It's Fine Press Friday!
Anatomy, the second book by poet, physician, and psychiatrist Alice Jones (b. 1949), is a letterpress chapbook printed in an edition of 100 copies, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama by the Bullnettle Press in 1997. Asa Peavy ran the press out of Tuscaloosa before moving on to work for Yale University Press and the San Francisco Public Library. The type is Gill Sans, cast by Michael and Winifred Bixler.Â
Drawing on her medical training (she studied Internal Medicine before completing a second residency in Psychiatry), Alice Jones’s anatomical poems explore “The Guts,” “The Senescent Ovary,” “The Larynx,” and other organs before concluding with the “Life Cycle.” A number of these poems originally appeared in medical journals. Â
The illustrations are by Berkeley-based book conservator Coriander Reisbord. Round reduction linoleum cut prints of bone, nerve, connective tissue, muscles, and platelets adorn Jones’ poems. Reisbord also bound most of the copies in this edition. According to the colophon, the first 85 copies were bound with paste-paper boards with transparent vellum spines, with the remainder presented in sheets or with full vellum binding. Our lovely copy, decorated with metallic organ cutouts, was uniquely-bound in leather by Priscilla Spitler in 2000.Â
Our copy is another donation from the estate of our late friend Dennis Bayuzick.
View other books from the estate of Dennis Bayuzick.
View other Fine Press Friday posts.
-- Amanda, Special Collections Graduate Intern
