Neverheart by Loren Walker (2021)

 Neverheart

Loren Walker

dancing girl press & studio

Chicago, IL 

(c)2021

No one is perfect. And I am starting with myself, I am a no one who is also not perfect. I am starting this little piece with a tiny bit of "me-ism" in the sense that I am a flawed person who, among my many pursuits and interests, collects and writes about chapbooks. And I have seen some amazing work done on this small scale production because - honestly - making chapbooks is not high end, large budget book production. It isn't for the faint at heart or for those with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads. It's for the dedicated, the committed; those living and thriving on the banks of the literary river that comprise this art form going back to cuneiform. To Ur. To the beginning of humans writing down their thoughts and deeds at the dawn of our being on this planet. 

Kristy Bowen has created this press and puts on her Sisyphus skin every time she brings out a chapbook of a female artist (that's what dancing girl press does; work with female artists). I applaud her for that. 

But as a publisher myself, I would have hoped that after nearly 20 years of doing this, it might have evolved out of the Xeroxed production era and this one hasn't. The cover image is good but the paper stock is very Xerox. I know this paper stock since I have used it myself. The words on the page are somewhat demeaned by the quality of the paper the words are printed on. As El Lissitzky wrote back in 1931, The book must be the unified work of the author and the designer. As long as this is not the case, splendid exteriors will constantly be produced for unimportant contents, and visa-versa.