LITERATURE - 'Leaves of Grass' as Work of Art

"Letter by letter, turning Whitman’s ‘Leaves of Grass’ into a work of art" PBS NewsHour 7/25/2014

Excerpt

JEFFREY BROWN (NewsHour):  “I celebrate myself, and what I assume, you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you,” the famous first lines of a landmark of American literature, Walt Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass.”

Whitman was 36 years old when he self-published the first edition in 1855.  A trained printer, he personally hand-set some of the lines of type in the book.  Now Whitman’s work is being printed again, just as he did it in the 1800s, on movable type printing presses, the setting this time, in an old industrial building in San Francisco’s Presidio National Park, where the Arion Press is one of the country’s last fine book printers, and limited edition, handmade works are crafted from start to finish under one roof.

ANDREW HOYEM, Publisher, Arion Press:  The making of a book is a very, very complicated process.

JEFFREY BROWN:  The man who’s kept it all going for four decades is founder, publisher, and a poet himself, Andrew Hoyem.

ANDREW HOYEM:  We do what we do not to be quaint, but to use these techniques of letterpress printing, printing from metal types, because when the type is pressed into good quality paper, it creates an aesthetic effect you cannot achieve any other way.