This book is a big one?in every way. In its 813 beautifully designed pages and over 450 gorgeous photos and images, a story unfolds not only of fine handpress printing but the man who printed works by many great 20th Century writers as well as prepared food for them and others in his own kitchens abroad and in the United States. It is a story of establishing the MFA in the Book Arts Program at the University of Alabama and the life of the first openly gay handpress printer. His recipes, dramas with lovers and work with writers as well as his vulnerabilities and insights intertwine to recreate a life in the arts.?At 85, Rummonds lives in Port Townsend, WA. His handpress books are in many of world?s most famous museums and libraries as well as in numerous private collections of fine printing.?His hope is that Fantasies & Hardknocks enlightens people about the role of the handpress in delivering fine literature. He also hopes readers enjoy trying the 65 recipes he has shared.?It is with great pleasure that I welcome Richard-Gabriel Rummonds to the pages of Writing It Real?I am grateful to be able to digitally share a bit of his splendid memoir.

Title page from ?Journeys in Sunlight (1986)

Item 42. ?Journeys in Sunlight

Six poems by Dana Gioia. With three etchings by Fulvio Testa. 1986.

Dana Gioia

Dana Gioia. (Photo Black Star, courtesy the?subject.)

Writing a column for the American Book Collector not only let me see what was being printed in the book arts community at large, but also introduced me to several new writers. In the March/April 1984 issue I reviewed a book, Daily Horoscope, by Dana Gioia, which had been beautifully printed by Kim Merker at The Windhover Press at the University of Iowa. Commenting on the text, I wrote: ?Gioia?s poetry is easy to read; it is like an inner voice unknown to us which surprises us with its aptness, with its immediacy to our lives and feelings.? Obviously I admired his poetry a great deal, and soon, Dana and I were exchanging letters and planning a book together. In July 1984, he mentioned a group of poems about Italy, ?though through years of revision it has ceased to be the real country which originally inspired them and instead what [Wallace] Stevens called ?an Italy of the mind?.? Whether real or of the mind, Dana?s poems speak of the Italy I loved.

The Worn Steps

But if the vision fails, and the damp air
stinks of summer must and disrepair,
if the worn steps rising to the altar
lead nowhere but to stone, this, too, could be
the revelation ? but of a destiny
fixed as the graceless frescoes on the wall ?
the grim and superannuated gods
who rule this shadow-land of marble tombs,
bathed in its green sub-oceanic light.
Not a vision to pursue, and yet
these insufficiencies make up the world.
Strange how all journeys come to this: the sun
bright on the unfamiliar hills, new vistas
dazzling the eye, the stubborn heart unchanged.

Fulvio Testa
When Dana sent me the manuscript, I was immediately reminded of Fulvio Testa?s small landscape etchings and mentioned these poems to him. Fulvio ? who was now living in New York ? was as excited about the project as I was; and during one of his visits home to Verona, he asked Luciano Cristini to prepare some plates for him. One thing was sure: if Luciano made the plates, they would be perfect.

Double-page spread from ?Journeys in Sunlight (1986)

Fulvio and Dana came to Cottondale in April 1986 so we could work together on the project, as well as celebrate my birthday. While in Tuscaloosa, Dana gave a poetry reading, as well as two talks: one to students in the creative writing program in the English Department, and the other to my printing students on collaborating with authors, a talk that was reminiscent of my talk in Omaha in 1979. My students were later to print some of Dana?s poems in a small book called Words for Music.

Fulvio Testa, Chase Twichell, Dana Gioia, and Mark Flynn
on the porch of the Canyon Lake house,Cottondale, AL, 1986

I had hoped that Antony O?Hara would still be around when we started to pull the etchings for the book; but the shipment of paper from the Magnani mill was delayed. Tony had already left by the time I started to work on the book. I was still working alone when Cary Wilkins, one of my former students at the university, moved out to the lake in August to give me a hand at the press.

Cary Wilkins

Cary, who had his own imprint, The Close-Grip Press, stayed on until we finished printing this item. He had completed most of his master?s project before he graduated. I let him use the Albion press to finish it. I included Cary?s book, August by Guy Davenport, in a talk I gave at the Firehouse Art Center in Norman, Oklahoma in 1987. The following is an extract from that talk.

This is Wilkin?s first major book, and like Davenport, he enjoys the mysterious, often parallel aspect of storytelling and graphic presentation . . . . Homoerotic overtones permeate Davenport?s work in something as subtle as a Cub Scout?s pair of shorts. An even more obscure erotic reflection is evidenced in Wilkin?s use of, as the width of his book, the length of one of the character?s penis, which is described as 23 centimeters ? that is 9 inches for those of you who cannot quickly convert to the metric system.

Pulling the Etchings
Since I did not have an etching press in my studio, I was very grateful to Richard Zoellner for letting me use his. Dick, who had befriended Alessandro Zanella and me in 1977, had been a printmaking teacher at the university, but was now retired from the art department. He still had his own atelier near campus and offered me the use of it to pull Fulvio?s etchings. Luciano had made our work a little easier by using extra thin copper for the plates, which minimized the platemark, and I further minimized the impression by dropping the plate into a well in a sheet of heavy Mylar taped to the bed of the press. Cary inked the plates, and I positioned the paper, very much like I had done for my first book in Verona, when I worked side-by-side with the printers at Luciano?s atelier.

Printing the Text
Once we had pulled all the etchings for a form, we returned to my studio in Cottondale where Cary and I would partially dry down the still damp sheets. The next day, we would print the letterpress on the Albion press. The text was set in Dante, a type I have always associated with Italy. I had purchased several fonts of it from Harold Berliner?s Type Foundry and was very pleased with the way it printed in spite of the negative rumors I had heard rumors from other printers about the poor quality of his type.

Binding the Book
Craig Jensen again did a superb job on the binding. There was one problem connected with it, however, over which he had no control. When the first batch of bound books arrived from Texas, I noticed while inspecting them that the bottom tray of the drop-spine box was smudged with something that looked like a dark blue powder. It turned out that the pigments used in the marbled papers used to cover the book boards had not been properly fixed. Not only did they smudge the boxes, but they also smeared in handling. Craig and I tried a variety of fixatives without any success and eventually had to put a distracting glassine wrapper on the book to isolate the fugitive marbled papers. I had foolishly let myself?be pressured into using local talent for these papers.

Praise from Dana Gioia
I felt that my efforts to scrutinize every text that I published had finally been appreciated when I read Dana?s account of his PWP experience in the April 1989 issue of Fine Print:

Surely one reason why the sumptuous production of ?Journeys in Sunlight complemented the text so well was Gabriel?s meticulous attention to every editorial and literary detail. Several of the poems in this sequence were complex and demanding. Gabriel studied the poems with intense care. He also went through the typescript line by line with a professional copy editor?s eye and suggested several small changes in punctuation which I immediately adopted. During the planning and printing of the book he phoned me at least twice a month to discuss details of design or production. . . . Gabriel is a printer with strong opinions, and there is no doubt that he controlled every detail in making the actual book, but he always wanted to hear my opinions before making his decisions.

In one sense, I guess I did accomplish what I set out to do when I took up printing. The text, whether it was mine or another author?s, always came first. I printed primarily because I wanted to communicate ideas. For me, ?Journeys in Sunlight and the whole body of work described in this memoir are more than mere press books; they are also a testament to the endurance of the handpress as an instrument to disseminate literature in finely printed editions. Who knows what I would have done ? or where I would have ended up ? if I had started out on the mythical mimeograph machine to which I often alluded in my talks on the formative years of the PWP. I never forgot that some of Jack Spicer?s early books were published in mimeograph editions.

A Bittersweet Memory
Beth Dinoff, an occasional book arts student, introduced me to a friend of hers named David Ferrill. He was eager to meet. David and I would get together at my place for dinner or take in a movie or go see a play on campus. Our first date was a performance of The Chalk Garden in September 1986. We both wore ties and jackets; we looked like a couple of frat brothers. I never seduced David, even though I could see in his eyes and body language that he was open to the idea. I knew I could easily fall in love with him. He was too innocent; I didn?t want to introduce him to my lifestyle, only to have him leave me later for someone closer to his own age.

A Miserable Year
After Cary left in December, I was pretty much on my own. All my boys had their own lives to think about now. The year 1987 was a dreadful year. I had no new projects lined up. I was, however, busy touring all over the country giving lectures, and participating in exhibitions of my work. My relationship with faculty members was growing more and more dire, and hostile. I was no longer cruising. Against my better judgment, I became involved with a redneck. We had nothing in common except sex, and in retrospect that was even very good. He had a truck with a rifle propped up on a rack in the rear window. Standing on the deck, he tried to teach me how to kill water moccasins in the lake. I was a terrible shot.

Two of my brothers, Tom and Bill, came to visit me in October 1987. They were there to cheer me up and to talk some sense into me. Get rid of the redneck! I did, but I was still in a slump.

Three of the Rummonds boys, Bill, Gabriel, and Tom
on the porch of the Canyon Lake house, Cottondale, AL, 1987

Risotto Nero di Seppie
Risotto with cuttlefish

Serves 6.

Writing this memoir brought back vivid recollections of eating my favorite dishes in the Veneto. One of them, which is rarely found in American restaurants is Risotto Nero di Seppie. Here is how they make it in Venice.

Risotto

? cup extra virgin olive oil
? cup finely chopped onion
1? Vialone Nano rice
4 cups hot vegetable stock
1/3 cup dry white wine
salt and freshly ground black pepper

Prepare the sauce in advance (see recipe below).???Heat oil in large, heavy saucepan. Add onion and cook over medium low until it is translucent. Add rice, stirring to coat the rice, about 5 minutes.???Add wine, followed by two ladles of hot stock. Cook 3 minutes. Stir in cuttlefish mixture.???Continue adding stock a couple of ladles at a time, stirring and adding more as the stock is absorbed by the rice. Regulate the heat so that rice and stock cook on a steady simmer. Continue adding stock until rice is plump with enough sauce to make rice creamy.

Sauce

1 ? tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
? cup chopped onion
? garlic clove
? pound clean cuttlefish, sliced into rings
2 fresh plum tomatoes
? cup juice from tomatoes
? teaspoon cuttlefish ink
? cup dry white wine
? cup water
salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Heat oil in large skillet. Add onion and garlic and cook until they are tender but not brown. Stir in cuttlefish and cook over medium, about 30 minutes, until all the liquid from the cuttlefish has evaporated.???Meanwhile, force the tomatoes through a food mill and mix with tomato juice and ink. Set aside.???Stir in wine and cook until it evaporates. Stir in tomato, ink mixture, and water and cook gently for another 45 minutes.