The Pandemic and the Poem

In Conversation With Limberlost Press

BY HEATHER HAMILTON-POST

“It’s been satisfying to edit and bring together different voices–I’ve taken satisfaction in the act of putting together an anthology. It’s really an artistic creation, especially with fewer and fewer print journals,” explains Rick Ardinger. With his wife Rosemary, Ardinger owns and operates Limberlost Press. They also publish The Limberlost Review. “Maybe it’s my old school nature, he says. “But I do know that a lot of writers like to have a hard copy in their hands, on their coffee tables, on their bed stands, so I always knew I wanted to bring out a hardcopy.”

Ardinger explains that the Review, in its first iteration, appeared in the 1970s in Massachusetts. When the couple moved to Idaho for graduate school, he had a seasoned journalism professor who insisted his students learn how to set type on a letterpress, even as the press was a fast fading art and long before text-consumed smartphones. “And then, ten years later,” Ardinger explains, “we winched an old letterpress into the garageturned-studio, and began letterpressing books.”

In the 1980s, the Ardingers pivoted to beautiful letterpress printed and hand-sewn books of poetry and prose by individual authors. Rick Ardinger served as the director of the Idaho Humanities Council from 1991 until 2018, so printing books happened during strange hours.

Rick Ardinger and his wife Rosemary own and operate Limberlost Press

“It’s very tactile, and when I was working, I needed an outlet, a way to work with my hands. It’s always great to sew up the first copy of a new collection of poems,” he says. Once he retired, he again turned to the idea of a literary journal, which has appeared annually since 2019. The 2021 edition is scheduled for February.

The annual, which Ardinger calls an “occasional journal,” is approximately 375 pages, and features work largely from Western writers, both known and unknown. The book is comprised of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, book reviews, writers reflecting on old favorites, interviews, and even artwork. Each piece is thoughtfully selected and placed within the whole, which brings together a variety of voices to tell a unique–and uniquely western– story.

Limberlost Press and Limberlost Review both exist, in many ways, to bring people together. “When the shutdown hit, I was encouraging people, if they liked someone’s work, to tell them. What writer doesn’t like to hear from people who read their work and like it? There was a lot of interaction. One of the better things to happen right now is that people have time to read,” Ardinger says. He explains that people are buying books and corresponding with other writers, and reconnecting in unprecedented ways.

Ardinger says that people are writing more too, and writing more about the pandemic. “What comes out of it is going to be pretty amazing,” he says, referring to the artmaking happening around the world. Virtual events are indeed making literature more accessible to new readers, but the challenges are also new. Forging words into literature demands isolation, but writing needs readers to fulfill its purpose. Ardinger has friends hosting book releases over Zoom, forgoing in-person readings and book signings they’ve been looking forward to for years. Still, Ardinger explains, the opportunity to connect with writers in different ways has been an unforeseen gift.

In his role as editor for both Limberlost Press and Limberlost Review, Ardinger corresponds with numerous writers, seeking out work he admires, although both the press and the journal accept unsolicited submissions. “In 1996, a very young Sherman Alexie was at a writing conference in Eastern Oregon, and I wasn’t there that year, but my books were. He contacted me–this was before he wrote the movie, “Smoke Signals”–and I’d vaguely heard of him. He wanted to send me this whole book of poems, over 100 pages. I told him I could do a chapbook (small paperback) and that’s how we started working together. The book we brought out this summer, “A Memory of Elephants,” was the fourth we’ve done by Sherman.”

What is letterpressing?

A traditional form of printing press from the 1400's, it's a process in which raised, inked surfaces—usually made of wood, metal, or linoleum—are pressed onto paper. It produces a beautiful texture to the paper.

There’s no magic formula in choosing what to print, Ardinger explains, just writing that speaks to him. “One thing I do recommend to people interested in getting a letterpress book or publishing in the Review is get one of our books in hand. See what we’re doing.”

Ardinger admits to sharing an author’s sense of accomplishment and delight when their first book comes out, which almost explains the painstaking labor of love required to put words literally on paper. He still seeks advice from old friends when his presses malfunction and gathers bibliophiles he’s known for years to assemble, collate, and sew books. “It’s very satisfying to bring in the last page and spread out all the piles of paper. You collate it and then send the first copies to the writer. Later, when they give their first public reading, it’s a big ceremony that means a lot to the writers and to us,” Ardinger says. “That’s what Limberlost is all about.”

Look for the 2021 edition of The Limberlost Review online, or support one of these local bookstores: Rediscovered Books, Bookpeople, The Walrus and Carpenter, Iconoclast.

The work

For decades, Limberlost Press has published beautiful letterpress and handsewn books of poetry as well as Limberlost Review.

No

By Sherman Alexie

This poem was originally published in The Limberlost Review: A Literary Journal of the Mountain West, 2020.

In the dark hours, I sometimes hold An imaginary knife to my temple And push it through. I have to grapple

With these terrible thoughts. My blood Wants to become more blood. But, fraught And fraught, one must unlearn what

One has taught one’s self about escape. Three times, doctors have burred Into my skull. Three times, they’ve pushed

Their fingers into my brain and saved My soul. Let every neurosurgeon be The priest. Let every operating room

Be the chapel. Let my imaginary knife Transubstantiate into a holy scalpel. Let that blade remove the persistent

Tumors, flaws, and scars that whisper Insidious commands. Sometimes, I will Outlast the dark because I want to see

The decades pass, and sometimes Because I know that my self-death Would steal the breath of people I love.

So let the next day begin. Let the birds greet The first light. Let me sit at the table And break bread with this beautiful life.