LETTER
Artist
The Alternative Press
Artist
Alice Notley
Date1976
MediumLetterpress on cardstock
DimensionsPaper Size: 6 7/16 × 3 7/8 in. (16.4 × 9.8 cm)
ClassificationsPrint
Credit LineGift of Gary Eleinko, 2023
Object numberUAC7443.06
DescriptionLetterpress print poem by Alice Notley, titled "LETTER".LETTER
Venus ballpoint PEN'cil
isn't writing
Also you've taken
my felt tip pen
Published by The Alternative Press, Issue Number 6.
The Alternative Press was founded by partners Ken and Ann Mikolowski in 1969, when the couple purchased a 1904 Chandler & Price letterpress from the Detroit Artists Workshop. During the Press’ three-decade operation, they collaborated with artists, activists, and poets to produce a great variety of printed materials that challenged convention and cultivated a compelling intermedia aesthetic. As scholar Rebecca Kosick observes, the Press “both received and sent out an ever-changing set of printed objects that included type (but not always), words (but not always), drawings (sometimes), paintings (on occasion), woodblock and other prints (as both paratext and text), and even, once, an egg. This is only a partial list.” Collaborations manifested as broadsides, postcards (dubbed ‘poemcards’ ), bumper stickers, bookmarks, and other forms of popular communication that the Press included in subscription “mailings.”
LETTER was published in 1976 in collaboration with Alice Notley (b. 1945), a notable poet and repeat collaborator with The Alternative Press. The four-line poem, printed in a neat sans serif typeface in black ink on a dark mustard cardstock, is sandwiched vertically between its title and author’s name to the right of an upright Venus ballpoint PEN·cil (a real commercial writing instrument in 1976 ), etched in red ink. Concise and biting, the poem suggests a soured relationship between writer and recipient and spurs several interpretations. In the most interior sense, the recipient of criticism could be the faulty red PEN·cil itself, having taken the place of the felt tip pen. More dramatically, perhaps the writer and recipient were once connected intimately, yet now she feels nothing (the PEN·cil isn’t writing) beyond the frustration of what has been stolen (the felt tip pen as any measure of time, care, etc.). Or perhaps the writer is admonishing an acquaintance to whom the PEN·cil was given (as a gift?) but from whom no letters have been received. Or again, did Notley receive the PEN·cil from this acquaintance (perhaps as a trade for a felt tip pen)? If so, then Notley now regrets the trade; the PEN·cil no longer works and she apparently possesses no more writing instruments. She must resort to the 1904 Chandler & Price letterpress to communicate her plight as a writer with no other writing utensils.
The Mikolowskis’ design sensibilities build on Notley’s poetry to create a mixed-media work that could be widely circulated amongst the Press’ subscribers, yielding not just “a single-authored creation in text” but “a collectively authored intermedial poem.” While LETTER is a comparatively straightforward broadside, it evidences how the Press provided fertile ground for experimentation, dialogue, and exchange among a diverse group of writers, artists, and readers. For example, we could imagine this broadside as Notley’s response to a community prompt such as “Please submit a message that would require a letterpress print to enable communication through the mail.”
Written by Sarah Teppen
1. https://fromasecretlocation.com/the-alternative-press/
2. Rebecca Kosick, “Intermedia Poetics In and Out of Detroit’s Alternative Press,” Word & Image 38, no. 2 (2022): 89.
3. Kosick, “Intermedia,” 88.
4.Kosick, “Intermedia,” 97.
5.https://www.detroitartistsworkshop.com/alternative-press/
6.https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/alice-notley
7.The PEN·cils were sold by Venus Esterbrook Canada, Ltd. of Toronto; those that still exist (e.g., for sale on ebay) are remarkably similar to the image on the broadside.
8.Kosick, “Intermedia,” 99.
