Eileen Madden
Evanston, IL
Learning to Read in the British
Library
Poem
by William Morgan
Limp vellum wrapper.
The text is letterpressed from polymer
plates on a Vandercook press on
handmade Cobsbrook paper. Endsheets marbled by the artist.
Learning
to Read in the
British Library is about a
day in the Reading Room at the British Museum. Morgan
was reading Thomas Hardy’s papers, and he
almost missed a letter that
Hardy wrote to a friend that included some pressed violets from Keats’
grave
in Italy. The
book mirrors the narrator’s experience of
rifling through old, rich papers, and
having the letter “fall.” 2006
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