Poetry of Sappho Sappho; Daley, John (Translator); duBois, Page (Introduction); Rearden, Anita Cowles Andrew Hoyem and Arion Press (New)

The format is 14-1/2 x 9-3/4 inches, 112 pages. The introduction was set in 12-point Garamont Monotype. The English translations were handset in 18-point Garamont. Garamont is a type by the prolific American designer Frederic W. Goudy, based on the sixteenth-century Garamond rendered in the later style of Jannon and more recent French versions. The Greek was composed on computer in digital Adobe Garamond Greek type, printed from polymer plates. The book contains 20 double-page Mehretu prints in black and white printed from polymer plates. On the title page, introduction, and colophon are 23 wood engravings cut by Anita Cowles Rearden in the 1880s, intended as illustrations for a book on Sappho and Alcaeus by her husband Judge Timothy Rearden, now printed for the first time (at the time the book went unpublished due to the author s unexpected death). All printing is by letterpress. The paper is Revere, an Italian mould-made sheet. The sections are handsewn with linen thread over vellum tapes, that are laced through the joints of the spine, which is also of vellum, stamped in gold with the poet s name. The boards are covered with a fine binding cloth manufactured in Germany, of a light green color, imprinted with a portion of an image from the extra suite of prints (sold separately) in darker green. The book is presented in a cloth and paper covered slipcase with spine stamping similar to the book s. The edition is limited to 400 numbered copies for sale. All copies are signed by the artist. In "Poetry of Sappho" painter Julie Mehretu has created prints for her first artist book, one of Arion s most beautiful and ambitious publications. Twenty prints by Mehretu alternate with pages of poetry in Greek and in English. The new English translations were commissioned for this edition from poet John Daley and classicist Page duBois. Sappho is the supreme lyric poet of antiquity. Celebrated by Plato as the "Tenth Muse", she left a literary monument comparable to the other precious ruins of the ancient world. As with its time scarred architecture, mutilated statues, and partial inscriptions, what remains of her poems are fragments of a vanished whole, and all the more resonant for being so. The only woman whose poetry has come down to us from antiquity, Sappho wrote more than two and a half millennia ago, a century after Homer, but before the great age of Greek drama and philosophy. Her subject is not war and the state, but individual emotion and the enjoyment of beauty, expressed in unforgettable images. The theme of lost civilizations implicit in Sappho made the ancient Greek poet a fruitful subject for Mehretu. Julie Mehretu is one of the most admired artists working today. An Ethiopian-American painter known for her densely-layered abstract images, she lives in New York City and works there and in Berlin. She received the 2005 MacArthur Fellowship. Julie Mehretu has made twenty double-page prints for the book, to be viewed between the facing pages of Greek texts and English translations, alternating throughout. The printmaking process began with the artist scratching the emulsion side of negative film with an etching needle. Light passing through the lines allowed the negative to serve as the direct matrix for a polymer platemaker. The plate, of thin steel, with raised plastic areas for the image, was then mounted on a magnetic base, making the printing surface the same height as type for letterpress printing. The linear effect is that of an etching, though the print is relief, not intaglio. The artist used different gauges of etching needles so that the line width varies and a layering effect is created. For some images, Mehretu drew with pen and ink on mylar over proofs of the images created with the scratched negatives to add yet another layer with a different linear quality, drawn rather than scratched. These elements are heavier yet and seem to rise above the surface of the etching-like imagery. ___POSTAGE: International cu