The secret & life of organic line

"For you the cover of a book - even when it is as closely allied as the cover of a paper book is /.../ to be integral to the whole - is a question of attractive packaging of a commodity. I have had occasion before and shall always have to attack at its roots what art becomes when it becomes a commodity. ... I do not live in New York, I live in a little town on the Pacific coast; my household is not modern; it thrives, as the imagination thrives, upon images. So I had a cover in a mode close to my work, where words and scene, image and experience have something like the exchage I seek in my own medium."
(Letter from Robert Duncan to Denise Levertov, citing his own letter to Grove Press concerning their sugested cover for 'The Opening of the Field').

I read this the night before last only to receive 'Caesar's Gate' in the post from Alan Halsey yesterday morning. It's hard to convey the exhiliration I feel on getting a book such as this first thing. Partly the pleasure of acquisition, of course. More importantly it's a sense of possibility - from the cover by Jess on into the volume itself (paste-ups, typewriter fonts, handwritten pages ...) everything oozes the 'alternative'. A defiance. I'm reminded of my delight at first seeing Raworth original editions - 'The Relation Ship', 'The Big Green Day', 'Log Book' - Harwood's 'HMS Little Fox' - Jonathan Williams' 'The Loco Logo-Daedalist In Situ' - the list goes on. Why can't ALL books of poetry be like this? Or even: Why can't all books be like this? (How lifeless on the page seem the recent 'Collected' Raworth & Harwoods).

Teaching my current 10th Grades, now that they are actually engaging with Blake's original plates, I sense a dawning realisation for some of them as to what his work was really all about. This for a generation so accustomed to the 'professional' look, Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, a hundred available fonts with one click of the mouse. It's an important lesson, surely.