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“SUCH ROOT SATISFACTION . . .”: SIGNED LIMITED TÊTE-BÊCHE EDITION OF THE SECOND BOOK BY DAVID YEZZI AND ERNEST HILBERT

by Ernie on 31/08/10 at 9:18 am

SOLD OUT! THANKS TO EVERYONE WHO ORDERED A COPY

Limited to only 8 copies available for sale, $20, free shipping! Available September 15th. Reserve your copy now!

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“SUCH ROOT SATISFACTION . . .”
SIGNED LIMITED TÊTE-BÊCHE EDITION
OF THE SECOND BOOK BY DAVID YEZZI AND ERNEST HILBERT

YEZZI, David and HILBERT, Ernest [MOFFA, Melissa and MERCER, Jennifer]. 3 X 5 [Three by David Yezzi, Five by Ernest Hilbert]. Philadelphia: Nemean Lion Press, 2010. Small tête-bêche folio, hand-sewn, Prussian-blue, faux-snakeskin binding, cutaway title windows, stiff eggshell-blue wrappers. 16pp. Measures 8 ½ by 5 ½ inches.

Signed limited-edition chapbook featuring two sequences of poems, one each by David Yezzi and Ernest Hilbert, approaching from two directions as separate books, one of only 12 copies signed by designer, bookmaker, and both authors, only eight for sale (two authors’ and two artists’ proofs).

This sleek “snakeskin” tête-bêche (from the French “head-to-toe”) volume consists of two separate books, rotated 180° relative to each other, that may be read with equal satisfaction from either direction, as Yezzi’s “Three” or Hilbert’s “Five,” meeting at the book’s center, which features inverted mirror-facing limitation pages. Yezzi’s three contributions are the poems “Itchy,” “The Ballade of In-between,” and “Free Period.” Hilbert’s five are “Drift,” “Ashore,” “Panthera,” “4AM Cab Ride,” and “While You Were Out.” The poems originally appeared in Antioch Review, LineBreak, New Ohio Review, Parnassus, Poetry, Think Journal, Vocabula Review, and Yale Review. Both limitation pages are signed by bookmaker Melissa Moffa, designer Jennifer Mercer,  and authors David Yezzi and Ernest Hilbert, accompanied by the press’s official blue Nemean Lion chop stamp; thus all books in the series are double-signed by all four creators. Books signed by both Yezzi and Hilbert are destined to become increasingly scarce. A fine, signed copy.

DAVID

ERNEST

JENNIFER

MELISSA

* * *

“Free Period” by David Yezzi

Outside study hall,
it’s me, my girlfriend, and a guy
named Rob—bony kid, klutzy
at games, fluent in French.
He’s behind her;

I’m asleep or half
asleep (it’s morning), and, as I
squint into the trapezoid of light
breaking on the bench and me,
I see him raise

his hand to her head
from the back, so gently
she doesn’t notice
him at first, but stands there,
carved in ebony

and beaten gold:
Stacey’s straight black hair
falling in shafts of sun.
He smoothes it down,
firmly now,

so that she turns,
kind of freaked, as if to say,
“Can you believe it?”
to me still coming to.
Yes, I guess I can,

I think to myself,
with only a twinge
of jealousy, with admiration,
actually. And pity—since he’d seen
beauty raw,

for which humiliation
was the smallest price,
and, dazzled, grasped at it,
not getting hold.
It wasn’t his, god knows,

or mine, as I,
months later, learned
hopelessly—almost fatally,
it felt—or even hers, though it was
of her and around her,

in that freeze-frame
of low sunshine,
with us irremediably young
and strung-out from love
and lack of love.

Copyright © 2010 David Yezzi. All rights reserved. Original appearance in New Ohio Review. Reprinted by Verse Daily®, E-Verse Radio, and Nemean Lion Press with permission.

 * * *

“4AM Cab Ride” by Ernest Hilbert 

You watch the cold bristles and scrawled ghost sheen
Of a full moon on a black bay beside
Refineries corroded by weather.
You want to believe there are old, unseen
Things out there that have long since learned to hide
From us and survive with all we prefer
To ignore or forget in those moments before
The fertile disorder of day reconnects
Us to our public lives. But now, a moon’s dry chalk
Marble rolls down the night’s drowned throat and lures
The eyes from moon to moon—cruel white collects
Like snow or ash, like milk, mist, or cut stalk,
Gathering of mown meadows; as it must
The heart fills, rasping, as a silo, with dust.

Original appearance in Vocabula Review.

Ernie

Ernest Hilbert is founder of E-Verse Radio.

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