Poems by Beau Beausoleil
Prints by Felicia Rice
Setting Type
there were letters
in some words
that pleased her
letters that she actually
had an affection for
and she often figured out
the afternoon in letters
writing them down on the back
of a torn envelope
creating a set path for them
into her life
she had learned that some letters
could be treacherous when left alone
and that other letters might
turn sharply against her
and so she used spaces in between them
thinking that one might be safe there
thinking that one might rest there
if one had to
ABOUT THE POET’S WORK
“…extraordinarily compact, concise, stark poems, with great clarity of line.” —Carl Rakosi
“These poems have the qualities of the first light of morning: clear, intense, and essential.” —Dunya Mikhail
“Yes, very eloquent poems: eloquence and vividness at great depths; a good deal of courage involved.” —George Oppen
ABOUT THE BOOK
“THE LONG DISTANCE is absolutely gorgeous. The book wouldn’t have been so beautiful without the lush, emotional art work you created for the panels. The colors of the panels hold the book cover and binding together, rather than detracting from it. The book is so perfect because each part: your art and the colors you used, the size and shape of the book, the binding fabric, and the font are cohesive and integrated. It is truly impressive.” —Andrea Hassiba
THE LONG DISTANCE is a limited edition artists book of seventeen poems by San Francisco poet, Beau Beausoleil. These spare narrow poems are written in the winter margins of love, alongside shards of waking dreams, and find place within our country’s vicious history. They reveal a mixture of the poet’s continuing concerns: social justice, and the interior spaces of love and memory.
Designed by Felicia Rice, THE LONG DISTANCE was handset in Lightline Gothic and Garamond types, and letterpress printed on Somerset Book paper at Moving Parts Press by Felicia Rice and Jared Cortez. The poems are accompanied by four relief prints by Rice. Craig Jensen of BookLab II bound this edition of 55 signed and numbered copies.
ABOUT THE POET
Beau Beausoleil is a native of the Bronx, New York; a former bookseller and a San Francisco poet since the late 1960s. Beausoleil sold his first chapbook of poetry, Undelivered Love Letters Of An Aztec Mailman (1970), on the streets of San Francisco for 35 cents a copy, it was hand lettered by the Fillmore collage poster artist, David Singer. In 2007 Beausoleil founded Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here, a global project of cross cultural and transnational solidarity.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Felicia Rice is a book artist, typographer, letterpress printer, printmaker, publisher, and educator. She has collaborated with visual artists, performing artists, and writers under the Moving Parts Press imprint since 1977. Work from the Press has been included in exhibitions from New York to Mexico DF to Japan. She has been active in Beausoleil’s Al Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition since its founding in 2007.
ABOUT THE PRINTS
The four prints tipped into the book were printed on a Vandercook SP 20 letterpress. They layer textures drawn from the work of Rice’s father, Ray Rice, with line drawings by Felicia. This technique was pioneered by Ray Rice using oil paints and pen and ink drawings. See more of Ray’s work at rayandmiriamrice.com/ray-rice/.
THE LONG DISTANCE
Poems by Beau Beausoleil
Prints by Felicia Rice
Edition of 55, signed and numbered
6 1/4″ x 14″
32 pages
$250 out of print due to 8/20 fire
movingpartspress.com/thelongdistance
Many of Beau Beausoleil’s poems stand in witness to some of the most immoral events of our time. These three series of searing poems appear in the MPP Digital Poetry Series: War News, In Ukraine: Poems, and Poems for George Floyd.