lone goose press
Opening the Mouth of the Dead
Limited Edition Book Art
By Catherine Woodard
Artwork by Art by Margot Voorhies Thompson
Published in two formats: Limited Edition Book Art and Paperback
Opening the Mouth of the Dead, bound in an accordion format, measures 11.75 inches in height and may be extended to 18 feet in length.
The 20 poems by Catherine Woodard are selected from the 64 comprising the paperback edition.
Each copy will be signed by author and artist, and housed in a custom clamshell box. Numbered edition of 59.
The artwork by Margot Voorhies Thompson is reproduced by an intaglio process using photopolymer photogravure plates.The same process was used to reproduce a scanned mezzotint by Perri Blitz which is used for the endsheets and front of box.
$1,500.00
The central character in Catherine Woodard’s poems is a third-grade girl growing up in 1960s North Carolina who uses the ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead to navigate her complicated relationship with her father. Alive, he sometimes seems as dead as a mummy.
The 20 poems in the book art edition were selected from the 64 comprising the paperback edition.
The type and drawings were printed from polymer relief plates on a Vandercook 219 proofing press by SandyTilcock. She bound the book, designed and made the protective clamshell box.
Thompson provided original drawings that were scanned and adjusted in Photoshop to be suitable for polymer photogravure plates. The grace notes were cut in Rubylith, scanned and adjusted to size for the plates. A mezzotint by Perri Blitz was scanned for the box picture frame and enlarged by Tilcock for the end pages. Both are printed from a photogravure plate. An Epson 4880 ink jet printer was used to print the backgrounds from scans of papyrus.
The types are computer generated: Egyptienne for poem text and Post-Antiqua for titles. Once the layout was finalized the adjusted image files were sent to Intaglio Editions of Boulder, Colorado, where the polymer plates were made by Jon Lybrook. The plates were editioned by Tilcock and Nikolas Wise in the lone goose press studio. The text paper is Somerset Book, off-white, the backing pages are Bugra Evergreen, and the cover paper is Kitakata Green. The cloth on the box is Duo Laguna from Bamberger Kaliko Textiles.
For a listing of Catherine’s readings and appearances, visit catherinewoodard.com.
Paperback
Like a yearning, incantatory prayer, these extraordinary poems build to an exquisite and devastating story of loss.With a child’s precision of observation made especially poignant through her third grade reading of the Egyptian Book of the Dead, Woodard’s narrator renders a brilliant portrait of a troubled family—a poem cycle truly remarkable for its economy, surprising humor, and sharp truths.
— Kate Walbert, novelist
$17.95
Glyphs
"Heart"
More about the paperback
In this beautiful, haunted book, the author’s granddaddy asks her as a child, “But what could I do?” The grown child says, “He asks as if I referee.” The child that survives catastrophic family history inevitably feels that she is a referee. The combatants are gone and were, always, not only powerful but unreadable. This child’s mind, facing a harrowing present and harrowing past, turns to a paradigm that she was given in the third grade: the Egyptian Book of the Dead. The ancient paradigm gives dignity and density to the tragedy of her parents’ lives. Litany, the insistent search for truth amid bewildering fragments, is what the survivor can perform to release, if not to save, the past. This is a superb book.” —Frank Bidart
Sandy Tilcock, proprietor of lone goose press, and author Catherine Woodard collaboratively designed Opening the Mouth of the Dead. A mezzotint by Perri Blitz was scanned for the cover. Artist MargotVoorhies Thompson provided drawings for the artwork and grace notes that appear in the book. Types are: Egyptienne for text and Post Antiqua for display.
For a listing of Catherine’s readings and appearances, visit catherinewoodard.com.
