Kyle Schlesinger on Contemporary Poetry Broadsides

Kyle Schlesinger has a great essay called “A Look at Some Contemporary Poetry Broadsides” in which he discusses the history of poetry broadsides and their contemporary design, over on Evening Will Come. A few excerpts follow, and it’s a fascinating read, with lots of examples.

 

On the Poetry Broadside in the 20th Century

In twentieth century America, the poetry broadside blossomed in the sixties and seventies. In the revolution of print culture spurred on by the New American Poetry’s intersection with the mimeo revolution and a new wave of innovative printers and book artists, the broadside became something of a radical courier for self-expression as well as a quick, DIY medium for social and political transformation. It served as an ideal way to promote and commemorate events such as Happenings, rock concerts, dance performances, and poetry readings. In turn, the construction and distribution of broadsides, magazines, and pamphlets became popular underground occasions for impromptu gatherings around second-hand Vandercooks, homespun silkscreen equipment, and saddle staplers.

 

On the Difference Between Broadsides, Handbills, and Pamphlets

It’s an elusive term, but broadsides are usually bigger than handbills and smaller than posters. They are often printed letterpress, but not necessarily. They often contain verse, but that’s not a requirement either. Like pamphlets, some broadsides fold, but that’s just my opinion, others would say that broadsides are a single, unfolded sheet printed on one side only.

Lindsay Lynch on White Space & Typesetting, for The Atlantic

On The Atlantic, Lindsay Lynch writes about typesetting letterpress and the en space in “How I Came to Love the En Space”:

To understand letterpress printing, imagine that every letter you see on your screen is an object, a tiny piece of metal. Not only is every letter an object, but every space between every letter is also an object. Every space between words, every space between lines—every bit of white space is an object. When typesetting, a printer has to think about negative space as something tangible.

This is where the en space comes in. An en space is a rectangular piece of metal or wood whose primary purpose is to be smaller than the metal or wood type being printed. The en space isn’t type-high—it doesn’t sit proud like an ordinary character—so it doesn’t catch ink when it’s run through the press. It just holds printable type together in a tight grid, creating spaces between words. It is never seen, but without it, everything printed would be nonsense.

X-Ray as Digitization Technology: On the En-Gedi Scroll

Even the act of moving them to a research facility caused more damage. But decades later, archaeologists have read parts of one scroll for the first time. A team of scientists in Israel and the US used a sophisticated medical scanning technique, coupled with algorithmic analysis, to ‘unwrap’ a parchment that’s more than 1,700 years old.
—Annalee Newitz, “One of the world’s oldest biblical texts read for the first time,” Ars technica

X-Ray as Digitization Technology: On the En-Gedi Scroll

Even the act of moving them to a research facility caused more damage. But decades later, archaeologists have read parts of one scroll for the first time. A team of scientists in Israel and the US used a sophisticated medical scanning technique, coupled with algorithmic analysis, to ‘unwrap’ a parchment that’s more than 1,700 years old.
—Annalee Newitz, “One of the world’s oldest biblical texts read for the first time,” Ars technica

Quote: “If words were material…”

—Brenda Shaughnessy, “(Side B)” from So Much Synth 

Dora Malech on Broadsides, on The Kenyon Review’s Blog

“We Real Cool, Broadside no. 6,” poem by Gwendolyn Brooks and printed by Broadside Press, source: Broadside Press Collection at University of Massachusetts Amherst

Last year, Dora Malech wrote “Different (Broad)sides,” a brief exploration into the history of the broadside and Broadside Press, over on The Kenyon Review‘s blog. She discussed contemporary broadside aesthetics as well:

“In exploring contemporary broadside and chapbook culture, one notices two streams–printed works that maintain a populist spirit and DIY sensibility, and printed works that exhibit a “fine arts” aesthetic through limited-edition letterpress artistry and heightened attention to design and material elements. This is, of course, a false “high/low” dichotomy; these streams overlap and intertwine.”

Malech links to the following sources, digital archives, bibliographies, and more:

• University of California’s English Broadside Ballad Archive
• Central Michigan University’s Detroit’s Broadside Press Bibliography
• The University of Michigan’s Broadside Press Records
• University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Broadside Press Collection
• University of Detroit Mercy’s Dudley Randall Broadside Press Collection
• The Knight Foundation’s blog post “A rich library of African-American poetry goes digital”
• Broadside Lotus Press
• University of Iowa’s Center for the Book
• Prairie Lights Bookstore
• Dolphin Press & Print at the Maryland Institute College for Art

 

Many thanks to Dora for providing me with some quick links for further research and for cultivating a conversation about broadsides.

Extracurricular Reading: “Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century” by Allison Meier

Although it’s a year old, Hyperallergic‘s article “Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century” by Allison Meier  fascinating read about the English Broadside Ballad Archive’s digitization of 17th century English broadsides—and it’s relevant to the work I’m doing at Offset! Here’s an excerpt:

The EBBA launched in 2003 at the Early Modern Center in the University of California, Santa Barbara English Department. It is currently focused on archiving over 1,150 broadside ballads from Houghton Library at Harvard University. These join recent additions from the National Library of Scotland’s Crawford Collection, as well as material from the Pepys Collection at the University of Cambridge’s Magdalene College, the British Library’s Roxburghe Collection, the University of Glasgow’s Euing Collection, and the Bindley and Britwell collections at the Huntington Library. While broadsides generally date from between the 16th and 19th centuries, and come mainly from in England, Ireland, and later North America, the 17th century is  considered their heyday.

One challenge for the EBBA is conveying original context and social meaning. In addition to high-resolution scans, the open-access archive has facsimiles with more legible modern transcriptions alongside the messy, old, gothic, black-letter typeface that was often quickly set. There are also recordings of singers, unaccompanied as they would have been on the streets, replicating as closely as possible the aural aspect of the ballads. Whether warning of damnation or giving a eulogy for a lost soul, a popular or traditional tune would be suggested on the broadside for the rhymes.

Check out the article at http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/