Scenes: Cuneiform: An Interview with Kyle Schlesinger

Complete Fragments

Would you briefly describe Cuneiform Press's history?

I had a teacher who went to Black Mountain College and served as the campus printer. Joseph Albers was his teacher. I bought my first letterpress because I wanted to learn how to make books by hand, but didn't know anything about printing or typography or design, so friends and I followed in the Dewey-inspired tradition of "learning by doing" that was in the air at that time. Letterpress struck me as the perfect cross between visual art and writing, both of which were (are) of great interest to me. I didn't have an agenda, not even a manifesto or movement to advance—just doing it for the fun of finding out what would happen next. I feel fortunate to have been born at a time when new media and old were coming together. I had a typewriter in middle school, a word processor with a screen where one could read four lines of black and white text at a time in high school, and my first email account in college. I'm thankful that I learned typography with metal instead of pixels, but I believe that an understanding of both is essential. But I'm not answering your question, as that had all happened before I started Cuneiform Press.

How would you characterize the work you publish?

Cuneiform publishes poetry, artists' books, and books about books. Our authors sometimes have a relationship to all three, such Johanna Drucker, whose collection of essays What Is? will be coming out this fall in ebook and cloth editions. We also publish the magazine Mimeo Mimeo, which examines all aspects of the material culture of visual communication.

Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them?

Our audience is similar to the film or music aficionados whose interests are not limited to what's happening in Hollywood or broadcast on MTV. Most of the serious writers and artists I know are involved in the small press world, which makes for an eclectic, decentralized field, buzzing with activity.

What is your role in the publishing scene?

With the advent of new media, there are more presses and publishers and ways to archive, collect, and discover writing than ever before, so in my opinion, there's never been a more interesting time to be involved in small press culture. Digital is material, and this is a particularly rich and exciting moment.

What's in the future for Cuneiform Press?

The rare book market is changing rapidly, and the prices of books from the small press/artists' book world of the last 50 years has skyrocketed to such a degree that the only way for young people to engage with them is in rare book libraries. I want to start producing carefully researched, well-produced facsimiles that can be used in the classroom, where students can take them home, read them in a coffee shop, and get to know them intimately in a way that can't really happen in a special collections library, museum, or gallery. We put a lot of things online, which is another way of subverting and inflating the market, but facsimiles, such as Zephyrus Image's Spirit Photography, will do much to educate and inform the next generation. The press has been active for twelve years, and we've recently relocated to Victoria, Texas, where the students in the Graduate Program in Publishing have the opportunity to edit and design our books, as well as intern with a number of publishing houses (including ABR), and I am certain that this relationship will continue to prosper in the years to come.

The Amputated Toe

Reading Keats to Sleep

With Wax