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Exhibit makes writing process visible Mail Tribune / Jim Craven "How the Ink Feels," a collection of 64 matted, framed and lettered broadsides featuring the writing of well-known poets, is the first traveling exhibit to come to the Thorndike Galley in the new Visual Arts Center at Southern Oregon University. By Bill Varble One day in 1987 William Stafford was working on the poem that would become "The Trouble With Reading." "When you learn to read you can decipher frost on a window," he wrote, using a typewriter. A little later he changed the line by hand to "When we read, it�s just print or deciphering frost on a window." Finally, in May of 1988, Oregon�s poet laureate moved other lines to the top of the poem, and the part about deciphering the frost moved down. You can see this process made visible, line-outs and all, in an exhibit opening today at the Thorndike Gallery at Southern Oregon University�s new $11 million visual art center, the first traveling exhibit in the new space. "How the Ink Feels" comprises 64 matted and framed letterpress broadsides illuminating the work of well-known writers. Most were printed with manual presses in a technique that�s changed little over the centuries. The pieces � poem and prose selections made poster-size and framed for hanging � are collaborations between writers, printers and artists, such as calligraphers and woodcut illustrators. The exhibit is sponsored by the English and art departments at SOU and the Friends of William Stafford, one of the country�s most celebrated poets. Some of the pieces are from Stafford�s collection. They debuted as part of an exhibit on hand-made books in Eugene called "Frost on a Window" about six years ago, and have since been touring the Northwest, sometimes in connection with poetry festivals. "Museum people tell us people are flabbergasted," says exhibit coordinator Nancy Winklesky. "People keep coming back and back." Included are selections from such famed writers as James Agee, Robert Bly, Ivan Doig, Rita Dove, Donald Hall, Ursula K. LeGuin, Richard Hugo, James Welch and many others. The 64 pieces hang like paintings, both on the walls of the Thorndike Gallery and in a nearby open space with lots of light where students go scurrying by and workers are putting finishing touches on the building. The pieces were hung by students in a museum practicum taught by Steve Frazier, a preparator/registrar at SOU�s Schneider Museum of Art. Some include extensive graphics, such as a black and white skunk by artist Alan James Robinson to illustrate poet Gary Snyder�s "The Dead by the Side of the Road," Karla Elling�s flowers for Stanley Kunitz�s "The Long Boat" and Maurice Lapp�s blue elephants for Denise Levertov�s "Blue Africa." And Stafford�s poem? Next to the working versions, it hangs in its final form, which was published by the Walt Whitman Birthplace Association of West Hills, Long Island, one in a limited edition of 100 copies. It lent a title to this exhibit, and it goes like this: When a goat likes a book, the whole book is gone, and the meaning has to go find an author again. But when we read, it�s just print � deciphering, like frost on a window; we learn the meaning but lose what the frost is, and all that world pressed so desperately behind. So some time let�s discover how the ink feels, to be clutching all that eternity onto page after page. But maybe it is better not to know; ignorance, that wide country, rewards you just to accept it. You plunge; it holds you. And you have become a rich darkness. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.