This week's Poem Of The Week, presented in association with Poetry Ireland, is an essay on typography by Kevin Cantwell.
an essay on typography
Hopkins would say they fettled these flecks of light from alloy
as steel dust – these jewellers who cut letters of type from stock.
With a bird’s tongue file, they shaved the burrs and nicked
the chaff they puffed aside to make the slant font display
a book hand meant to imitate Petrarch’s script.
They set without kerning one wavering page of Nature
wedged in a proofing tray by wood-block furniture
and shimmed quoins – but first they waved each glyph
through candle flame, smoke-pressed it onto wet paper.
One apprentice touched a hot italic to his forearm,
and his inky boy, so cold, so soon, so this forewarns,
in their rooms above where the town’s rank sluice would fall and disappear,
let his fingernail, in a chipped polish dubbed Purple Seed,
pick the scab to make the letter bleed.
About The Poet: Kevin Cantwell has published two books of poems, the most recent is One of Those Russian Novels (2009). His work has appeared in Poetry, Irish Pages, Commonweal, The Paris Review, and The New Republic. A group of his poems was published in Five Points as winner of the James Dickey Poetry Prize. He is Professor of English and Dean of Graduate Studies at Middle Georgia State University (USA). His poem ‘An Essay on Typography’ was published in issue 121 of the Poetry Ireland Review (2017).
