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Welcome to Staxpeditions where we've been asking "The Nerdiest Question"
"What is your favorite Library of Congress call number range?" This time we're
featuring our
holiday edition! We're heading back into a range in the stacks to see what
we have there.
[Intro music]
And we are featuring a special guest star
John Culshaw the university librarian has joined us for this episode!
Got some holiday ranges here, just pick a slip.
PG 1164 through PG 3,001
Let's go take a look! Let's see what we've got!
Yeah, PG. Should be down here.
PG
All right. PH...PE...
PG!
PG 1410.
We should be good, I think it is this shelf right here.
So we just pick any book? Grab one, yeah, grab one.
Let's take this sort of nondescript
Very nondescript yes, let's see what this is.
Okay. Okay, here we are.
John pulled this one. So we have the paper,
a very simply bound book called Snow
a couple of staples some... published by
The Toothpaste Press in West Branch Iowa Do you know i'm talking about?
Does anybody know anything about that Press?
Uh...that's the uh...
It became the Coffee House Press. That's right, yes.
Allan Kornblum - we actually have the archive of the
Toothpaste Press and Coffee House press in the collection as well
In fact we could probably see if we have something about
this particular book. Um, is there a date
on it? It looks like a...
1973. Okay so it's an early, one of the early ones
Tomaž Šalamun
and it says translated from the Slovene.
by the author in collaboration with Michael Waltuch
on some hollow Bob perlman
Deborah ... and Elliot Anderson
okay so these are the Toothpaste Press records
One of our manuscript collections
This is a letter from Tomaž to Allen a
who was, who started the Toothpaste Press Some letters back
and forth
Here's addresses
Copies of "Snow"
[Inventory list] probably includes who it was mailed to
Charles Simic and Andrei Codrescu
so Charles Simic and Codrescu both
to really well known surrealist poets
Codrescu, of course editor
Exquisite Corpse and other publications like that
It says "Dear Al,
This is the cover stock for Tomaž Salamun
book, [Oh! Look at that!] so my plan is to have a stencil the snowflake cut out of one cover
and spray paint white on this page then print author and title in black
and in the end it looks like eventually rather
so this is letterpress printed and then the snowflake
the is spray-painted on through a stencil. What I was wondering is could
you cut a snowflake stencil
I'll be at the Student Activity Center all day mimeographing
I will of course spray the covers so you don't have to breathe the fumes
Best, Allan.
That is what led then to this being made this way.
The quality is pretty nice for a mimeograph. It's very readable
There's not stuff all over the paper. It's not a paperback.
It's not hardcover publication
but this is the way that so much poetry
still is done what the description adds about the author is
it says "Mimeographed and saddle stitched with letterpress cover
designed by Allan Kornblum" and then it says the author participated in the
International Writer's Workshop at the University of Iowa
1971-1973 yeah so the
author was in the Writers Workshop.
Okay, well that's what we had in PG 1,164
to PG 3,001. Enjoy! And Happy Holidays from the University of Iowa Libraries!