Dear Backers,

Exciting news! The History of Violets will be shipping very soon from the bindery in Michigan--we hope to have copies in hand by the end of this week or early next week. Yesterday, we letterpress printed the front side of the three-postcard set. I am including some pictures here of the postcards and also the finalized cover--the color scheme for both has changed a bit. We look forward to packing up your books and postcards and sending them along soon. I'll be sure to let you know about readings and other Violets-related events in the coming months. Thanks again for your support--we couldn't have done it without you!

The photos:
1.) Polymer plates laid out on the letterpress base
2.) A set of postcards coming off the press
3.) Printed in beautiful Amazon Green
4.) Side one complete; next up: trimming the cards and printing the back
5.) A sneak peek at the final cover
6.) Cover detail with color bar and spine marks
7.) More advanced praise
8.) The letterpress and wall of Ugly Duckling Presse covers

To all our backers,

Thank you so much for helping us quickly meet and then exceed our goal! With your help, UDP is very excited to put the finishing touches on this book. We are finalizing the manuscript now, and in the next few weeks we'll print the covers and the postcards. In November, we'll send Marosa di Giorgio's wonderful poems out to a whole new audience... And to you! Thanks again!

Garth

Some Advance Praise for The History of Violets...

"More than a fresh engagement with Di Giorgio’s farm and family, Pitas’s translation renders Di Giorgio’s willingness to let language be the sovereign that can banish 'Me from Myself,' to use Emily Dickinson’s formulation. The History of Violets is a history of witnessing across a network of furtive but always alert gazes. 'I only see perplexing things,' writes Di Giorgio, but it is because her gaze penetrates through to the otherness within the self. In Di Giorgio’s eyes and imagination we find transformation and, ultimately, freedom: 'Since no one sees them, the sheep… look like demoted gods, now without expectations.' More than musings, there’s a lot at stake here, namely the opportunity for a new generation of American poets to take Di Giorgio as a model for wresting the 'poetry of witness' away from humanism’s easy faith in testimony and remembering that the imagination is the organ of compassion."
—Farid Matuk