Where Poetry and Design Meet
The ‘Black Art’ of Letterpress Printing Lives On
with Boise’s Limberlost Press
For a book lover, cracking open a new edition of a
Limberlost Press book is like being a kid unwrapping a candy. You
can feel the difference right on the cover, in the physical imprint
of the words on the paper, something unusual in this day and age.
When you do open the book, you’re greeted by a
luxurious endsheet. Inside, the rest of the pages are thicker than
what you’re used to. The words appear freshly typed. The whole
affair is tied together with strong thread. You are holding a book
made the old-fashioned way—by hand, with a letterpress.
“It’s a chance to put poetry—which is the most
beautiful thing in the world to me—in an incredibly beautiful
format,” says Native American author Sherman Alexie of why he’s
published two books with Limberlost: Water Flowing Home
(1996) and The Man Who Loved Salmon (1998).
Tucked in a garage in the foothills between Boise
and Idaho City, Limberlost Press has published some of the country’s
best-known and -loved poets: Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti,
Gary Snyder, and Alexie among them.
But Limberlost publisher Rick Ardinger is also
committed to the work of regional writers, from Boise’s Gino Sky and
Idaho City’s Nancy Stringfellow to Pocatello’s Ray Obermayr and
Margaret Aho.
“To establish a really good small press here is
just something I’ve always wanted to do,” Ardinger says, “and
it’s a [much] needed thing; we have surprisingly few literary
magazines in this state.”
♦♦♦
In 1976 Ardinger produced the first of thirteen
issues of his own literary magazine, Limberlost Review, which
was offset-printed at a local establishment. In 1985 he published
his “first big book,” a collection of award-winning essays by
John Clellon Holmes, a friend of Jack Kerouac’s, entitled Gone in
October: Last Reflections of Jack Kerouac.
With his wife Rosemary, Ardinger moved to Boise
from Hailey after publishing that book, and the era of the
Limberlost letterpress was born. Answering a classified ad, the
couple purchased a twelve-by-eighteen-foot, one-ton Chandler &
Price platen press for $500, along with a type cabinet, marble
composing stone, and other tools. In the twelve years since, the
Ardingers have produced about thirty-five individual titles, most
recently An Archaeology of Home by Utah writer Gary Holthaus.
Although Caxton Printers in Caldwell does some
letterpress work, Ardinger doesn’t know of anybody else in all of
Idaho who hand-produces entire editions as he does.
Close personal attention is given to each
manuscript. While Ardinger often receives unsolicited manuscripts,
he prefers soliciting particular authors whose work he admires and
with whom he believes he can work well. After he receives a
manuscript, he picks fifteen or so of the best poems and wrangles
with the author over their order; occasionally a new poem or two is
born out of the process and included.
From initially receiving a manuscript to holding a
finished book takes about a year. “There’s a great satisfaction in
publishing,” Ardinger says. “There aren’t a lot of opportunities
for writers to get books published like the way we publish books.”
Each debut looks so good, Alexie says, “It’s
like prom night for the poem.”
♦♦♦
“I went to Slippery Rock [Pennsylvania] State
College back in the early seventies, and there was a little cottage
we lived in named Limberlost,” Ardinger says of the naming of his
press. “There is a Limberlost swamp in Indiana, and a lot of
people thought we named it after that.”
Such a brooding, poetic setting provides a good
metaphor. Letterpress printing is known as “the black art”
because of the way ink seems to hang like a dark cloud over
everything in the room.
“Every time someone walks into the shop, that’s
the first thing they always say: ’Boy, I love the smell of the
ink,’” Ardinger says. “Every time, everybody.”
From the deep musk of ink to the clacking of the
press, this process of making books the old way is a visceral
experience. “The pressing onto the paper, the bite into the paper,
it makes it more tactile,” Ardinger says.
Ardinger “chases up” type, composing it on a
large, flat marble board within a metal frame, or chase; a typical
thirty-line poem takes two to three hours. Once the press is
running, he hand-feeds each blank page into the machine,
occasionally “slashing on” more ink, applying it to the ink
wheel with a putty knife-like instrument.
“It’s not just printing; it’s a printmaking
process,” Ardinger says. The difference may be subtle, but it’s
real. In today’s world, where you can laser print or photocopy as
many copies as you need and whip out extras when you’re out,
letterpressing requires you to “actually commit to an edition.”
“The commitment to the book is a commitment to
something that’s going to last,” Ardinger says.
Most books today are bound with glue, which will
eventually dry out, and printed on high-acid papers that inevitably
yellow—“it’s just not going to hold together.” Ardinger
stitches his books together with thread and uses “good, archival
quality paper,” acid-free, eighty-pound stock that’s guaranteed to
last for 150 to 200 years.
Ardinger sets most of the type himself, while his
wife performs much of the sewing, collating, and business duties
such as filling orders. The two often hold book-sewing parties; all
the folding is done by hand with a folding bone.
Since 1991 Ardinger has worked for the Idaho
Humanities Council, as director since 1996. “My day job tends to
be a little sedentary,” he says, “and this [letterpressing] is a
job that’s like working like a carpenter almost, going up and down,
moving around, changing things—it’s more physically active.”
♦♦♦
“There are a lot of letterpress printers in
America that publish poetry. The challenge is to publish at a
reasonable price,” Ardinger says.
A typical Limberlost book costs $15 hot off the
press; Alexie’s two books cost $20 each because he’s a well-known
author. Out-of-print Alexie or Snyder books sell for hundreds of
dollars, Ardinger says.
Word-of-mouth advertising is the best kind for a
small press like Limberlost. With the first Alexie book, produced in
an edition of five hundred copies, Ardinger never even printed the
usual notice that it was available, “and yet it completely
evaporated. Bam! It was gone.”
Every limited edition includes an even more
limited number of books bound with cloth-and-board covers and signed
by the author. Typically only twenty-six are signed and lettered
from A to Z, but Alexie signed one hundred copies of his first
edition—at $150 a pop.
But don’t think Ardinger is getting rich from his
publishing venture. His goal is “to just break even,” he says.
“I do sink my own money into the process, of course, [but] I want
one book to pay for the next. I’m not looking to make money,
although the thought of someday devoting fulltime to this is very
attractive to me.”
Limberlost’s first book (and the author’s, too)
was No Wild Dog Howled, by Inkom poet Bruce Embree, described
by Ardinger (paraphrasing a reviewer) as “a Charles Bukowski with
Wendell Berry’s agrarian sensibility, raised on a ranch.”
“The chance to print a poet like him is a
conscious decision—I didn’t have to publish a book by him,”
Ardinger says. “I could have published a more well-known poet, but
by choosing him we made a commitment to regional writers.”
Ardinger says in many ways Embree’s book is still
his favorite, “in part because it was the first. I remember just
coming out and being amazed to hold the first copy of our first
letterpressed book. We only printed 260 copies. We did it at a time
when I was pretty broke. We managed to gather enough money for
paper, and I kind of learned on that book. I would have to press one
page, break down the type, and redistribute it in the cases before I
could set another page.”
A typical Limberlost edition now runs from 350 to
500 copies, although the Snyder book ran in an edition of 800.
Keeping print runs under 1,000 is important because that “makes it
attractive, is part of the allure, a large part of the
collectibility of a book.”
Although Limberlost books are stocked periodically
all over Boise, Parnassus Books, 218 North Ninth Street, and the Log
Cabin Literary Center, 801 South Capitol Boulevard, are the best
places to find them on a regular basis. Or they may be purchased
directly from Limberlost Press, 17 Canyon Trail, Boise, Idaho 83716.
“I want Limberlost to be known as one of the
really good presses from the region—and the word is growing and the
reputation is growing,” Ardinger says. “I want it to be known as
a good press not just because of the quality of the work but because
of the poetry we’re publishing.
“My methods are traditional. I love that old
look.” But, he adds, “I always want to surprise people with new
things coming out.”
Originally published in the Boise Weekly.
Copyright
© 1998, 2006 by Jeff Fearnside
