possible to make sense of things, if only we're willing to "sit silent" long enough to "let the wild grow accustomed." There is, of course, the need for the creatures in this poem to become comfortable with their human visitors, but there is also the need for the humans to quiet themselves. It's only after this essential first step that the speaker can begin to impose an order on her observations of the landscape, in this case the musical structure of a symphony. From random sounds, meaning is created; whether we sit by a wooded pond or on a bench downtown, it's what we do.

The Design: 
Title & Name: 30pt & 24pt Goudy Old Style
Body: 12pt Balham
The contrast of thin and thick strokes in Balham mimics the "there and gone again" elusiveness of the creatures and forces that create this poem's sounds. It also gives the page a lightness that matches the poem's tone. Goudy Old Style is weightier, but not so much as to capsize the balance of the page.

Editorial & Design by Architrave Press, St. Louis
Letterpress printed on the Heidelberg at All Along Press, St. Louis

Happy Birthday To Me, by Christopher Citro

Read the full text of the poem by clicking on the image or purchase it here.


The Poet:
Christopher Citro's poetry appears or is forthcoming in Poetry East, Arts & Letters Prime, Fourteen Hills, The Cincinnati Review, the minnesota review, The Cortland Review, Tar River Poetry, Harpur Palate, and elsewhere. He has taught creative writing at Indiana University and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing. A Pushcart Prize nominee, his poetry has twice been featured on Verse Daily, and his awards include the 2006 Langston Hughes Creative Writing Award for Poetry and the Darrell Burton Fellowship in Creative Writing. He lives in Syracuse, New York, but you can visit him online at www.christophercitro.com



The Poem:
Willy is a very odd guy, but humorously so. It’s hard not to chuckle at his “conversation pit (filled with alligators and musty water)” or the cobra sitting in his chair, because they’re so over the top. Who keeps such creatures around the house? A guy like Willy, for whom a look-alike zombie turns out to be the perfect gift – and therein lies the heart of this poem: it's friendship. Bianca understands and accepts Willy as he is. She sees him more clearly than he (at least at first) sees himself and she responds accordingly. That’s a true friend.


The Design:
Title & Name: 30 & 20pt Garamond Bold
Medieval Title: 30pt Cardinal
Body: 13pt Garamond Roman
Medieval Body: 13pt Cardinal
Willy’s eccentricity called for a typeface that you just don’t see every day. Dieter Stefmann’s Cardinal strikes an excellent balance between the exotic and the legible. But what to pair with it? The companion typeface had to be unobtrusive, yet also harmonious. Garamond’s ascenders, descenders and ligatures offer just a hint of the more pronounced flourishes in Cardinal.


Editorial & Design by Architrave Press, St. Louis
Letterpress printed on the Heidelberg at All Along Press, St. Louis

It's Here!

Edition 2 arrives this Wednesday at 7:30pm

at the Tavern of Fine Arts
313 Belt Ave, 63112

Reading promptly at 8pm:
              Ray Holmes
              gaye gambell-peterson
              Shane Seely

Come a little early to get a drink or a bite from the Tavern's excellent menu, and hang out afterwards for as long as you like.

Edition 2 will go on sale on the web May 3, and will become available at our brick and mortar partners over the following week.

"Diving Into the Wreck" - Commentary by Don Raymond, Jr.

... and I tried to explain to her last night that we are all alone, born alone, die alone, and - in spite of True Romance magazines - we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way.

                        -- Hunter S. Thompson

There is a poem which has haunted me since I first read it, twenty years ago. In “Diving Into the Wreck” Adrienne Rich describes an explorer preparing for her mission. The first stanza begins with a check-list of scuba equipment, then ends with a sudden, almost bitter turn:

I am having to do this
not like Cousteau with his

assiduous team
aboard the sun-flooded schooner

but here alone.

This contrast runs through the remainder of the poem: loneliness versus teamwork, darkness and light. This contrast has also run through my own life: there is no one else. I have to do this alone ... no help is coming, and none can be expected.  But for all that we might wish to be a part of Cousteau’s “assiduous team,” there is also a certain rebellious streak of pride in the solitary challenge of the lone diver.  After all, that’s what poets, explorers, scientists, do – go off alone into the wordless places and bring back something that might be the truth.  And there is a price to be paid for that.

What Is It About That Wheelbarrow?

Poetry is a mystery to most people, and poems like this one don’t help matters:

so much depends

upon

a red wheel

barrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

-William Carlos Williams


Nothing happens in this poem. There are no people who might converse about or use the wheelbarrow. There is only the wheelbarrow itself, some chickens, and recent rain. And yet, the poets insist, it’s a great poem. But why?

Edition 2 Will Be Here Soon!

There are a couple of opportunities coming up to check us out:

First, Architrave poets Emily Grise, Ray Holmes and I will be guests of Nicky Rainey on KDHX 88.1FM's Literature for the Halibut Monday April 30 from 9-10pm. If you're not in St. Louis, you can stream the broadcast live from their website.

We'll talk about the press, read from our own work plus some of the poems the press has published, including a sneak peek at Edition 2.  Since all three of us are also students in the Creative Writing MFA program at the University of Missouri - St. Louis we'll talk about that as well as UMSL's Graduate Writers Association.


Then the big event:
Edition 2 Reading & Release Party!

Wednesday May 2, 7:30pm
at the Tavern of Fine Art

           
Reading promptly at 8pm:
Ray Holmes
gaye gambell-peterson
and Shane Seely



Come early to get a drink or a bite to eat from the Tavern's excellent menu.
Poems from both editions will be available for purchase.