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Grave Deposits

Prose poem by Marie Luise Kaschnitz (translation by Lisel Mueller); photographs printed digitally by Michele Burgess onĀ film and Gampi paper. Text hand set in Spectrum, printed on Stonehenge paper. Case binding in silk matka. Hand painted slipcase. 13.5" x 11.75" closed. Edition of 30. 2010.

Grave Deposits, volume three of “The Stratigraphic Archives,” is narrated by Marie Luise Kaschnitz in her prose poem of the same name. In it, “Writer B. couldn’t care less about his printed books...” preferring his failed drafts, instead. The digital prints by Michele Burgess, printed on film and Japanese papers, combine the “protagonist” figure from Herbarium with meditations on geology and winter’s permeable and impermeable frosts. The images and book design were inspired by: nineteenth-century daguerreotypes; an ever-changing arroyo in Dixon, New Mexico; the reliquaries at the Santuario de Chimayo in Chimayo, New Mexico; Bill Kelly’s sketchbook; the anatomy of the human foot; and an arrival of Japanese beetles in Liisa Kissel’s garden in Grafton, Vermont.

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