A Suite of Moons
fourteen poems by Ted Kooser
letterpress on archival machine-made papers, marbled wrappers
7 5/8 x 5 3/4 x 1/2 inches (closed), 21 pages
130 fine copies (signed by poet and printer)
Please scroll down for images of and details about this book.
Contents
A New Moon
Three A.M.
Motel Moon
Moonplay
Pandemic Moon, March, 2020
Bed & Breakfast
Sunset with Moon
No Moon; Instead, a Lake of Starlight
Another New Moon
A Walk with My Shadow
Waking to Moonlight in Clouds
A Winter Morning
A Moonrise
Dark of the Moon
This version pictured above is OUT OF PRINT: Fifty-five deluxe copies, shown above, were hand printed in two colors (blue/black for text and sunset orange for title and folios) from handset Romulus type with the title in Murray Hill. These books feature three handmade papers: Twinrocker cotton for text, an orange watermarked cotton made by the printer/binder at Constellation Studios for endsheet/wrappers, and a flax sheet formed and colored by Zoë Goehring at Cave Paper for covers. The three signatures, first and last wrapped in the watermarked orange, were sewn by hand without adhesives using a French link stitch over paper tapes. The header tape bearing the title is woven into the front cover.
COPIES AVAILABLE of this version (pictured above): One hundred thirty fine copies, pictured above, were hand printed in a blue/black ink from Romulus and Murray Hill types and feature three machine-made papers from the French Paper Company of Niles, Michigan — Parchtone for text, Orange Kraft-Tone for endsheets, and Construction cover stock. The long-stitch hand sewing, another non-adhesive binding, was wrapped in French marble #924. A press-cut window on the wrapper reveals the title, and a small circle punched in the wrapper’s spine indicates the book’s head.
Motel Moon (an excerpt)
THERE’S OFTEN one light left on behind
the great black door that is the sky,
a glow through a peephole as I pass by
on tiptoe, on my way toward my own
dark door …
photo by Joseph Gascho
Ted Kooser, a former United States Poet Laureate (2004-2006) and Pulitzer Prize winner, has recently retired from teaching at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln (UNL). For the past fifteen years he edited the weekly newspaper column, American Life in Poetry, jointly sponsored by the UNL English Department, The Library of Congress, and the Poetry Foundation. He has published sixteen books of poetry.
Please visit Ted Kooser’s website here.
Denise began setting and printing this suite of poems in August of 2020. In December, she designed and made the orange paper for the special (fine) copies. Her sheets, watermarked with moons, were pulled from beaten cotton linters with pieces of worn crocheted doilies and embroidery floss added in the deckle box. By February, she had finished printing and began to fold, cut, gather, and sew the signatures into covers. Both states of the edition were completed in April of 2021.