Book Collecting: A Bestiary

Kay Ryan reading broadsideIt’s been a long time since I posted a book in my artist’s book collection. Then the other day I read that the poet Kay Ryan had gotten a MacArthur Fellow Genius award. I have a broadside from a reading she did at the SF Center for the Book in 2001 hanging near my own press (that’s it to the left — click on it to get a larger image and read the poem). Ryan had allowed the Center to use her poetry in a book produced by a year-long letterpress class — the text is in Centaur, set by hand, and the drawings, by Michelle Geiger, were done in photopolymer. I also have a copy of that book, which I happily re-read. The title page is shown below.

A Bestiary, title page