As part of an ongoing effort to provide NYPL patrons the opportunity to discover the thriving literary community that exists outside big publishing houses, we collect chapbooks—small, paper-covered booklets that were initially popular in early Modern Europe—at The New York Public Library. This month, we showcase the chapbook series Catenary Press.

Published in Walla Walla, Washington and in Brooklyn, these chapbooks are designed by artist and poet Rawaan Alkhatib. We had the pleasure of speaking with Catenary Press founder and co-editor Rob Schlegel about the press and their process.

What is the Catenary Press?

The Catenary Press is dedicated to designing and constructing handmade chapbooks by new and established poets.

What inspired you to start this press?

The press began out of a desire to publish long poems and sequences. We've since expanded our focus to simply publish the best poetry we can find.  

Why have you chosen to focus on chapbooks? 

One very practical reason is that our hands can actually do the work of sewing chapbooks. The handmade allows us complete control over the design and feel of each finished object, and we're totally committed to making beautiful handheld vessels of exhilarating poetry.

How do you find and select the work that you publish? 

We read solicited and, less often, unsolicited work by new and established writers, and then share that work with each other.

Can you choose a favorite poem or two that you've published?  

The poem "Ash Wednesday," part of Ode Days Ode by Hanna Sanghee Park, and the poem "Combinations," ("Sun marries clouds..." to "An apple married air...") from Gestures by Heather Tone. 

Tell me about the process of designing the books. How do you make your cover choices, and how do the covers relate to the work?

We employ fairly uniform practices for each book's interior. The covers, however, are all unique and individually designed by co-editor, Rawaan Alkhatib, who maintains an uncanny sense of how a cover can inform what's behind it. Rawaan's vision is a major factor in each book's success.

Give us some hints about what’s next. Teaser lines from the next chapbook?

Here are excerpts from our two most recent chapbooks:

It claimed me like an ordinary, primitive fist.
In our great cities, completely preserved,
a pixilating voice began to speak and I inclined
my head for it. There is scarcely any other matter.
Pale candles in my hair that wouldn't light.

I never knew when something I heard said
moved me because it was wise or totally insane.
But each slid a knife in me. Belief, like love,
mattered less once it entered you. In a place
I cannot reach. You put your voice inside mine.

-from "The Secret Language of Flowers," featured in Bridget Talone's Sous Les Yeux

To undo the foolishness
of cut life & its rugged
display-devices, the rollicking
mutual pettiness & kind,
inaugurated, spinning films
of merit, of lies, of guys,
inside flatware combing themselves
w/ eyes — there's a hard nose
on the face of life & a willingness
to blow it — there's an example
of what it means, & another, &
another. The sidelong laced
abracadabra boxes our miffed
trilling. Jump to then &
again the fame of matter
is fulfilled.

-from Rod Smith's Hegel's Mother

We hope you enjoyed this short interview, and find a poem or two from this series that piques your interest. For more on Catenary Press, here are links to the Catenary Press publications in our collection:

Secret I D  by Alice Notley    

Sous les yeux  by Bridget Talone   

Hegel's Mother by Rod Smith     

Gestures by Heather Tone     

Polis by Micah Bateman  

Decay constant by Margaret Ross

Foyer states by Jennifer Moxley 
 

Additionally, there are two works from Catenary Press editors in the NYPL collection: Rob Schlegel’s collection of poetry entitled January Machine and Daniel Poppick’s The Police. You can read both of them in the Rose Main Reading Room.  

This post was co-written with Miriam Gianni, General Research Division, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building.