Marie Dern
Marie Dern began Jungle Garden Press in Berkeley in 1974. Using a Vandercook and a Chandler & Price letterpress, she has created books both of her own writing and in collaboration with others. Dern's books are notable in their clarity, simplicity and humor.
The Jam Jar Life & Other Novelties Exposed
by Kay Ryan
The Jam Jar Lifeboat
invented in 1831 by a man named Bateman who
insisted it was unsinkable, sank the first time it was tested.
Ripley’s Believe It or Not!
It was quixotic to think
the cold grey North Atlantic
might be survived in a jam jar boat.
It is not enough that one of something
can be made to float with its lid sealed tight.
One rat might survive one night
on a single treadmill bottle
but even that would be a battle.
Bateman always hated how small truths
extrapolated so poorly. He came up with
really good small ones almost hourly.
Kay Ryan is the Poet Laureate of the United States 2008-2009. Her intensely strange,
yet humorous and musical poems have been compared to those of Emily Dickinson.
Playful and darkly witty, The Jam Jar Lifeboat and Other Novelties Exposed delves into
the oddities of human behavior. Each of the fifteen poems are Ryan’s response to a
randomly selected entry in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! The poems are accompanied by
delightful full color illustrations by Carl Dern.
Kay Ryan teaches English at the College of Marin. Her numerous awards include the
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, a Guggenheim fellowship, and a grant from the National
Endowment for the Arts. She resides in Fairfax, CA.
Carl Dern’s sculptural work is in steel, bronze, and wood. He has made drawings for
books published by Jungle Garden Press since 1974 including books by Raymond
Carver and Tess Gallagher. He is the art department for Red Berry Editions.
The Jam Jar Lifeboat
Red Berry Editions
40 pages, 13 color drawings
$20 plus $1 shipping and handling
|
