Introducing JackPine Press
JackPine Press’ vision is to showcase
literary and visual multidisciplinary collaborations in a published, chapter
book format; provide writers and visual
artists from all genres and disciplines a venue to publish collaborative visual
and textual dialogues; produce wholly integrated, unique book artifacts in
tandem with the contributors; and ultimately, to create books that are as
interesting
as art objects as they are works of literature.
A collective of Saskatchewan writers and artists founded JackPine Press to push
the possibility of the book and revive the art of the book in a way that gives
writers and artists control over both the content and packaging of their work.
JackPine Press provides a publishing venue that gives the vision of the book
back to the artists and writers in an approach that results in handmade, fine
quality unified book artifacts.
Since founding in 2001, JackPine Press has published 12 limited-edition chapbook
titles by both emerging and established writers and artists. JackPine authors
include Governor General award-winning poets Tim Lilburn, Jan Zwicky and Don
McKay, Griffin Prize-winner Anne Simpson, award-winning Saskatchewan poets Barbara
Klar, Steven Ross Smith, Sean Johnston and Hilary Clark, and emerging writers
and artists Tamara Bond, Ellen Quigley, Sheri Benning, Erin Bidlake, Mariianne
Mays and Jennifer Still.
For further information, contact:
JackPine Press
804 Idylwyld Cr.
Saskatoon, SK, S7M OB2
jpp@jackpinepress.com
www.jackpinepress.com
306-653-0575
JackPine Press collective: Tamara Bond, Betsy Rosenwald, Barbara Klar, Tim Lilburn, Helen Marzolf and Jennifer Still
Poems by Anne Simpson from Mayfly
Published by JackPine Press
Eurydice, Orpheus
I
It’s time. The lawn is shawled
with snow. Beyond,
the strong arm of the Acheron:
muscled under ice. Soon it will break through.
In this world it’s not always dark,
as everyone thinks. Stars send charming,
indecipherable messages. No one
can figure them out. At dawn,
when it’s especially cold, people shovel
whiteness to one side. The souls that pass
in the small hours
go over the bridges swiftly. She picks up
her bag. There’s no time
to tell him how the water – black
under white – bends around a frozen
bank. She carries
nothing more important than shoes, an orange,
one or two letters.
II
Ever since he arrived -- each day
lengthening, gradually, into dusk – he’s had trouble
sleeping. He misses her
more when he’s with her. At least he’s discovered
he’s comfortable on his back,
looking up. Flashing scenes of brightly-lit cities
cross over the ceiling, disappear.
Now what he wants
is strong black coffee, the kind he imagines
they offer on round silver platters
in Turkey.
III
This place won’t remember her. She’d like
to leave her name
between a fold of hills, where sky
is haunted by a kind of blue
that surrounds -- thinly, almost
transparently – a song
before it’s a song.
It wasn’t just the way he looked
at her. The way she looked back.
IV
She said she’d be ready. He’s not impatient
yet, shuffling his boots
by the glassy willow. Icy branches tick
together. He’s whistling snatches of an aria
people used to hear on the radio
during the war. They’d tilt
their heads -- eyes almost shut --
and start humming.
Eurydice Afterwards
She’s underwater. It’s spacious, dark;
the marble stairs spiral around
as they descend. Years ago, a boy floated
down, dying. It was not in her power
to change things. He’d thrown
himself off the bridge, despair
in his pockets. The least she could do
was stroke the pale skin, carry
the body to shore. Now she recalls
air. What it was like to breathe,
happiness wrapped around her
like a cloak of butterflies, wings
stitched with iridescence. She drew
that mantle over a prince’s shoulders,
put the crown of her hand in his hair.
Sometimes his lyre can be heard faintly,
or maybe it’s just the last of the ice floes
striking the bridge as it passes. The light
from above scatters, glimmering
even here, in these watery halls.
Orpheus Afterwards
He lies on the grass. When did spring
come into it? One hippogriff of cloud
translates into another: expanding,
contracting. It’s all unreal, the same
sky and river, the scent of living
things. The last of the ice floes passes
on the water, shears in two
pieces against the bridge. He studies
his hands, bitten fingernails. Every
time he turns, he feels the stamping hooves,
the great herd. A man can get used
to anything, grow accustomed to
a change of seasons, each snap
of the moon. Even when he’s stretched
out on this slope he hears a steady
thrumming. It’s a long way off,
but he lies still, pretending. Once
he put candles in each window
of her body: a thousand wavering
lights. Back then he knew about fire.
