Last January, Missouri was granted its first official Poet Laureate. At the inaugural celebration, Walter Bargen read a new poem for the occasion, a poem which spoke to Missouri and dreamers and possibilities, called Moonwalk Missouri.
The Missouri Center for the Book has produced a fine letterpress broadsheet. It is now available. Go to
http://www.columbiabooksonline.com/
and click on the Walter Bargen link on the left side. There you will see at the top two versions.
The money will go to support the Poet Laureate program, which MCB hosts, and will ensure its continuity. It’s a little late in the season, perhaps, but these would make good gifts. They were produced by Little Truck Press on a 1960s era Vandercook SP15 Letterpress, using an essentially obsolete process.
As president of the Missouri Center for the Book I’d like to add that Walter Bargen has been terrific. We could not have asked for a better poet laureate and as our first one he has been everything we could have hoped for. This has been a great program for the state. Walter has traveled to virtually every corner to date and this has only been the first year of a two-year term. These broadsheets are excellent commemorations of what are too-rare instances of “official” support for the arts, especially the literary arts.
In any event, I wanted to let everyone know that these are available.
