Women the Children the Men by Roberta Metz (1979)

Women the Children the Men

Roberta Metz Swann

Laughing Bear Press

Woodinville, WA

(c) 1979

This is an interesting book but not necessarily meant at a positive. I like the poems, for the most part, but the presentation is somewhere between confusing and just blank OFF. I do understand that it is a chapbook and there are various limitations in that, but to shrink some poem's font size to a reading needing to use a magnifying glass to read it is a bit absurd. 

As it is/was (published in 1979 so the very existence of the book in my hand is both present and past tense) the chapbook is 63 pages and the paper stock is a grade up - perhaps - from transparencythin. I suppose some secret sauce might be revealed in the Laughing Bear Newsletter I have linked above. 

I do credit the production of this book for using different typewriter fonts (1979, so I am imagining the use of one of those semi-circular "heads" one could pop onto one of those new-fangled typewriters of the period) but shrinking the font size of a poem to fit it on a single page when it's already over 60 pages doesn't seem practical to me. {yes, I am also a publisher}