FALLING TO EARTH

Double Elephant Press announces Falling to Earth, a book of poems & intaglios by Michael Kuch. The book is a reaction to the terrifying & tragic collapse of the World Trade Center Towers & our ensuing bombing campaign. The book’s imagery uses the metaphor of falling to look at the human & spiritual costs of violence. Mythological &biblical narratives are evoked in a modern framework that may give perspective to raw, recent events. Icarus, Jacob’s ladder & parachuting Christs descend in our new millenium. Fourteen poems & twenty-one etchings are also frequented by angels providing vantage from above. Though the book does not shy from a hard look at the human toll of human violence, the work is not concerned with a world of blame, but instead hopes to unfold as a kind of topographical map of healing.

The volume measures fifteen by eleven & a half inches. Vertical raised surfaces on the front cover are wrapped in gray, handmade, Japanese paper with silver, laid-screen design which mimics the façade of the former World Trade Towers. Collaged strips of blue & white paper produce the illusion of sky & building side. Exposed sewing along the spine continues the longitudinal design. The back cover is wrapped in grey, metal-dried paper handmade by Dieu Donné Papermill of Manhattan. The sheets for the signatures are a blend of cotton & natural abaca fibers made by hand by Shannon Brock at Carriage House Papers in Brooklyn. The type is 14 point Emerson, cast by David Wolfe. Letterpress is by Art Larson who also printed the intaglios with Michael Kuch. Each book comes in a steel-walled, fall-back box. Shoshannah Wineburg & Barry Spence bound the edition of one hundred & ten hors commerce.