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| Charles Dibdin (publisher) Battle of the Nile on Real Water Sadler's Wells Theatre 1815 wood-engraving with letterpress British Museum |
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| Blades & East (printers) Notice of a Lost or Stolen Pocket Book 1845 letterpress British Museum |
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| E. Crick (printer) Notice of a Lecture in Leamington 19th century letterpress British Museum |
lac[e]y.
for Tom Raworth
a. taupe. wald.
less. commas.
into. gelatin.
*
"let's. call.
this."
my. age.
leaning. into.
some. dream.
*
the. further. he.
moves. away.
the. more. surfaces.
the. longer.
they. end.
as. her. midst.
*
my. nose.
of. all.
recourse.
(shaped.
trouble. upon.
. siecle.)
my. polk. m'edge.
– P. Inman, from at.least (Krupskaya Books, 1999)
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| after Aubrey Beardsley Poster for The Spinster's Scrip as compiled by Cecil Raynor 1894 line-block and letterpress British Museum |
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| Aubrey Beardsley Poster for The Savoy ca. 1896 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| C. Burckardt (publisher) Carnival Poster - Witch ca. 1890 lithograph Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Jules Chéret Poster for Scaramouche (pantomime-ballet) 1891 lithograph British Museum |
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| William Henry Bradley Poster for The Chap-Book 1894 zincograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Crossroads in the Past
That night the wind stirred in the forsythia bushes,
but it was a wrong one, blowing in the wrong direction.
"That's silly. How can there be a wrong direction?
'It bloweth where it listeth,' as you know, just as we do
when we make love or do something else there are no rules for."
I tell you, something went wrong there a while back.
Just don't ask me what it was. Pretend I've dropped the subject.
No, now you've got me interested, I want to know
exactly what seems wrong to you, how something could
seem wrong to you. In what way do things get to be wrong?
I'm sitting here dialing my cellphone
with one hand, digging at some obscure pebbles with my shovel
with the other. And then something like braids will stand out,
on horsehair cushions. That armchair is really too lugubrious.
We've got to change all the furniture, fumigate the house,
talk our relationship back to its beginnings. Say, you know
that's probably what's wrong – the beginnings concept, I mean.
I aver there are no beginnings, though there were perhaps some
sometime. We'd stopped, to look at the poster the movie theater
had placed freestanding on the sidewalk. The lobby cards
drew us in. It was afternoon, we found ourselves
sitting at the end of a row in the balcony; the theater was unexpectedly
crowded. That was the day we first realized we didn't fully
know our names, yours or mine, and we left quietly
amid the gray snow falling. Twilight had already set in.
– John Ashbery, from Your Name Here (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000)
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| Johannes Theodorus Toorop Poster for Delft Salad Oil 1894 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec May Milton 1895 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Alphonse Mucha Sarah Bernhardt in Lorenzaccio by Alfred de Musset at Théâtre de la Renaissance 1896 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Theodore van Rysselberghe Poster for N. Lambrée, Estampes & Encadrements d'Art, Brussels 1897 lithograph Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Anonymous designer Three Dancers with Large Fan Advertising Poster (proof without lettering) ca. 1898 chromolithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous designer Children riding Elephant, with Attendants Advertising Poster (proof without lettering) ca. 1898 chromolithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |