The Amichai Windows has a total of 18 poems. A cross section of poems from Amichai’s ouevre, they’re equally divided between love, war and being a Jew in the 20th century, both in the Diaspora and in Israel.
I have been working hard this past month to try to finish printing the poems. First, each poem gets printed digitally in my basement studio; then I cart it over to Pyramid Atlantic Arts Center, where I letterpress the poems as well as blind emboss various images into the paper spreads. I have now printed about 80 percent of the poems.
The poem spread above is from one of the love poems, which is simply entitled “28.” The actual poem is printed in silver on a midnight blue. The main image reproduced is a page from “Sefer Evronot,” a book of intercalations from Germany, 1627, courtesy of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. This book details how to set the Jewish calendar according to lunar calculations.
The images below feature the blind embossing that I’m doing on each poem. A blind emboss is running the press with a plate but no ink so that an image is indelibly imprinted into the paper itself. Below I have printed the shutters of a Jerusalem window as well as the word, “chai,” in Hebrew, which mean “life” or “lives” — and which also happen to be the last two letters of Amichai’s name in Hebrew.
Recently, I was preparing one last poem’s layout before sending for photopolymer plates so that I can letterpress it. I was also selecting additional papers to use, either to print on or tip on to highlight a poem. Papers for The Amichai Windows come from the U.S., Japan, Nepal, Mexico and other countries.
More sneak previews to come as we continue to make headway. . . !
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