The Lines of the Poet

The Lines of the Poet

Here is a unique celebration of poetry in Canada, an original livre d'artiste upon which the hands of the artist, the writer, and the craftsman of the book rest in a manner unprecedented in the history of publishing in this country.
Thirteen extraordinary portraits - Margaret Atwood, Earle Birney, Leonard Cohen, Ralph Gustafson, Irving Layton, John Newlove, Alden Nowlan, Michael Ondaatje, P.K.Page, Al Purdy, F.R. Scott, A.J.M.Smith, and Phyllis Webb - drawn from life by the Montreal artist Rosengarten accompany the work of some of the most distinguished poets of our day, writers of whom D.G. Jones, the editor, remarks that 'no history of Canadian poetry over the past sixty years could well be written without mentioning their names.' The fourteenth portrait is of Doug Jones, himself a winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry. Each of the portraits is an original lithograph which has been signed and numbered by the artist. Remarkably, each of the poems has also been signed by its author (with the exception of that by A.J.M. Smith, who died before the work was completed). No comparable collection of signed works by the leading poets of the time has ever been published before.

In his Preface to The Lines of the Poet Rosengarten tells of his odyssey to visit his subjects and draw their portraits, and of the subsequent proofing and printing of the lithographs-a process which spanned two years. The lithographer Marc St. Pierre collaborated with the artist and pulled all the impressions from the lithographic stone. As he completed each edition of 130, Marc St. Pierre effaced the image from the stone. The lithographs in The Lines of the Poet are the only suites of these portraits in existence.
While Rosengarten was drawing his portraits, prior to the creation of the lithographs, the Papeterie St. Armand in Montreal was making the paper on which the lithographs and the poems were to be printed. Composed half of cotton and half of flax and made entirely by hand especially for this book, it is an exceptionally pure (acid free) and exceptionally heavy (150 lb) medium smooth laid paper. The almost 4, 000 large sheets required for the edition of The Lines of the Poet represented an order of remarkable size for a hand paper maker to undertake for a single book.
The text for The Lines of the Poet was composed by hand from movable type in 30 point and 18 point Kennerley Old Style by Pierre Guillaume in Montreal and was printed by him on his Vandercook hand press. The poems appear on the right hand of sheets folded to measure 20 1/2 by 14 1/2 inches, the same size as the lithographs which are laid into the folders, an unusually large page size. The magnitude and texture of the sheets posed a typographic and printing challenge to which Guillaume has responded as only a master of the hand press could.
The complete work takes the form of sixteen loose folders: the title; the editor's introduction; the artist's preface; the thirteen poems, each with its accompanying portrait; and the colophon page which carries the number of each copy and complete information about the making of the book. As has been mentioned, each poem (with the exception of one) has been signed. The introduction is signed by D.G. Jones, himself a distinguished Canadian poet, and is accompanied, like the poems, by a portrait of the author. The preface is signed by Rosengarten. The whole is contained in a dark grey, black paper lined buckram folding box, with the title printed by silk screen on the upper cover, made by the binder Pierre Ouvrard at his atelier in St. Paul, Quebec.

One hundred and thirty copies of The Lines of the Poet were made, of which 100 copies of which were offered for sale at a price of $2,500. The rest were reserved for the artist, the authors, and the other makers of the book.

This book is the result of an unusually dedicated degree of energy and collaboration between artist, editor, writers and craftsmen.

'This website has been recognised as a book in itself, an electronic book, by the National Library of Canada, and has been added to the NLC's electronic book library. It can be found at :
http://collection.nlc-bnc.ca/100/200/300/michael_werner_images/lines_of_the_poet/index.html
The NLC considers it an electronic book about the original paper book, The Lines of the Poet. For further information about either book, contact canarywharf@look.ca '.

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