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Artist Books

The Rare Book Room includes a collection of Artist Books, dating from the late 1920s to the present. All are limited editions; some are one-of-a kind, and all are beautiful. Here are some of the titles in our collection.

Mary Ruefle

Mary Reufle

Mary Ruefle is an American poet, essayist, and professor. She has published many collections of poetry, the most recent of which, Dunce, was long listed for the National Book Award in Poetry and was a finalist for the 2020 Pulitzer Prize. In an interview with her from the Poetry Foundation, she discusses her work as an "erasure book" artist.

An Incarnation of the Now

An Incarnation of the Now / by Mary Ruefle.  Minneapolis, MN: See Double Press, 2015.A page of "An Incarnation of the Now," depicting a woman talking to a faceless creature

First edition. "An Incarnation of the Now is issued in hardcover (270 copies) and in a limited edition of 30 copies each of which contains a signed original work of art by the author." An erasure book.
Issued in a hardcover edition of 270 copies and a limited edition of 30 copies, each containing an original work of art signed by the author.
Library has copy no. 10 of a limited edition of 30.
.A page of "An Incarnation of the Now," depicting two poems

A Little White Shadow

A Little White Shadow / by Mary Ruefle.  Seattle, WA; New York, NY: Wave Books, 2006. 

 

A page of "A Little White Shadow," showing Ruefle's "white-out poetry"

The experimental poet presents a pocket-sized reproduction of a little known 19th-century volume by Emily M. Morgan, in which Ruefle has whited out most of the words, with the ones remaining forming enigmatic verse fragments exploring the nature of thought.

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