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Voices of Marrakesh
By Elise Canetti
Translated by J. A. Underwood
Etchings by William T. Wiley
Photographs by Karl Bissinger
Afterword by Ferdinand Protzman
1999. Edition of 300.
Letterpress from Goudy Old Style on Mohawk Superfine. Etchings are on Rives Lightweight mounted on Fabriano Ingres to form a border. Photographs are printed duotone and four-color offset lithography. Edition of 350 copies for sale, signed by artist and photographer, of which 50 are accompanied by the full-sized etching. Book edition is bound in brown cloth and red paper over boards with illustrated cover and presented in a paper envelope. The Book/Print edition is bound as above but with a leather spine and presented in a slipcase. Both casings feature an illustrative fragment of the etching. Sumptuous.
Book Edition:
Drawn ravel record of a visit by Elias Canetti. Translated from the German by J. A. Underwood. Etchings by William T. Wiley. Photographs by Karl Bissinger. Afterword by Ferdinand Protzman. This edition was the result of a fortuitous coming together of elements. Wiley, a renowned artist and an avid reader of Canetti, suggested the project to publisher Andrew Hoyem. On hearing of it, a friend of the Press told Hoyem that his father, Bissinger, had taken a series of photographs of Marrakesh in the late 1940s while on assignment for Flair magazine. Bissinger's photos transport the reader to the exotic and ancient walled city of Morocco, while Wiley's intaglio prints illustrate the human encounters related by Canetti's narrator.
Nobel Prize-winning author Canetti is described as a radical humanist, an inexhaustible source of insights, revelations, and unflinching observations. His descriptions are vivid, yet economical to the point of minimalism. The book provides a visceral sense of the people and the place as he explores the themes that typify his work: death, crowds, transformation, survival, and the smell and sounds of a city's life. Indeed, the book rings with sound as you hear the voices of Marrakesh's Arab, European, and Jewish residents. Canetti, whose first language was Ladino, a Judeo-Spanish dialect, revels in the musicality and sociological function of language. He listens just as closely to his own thoughts and describes them with relentless precision. His musings are woven, at times, so seamlessly with the city's sounds that they become as one.
At Hoyem's suggestion, Wiley created one large etching to be partitioned into six sections, each illustrating a story from the text: the rabid camel, the door knocker bound with rags, the veiled woman, et al. The full-sized etching is an integrated collage of portraits with an underlying map of the city (made in 1953) printed in earthy red. Each segment also functions as an integral whole. Bissinger's twenty-eight black-and-white photographs and color frontispiece depict the diversity of the city: gateways through the walls of Marrakesh; street scenes; an open-air bakery; rug weavers; shops in the souks; women who are Favorites of the Sultan lounging at the palace attended by eunuchs; prostitutes taking tea; letter writers taking dictation; a barber and a snake charmer; the summer palace of El Galoui; the Atlas Mountains; and more.
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Love Affairs
By Diana O'Hehir
Mill Valley, California: Depot Books, Inc, 2002. No limitation stated.
6 x 9" with 28 pages in tan wrappers. Sewn binding. Printed at Arion Press.
Diana O'Hehir is the author of five books of poems and two novels. She is the editor of Mother Songs, a poetry anthology. In 1986, her novel, I Wish This War Were Over, was runner-up for the Pulitzer Prize. Her book of poems, Spells For Not Dying Again, received the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award in 1997. Earlier collections of poems, Summoned, The Power To Change Geography and Home Free won awards from the Poetry Society of America and University of Missouri Press.
This poetry chapbook is divided into three sections: Ghosts; Revenges; Recognizing.
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