So I started doing this work, to be more matter of fact,
in about 1979 in a class at the University of Wisconsin
after having spent a week in the company when
I was working towards a PhD, and I went to a conference.
I spent a week in the company of the poets Robert Duncan
and Robert Creeley and Ed Dorn.
And I think coming to some realization
that there were things I could do in this world around poetry
that weren't going to lead me to be a professor of English
and it turned out I was in an ideal place in Madison,
Wisconsin at the time to learn to make handmade books.
And I've done that ever since, although also publishing
trade paperbacks in the last 15 years
so that aren't all handmade.
And I think one of the challenge I'm--
two challenges I'm trying to face now or one, how
to bring aspects of the kind of really creative work
I want to do with books in ways that maybe
aren't all handmade that can be made
and dispersed more widely than the limited editions
you have here.
And make the work I make on really limited edition books.
I've got myself to a point that I only
want to make those if it's a real artistic challenge to me.
And so those books are sometimes smaller editions.
Actually, I did my first one of a kind book
last year, a book for--
it says about a year and a half ago--
for an exhibit at the University of Arizona art museum on--
called Love and Terror in which I
traced the appearance of those words and ideas about them
throughout American poetry history from Anne Bradstreet
to Myung Mi Kim.
And it had just individual lines on big pages
about this size in an accordion fold book
but the whole thing was I think like 21 feet
long when spread out.
And then each page was hand-painted
and hands splattered with paint looking like blood.
And probably ended up being too elegant to really suggest
blood, but in some ways it did.
And that's something that interests me now.
What can I do in the studio and actually
get done in two or three days even as opposed
to sometimes the half a year or a year or more than a year
that some of these books have taken to come together?
Any questions?
I'm happy to answer anything.
Actually, why don't we ask you those further questions?
OK, what questions?
Are you going to be able to stay?
Yeah?
I hope so.
OK.
Now I'm sure.
I'll try.
OK.
All right.
So thank you, Charles.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]