Category: synaesthesia press publications

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Scot Sothern Sweet Adeline Letterpress Limited Edition Preview

A picture of a mock up of the Scot Southern book to be published by synaesthesia press in March of 2026 called Sweet Adeline.

I wanted to give you a sneak peek at what’s currently on my Vandy SP-15 over at the synaesthesia press. I alluded to it a few Five Things, Right Now posts ago — Scot Sothern’s Sweet Adeline. Like all my letterpress books, it’ll be limited. Whatever you do, don’t call me a numerologist; however, I love the number 125. I love 99’s. I love 26’s. Go figure. And, as collectors, we all love knowing exactly how many are out there.

I’m leaning into a French fold. Same approach I used years ago with Tim O’Brien’s Friends & Enemies. We all love letterpress. And we really love that heavy kiss on the page — printer’s speak for a deep impression into the paper. What we talk about when we talk about letter press. The problem is printing back-to-back while kissing those pages. Too much bite (unless you want a complete mess). French fold solves that issue. Print one side then fold it, and now the impression really lives. It feels like something. Without interfering with the rest of the book.

Follow Scot Sothern on Substack. I love his stories. I love his pictures, too. He makes a photograph the way Bukowski made a poem — direct, sometimes dangerous, and certainly not for everyone. Same goes for his stories. They’re not for everyone.

125 copies total. 99 numbered. 26 lettered. All signed. The lettered copies will have five of Scot’s photographs of Adeline laid in.

I’d love to see this land in your mailbox by the end of March. We’ll see how that goes. I’m already a month behind. For now, this is what it looks like on the press.

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Gonerfest 9: Lettered, Boxed, and Now Released.

Gonerfest Nine picture included in the synaesthesia press publication Music Box

If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.

—Jack Gilbert, “A Brief for the Defense” from Refusing Heaven (2005)

After Gonerfest I came home from Memphis with a camera full of music and a head full of ideas. What came out was Music Box — my attempt to make something in the spirit of what Johnny Brewton had pulled off at his X-Ray Press — especially X-Ray 8. Johnny’s work has always stuck with me: loose but professional, real and raw, letterpress personal and full of all these wonderful bits and pieces. I wanted mine to feel the same without stepping into that trap Harold Bloom calls “The Anxiety of Influence”.

So I printed 30 giclée photos — bands, moments, the crowd, all of it — and housed them in a found cardboard box. Held together with a wrap-around band. A found, vintage library card pocket repurposed as a place where you’ll find my colophon. The hidden couple dancing. And Jack Gilbert…because Gilbert was the greatest living American poet — until he wasn’t.

Monsieur Jeffrey Evans (’68 Comeback, The Gibson Bros.);  Thursday night Emcee NOBUNNY; Memphis’s Moving Finger; the Frenchmen who made up Jack of Hearts; The Golden Boys from Austin TX; the Oblivian who calls himself Greg; all the way from Holland The Anomalys; Indiana’s The Hussy; a couple shots of Texas bad asses Bad Sports; Melbourne’s incredible Bits of Shit; a couple a fans! and a couple of River City Tanlines;  NOBUNNY and his backing band that night, Bad Sports; Dez Vibez from Ryan Wong aka Wong Reatard aka Mr. Rousseau; another Aussie band Native Cats; Chicago’s White Mystery; The Detonations; Ex-Cult / Sex Cult; a photog / fan screaming at Mad Macka; finally, a photo in there of the Hi-Tone at full capacity — the last image in the box from one of the last shows played. An experience. And I didn’t even mention the food or make pictures of what I ate.

There’s 26 lettered copies of Music Box. I archived most of them. For years. Because my doubt looms large and Imposter Syndrome is very real exempli gratia Vivian Meyer and Henry Darger and all the poets and writers scribbling away and too afraid to show a soul.

But I’m listing Music Box now. Cause fuck the doubt and everything that comes with it.

If you were there, you’ll get it. If you weren’t, maybe you’ll feel like you were…all laid in to a small, perfectly square box.

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Charles Bukowski’s Lost Essay in 4 Poets | A Notebook Discovery

One of the more unusual things the synaesthesia press ever published was an essay by Charles Bukowski on the state of American poetry.

The piece appeared in 4 Poets, synaesthesia press chapbook #2, and has long since gone out of print.

Bukowski wrote the essay in 1964. I discovered it while working in the Special Collections Department at the University of Arizona. The manuscript was preserved in one of those inexpensive spiral-bound notebooks. It cost all of thirty-nine cents and looked like it had lived a hard life. There were beer stains, doodles, random observations, abandoned ideas, personal notes, and the sort of material most writers never expect anyone else to read. To hold it in my hands was a thrill. For a young publisher and devoted Bukowski reader, it felt like I was given a backstage pass.

Then, right in the middle of it all, was this wonderful essay.

The notebook turned out to be a treasure trove. It also contained the handwritten first draft of The Day It Snowed in L.A., which would not appear in print until more than twenty years later and survived almost unchanged from the version preserved in the notebook. The cover illustration I eventually used for 4 Poets was found there as well. Another essay, “The House of Horrors,” also emerged from those same pages and was included in a small number of special copies.

I can’t adequately describe what it felt like to hold that notebook in my hands. At the time, it was one of the great thrills of my young publishing life. Looking back, I realize it was one of those experiences that can only happen once. For a few hours, I wasn’t reading Bukowski anymore. I was sitting beside him while he worked.

4 Poets was published in an edition of 243 copies, along with 11 special copies containing the additional Bukowski essay “The House of Horrors.” Those special copies were issued in 11 different variant covers, each representing a cover design I had considered for the regular edition. Both editions sold quickly. Every so often a copy surfaces on the secondary market, usually to my surprise. I haven’t had one to sell in years.

What remains is the memory of that notebook and the privilege of bringing a small piece of it into print.

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Billy Childish Woodcuts for Barry Gifford’s The Strangest One of All

Johnny Brewton introduced me to Billy Childish.

If you already know Billy’s work, an introduction is unnecessary. If you don’t, Billy Childish is one of the most fiercely independent artists of the last fifty years—a poet, painter, musician, novelist, woodcut artist, and cultural force whose influence far exceeds his mainstream recognition. Working largely outside traditional institutions, Childish has built an international following through a relentless commitment to making art on his own terms.

And it was through Johnny’s introduction that I had the opportunity to work with Billy on one of my favorite publications: Barry Gifford’s The Strangest One of All, a meditation on Barry’s trip to “The Bunker”.

For the project, Billy created a series of original woodcuts depicting Burroughs. The standard edition features a single Childish woodcut visible through the die-cut window on the cover. The lettered edition of 26 copies includes two additional original woodcuts, housed separately in a manila envelope. Together they form a remarkable visual counterpart to Gifford’s text.

What I particularly love about Billy’s contribution is its directness. Every image focuses on the same subject: William S. Burroughs. Childish strips away mythology and celebrity, returning again and again to the face of the writer himself. The result feels both reverential and unsentimental.

Billy affectionately referred to Burroughs as “the old duffer,” a phrase that still makes me smile. It captures something of Childish’s relationship to literary and artistic heroes. Admiration, certainly—but never worship.

Working with Johnny Brewton, Billy Childish, and Barry Gifford on this project remains one of the highlights of my synaesthesia life.

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Richard Brautigan chapbook Four Poems

4poems.jpg

I was talking to my friend Mark at his bookstore in the Haight, St. Adrian. This was a long time ago.

We talked about books.

We talked about Kerouac or Bukowski or maybe the great things coming from X-Ray Press. I don’t recall.

Then, we talked about Richard Brautigan. I do recall this, because as we were talking, Mark brought out a copy of All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace. It was a first (and only) edition, and it was published by the Communications Company in 1967 — and probably within walking distance of Mark’s store.

We talked about the fact it was probably printed right around the corner, and we talked about the fact that, 30 years earlier, Brautigan had roamed this very neighborhood, handing out poems and chapbooks freely, and how that sort of thing doesn’t happen much anymore.

We even talked about R. Crumb walking this same neighborhood during the same time, pushing a baby carriage full of Zap #1, and how he sold them right out of the carriage.

Then Mark read the copyright from Brautigan’s book: “Permission is granted to reprint any of these poems in magazines, books and newspapers, if they are given away free.” The book was published in an edition of 1500 copies — none of the copies were offered for sale — they were all given away.

The entire edition was given away. 1500 copies. Free.

We both agreed this definitely doesn’t happen anymore.

I bought some books from Mark, jumped on the #7, and headed back down to the Tenderloin and the hotel I called home.

Sadly, St. Adrian’s doesn’t exist anymore, either…just like Crumb and his baby carriage and people giving stuff away for nothing.

A few years later, while working on the Vandercook, I decided to take a few of my favorite poems from All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace, print them, and, following his copyright, give the book away to the friends of the synaesthesia press; the people who, since its inception, have supported synaesthesia either through shared knowledge, submitting work, or buying the books.

4 Poems was the result.

Twenty-six lettered copies were printed. There were maybe 20 “overs” which were sent to Brautigan’s daughter, Ianthe.

I have no more.

My only hope here is it’s an adequate thanks for all those who have helped synaesthesia make it this far.

And maybe this little book has some of the spirit and essence that All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace offered.

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Neeli Cherkovski’s Wedding Poem for Johnny Brewton and Giselle Orsolio

When Johnny Brewton married Giselle Orsolio in 1998, I got an idea.

I thought it would be nice to mark the occasion with something “lasting” (for lack of a better term), so I approached poet Neeli Cherkovski and asked if he might write a poem for them. I had met Neeli several times at his home in San Francisco and always found him to be gracious, generous, and encouraging. That made it easy to pick up the phone and ask.

His response was immediate.

Not only was Neeli willing to do it, he was genuinely excited by the idea. A few days later he called and told me the poem was finished.

I printed about one hundred copies and distributed them to guests at the wedding reception. Reading Neeli’s poem again, what strikes me is how well it captures the optimism and mystery of marriage. Rather than offering advice or sentimentality, Neeli writes about union, imagination, reflection, and the ways two people discover both shared and private worlds together.

More than twenty-five years later, I’m still grateful Neeli said yes.

Johnny Marries Giselle

I

it’s a wonder
like grass, the glass
in that music, brittle
steel, strong
silence pushing a man
through print
into light, the marriage
of spirit and
soul, the union
of imagination and
mind, the rooms
two will find
together and those
that remain
locked in one set of eye

II

“…the marriage
of true minds…” how
we read ourselves and bend fog
backward and dream
waves, arm in
hand, lip to lip, hand in
the sky, till we bend
to our twin reflections and
never do anything but live

Neeli Cherkovski
2 May 1998

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A. di Michele’s The Mollifier | Joycean HyperText from the synaesthesia press

A. di Michele’s The Mollifier was published by the synaesthesia press in November 1996.

When people ask me to describe it, I usually tell them it’s “Joycean HyperText.” That’s not my phrase—it’s how Andy described his own work, and who am I to argue with the author?

Usually that earns me a puzzled look.

“What does that mean?”

Exactly.

Go read it.

Part fiction, part linguistic experiment, part philosophical prank, The Mollifier occupies that fascinating territory where language itself becomes the subject. Like much of di Michele’s work, it refuses easy classification. The influence of Joyce is certainly there, but so are traces of critical theory, poetry, situationist thought, and a distinctly Southern strain of literary mischief. The result is a text that feels simultaneously playful and challenging, as if the language is constantly rearranging itself beneath your feet.

Di Michele also provided the illustrations for the chapbook, giving the project a visual coherence that perfectly complements the text. At the time, he was part of a loose network of poets, small-press publishers, and literary experimenters whose work circulated through little magazines, handmade books, and alternative publishing venues far removed from the literary mainstream.

One biographical note I found years ago described him as a “lingual neuro-situationist trans-bard and furniture/environment deconstructor.” That may be the most accurate literary biography I’ve ever encountered.

My favorite di Michele line remains:

“poets would do better to work in sweatshops rather than sweat in workshops.”

That should tell you everything you need to know.

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti and 4 Poets | How ‘Poet as Fisherman’ Joined the Project

Front and back covers of synaesthesia press chapbook 4 Poets featuring a whimsical line drawing adapted from a Charles Bukowski notebook discovered in the University of Arizona Special Collections collection.

I met Lawrence Ferlinghetti at a reading at the Caravan of Dreams in Fort Worth, Texas, sometime around 1992. I was living in Dallas at the time, hustling as a penny-stock broker. Poetry and penny stocks made for an odd combination, but there I was. Looking back, my life has always seemed to work that way.

After his reading, Ferlinghetti stayed to sign books and answer questions. When my turn came, I asked if he might have a poem available for a small publishing project Steve Fisher and I were assembling. Without hesitation, he opened the folder he was carrying, pulled out a poem, and handed it to me.

Just like that.

No introduction required. No gatekeeper. No elaborate proposal. No discussion of contracts or credentials.

What I remember most is not the poem itself, but the generosity of the gesture.

Pure class.

The poem was “Poet as Fisherman,” and it would become the final contribution to what was then an untitled project. With Ferlinghetti’s participation, the book finally felt complete. The collection was eventually published as 4 Poets, bringing together four distinct voices in a modest edition that remains one of my favorite early publishing efforts.

Years later, Ferlinghetti included “Poet as Fisherman” in These Are My Rivers: New & Selected Poems 1955–1993, published by New Directions. I’m glad he did. But I’ll always remember the moment before that, when the poem existed simply as a few sheets of paper in a folder carried by one of America’s greatest poets.

4 Poets was published in an edition of 232 copies, along with 11 special copies featuring variant covers. Those special copies were never intended as a deluxe issue. They were simply experiments—different papers I was considering for the cover stock. Like many things in small-press publishing, they survived because I couldn’t bring myself to throw them away.

Looking back, what stays with me most is Ferlinghetti’s kindness. A young publisher asks for a poem, and one of the giants of American poetry simply says yes.

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Steve Fisher’s Rock Salt & Glissandos | The First synaesthesia press Paperback Original

synaesthesia press paperback original #1 is Steve Fisher’s Rock Salt & Glissandos: Stories and Poems.

For lack of a better term, it was synaesthesia’s first “real” book. What I didn’t know at the time? It would also be the last.

Steve Fisher was there from the beginning. In fact, he named the press. By trade he was a piano tuner. He was also a bookman, a collector, and a writer of extraordinary gifts. Today, Steve serves as the synaethesia press’s guardian angel.

The book grew out of years of Steve’s work that had already attracted the attention of serious editors and writers. His stories appeared in many of the country’s leading literary journals during the late 1980s and 1990s. TriQuarterly devoted a special Steve Fisher section to his work, while Hayden’s Ferry Review published a feature titled “Edges & Spears Outside.” Yet despite the admiration of editors and fellow writers, Steve never lived to enjoy the recognition his work deserved.

As Barry Gifford wrote:

“Steve Fisher’s work reads like Jim Thompson at his best meets Drugstore Cowboy with Jean Genet standing outside in a freezing desert wind waiting to score. It’s a shame we can’t have more, much more—because Fisher wrote like a flaming angel genius. Maybe he was.”

Fisher tuned pianos for a living, collected rare books, corresponded with Charles Bukowski while incarcerated, and wrote unforgettable stories and poems drawn from the worlds of addiction, prison, survival, and redemption. Readers discovering his work today often assume he is the better-known mystery writer of the same name. He isn’t. This Steve Fisher belongs to a different tradition altogether—one that includes William S. Burroughs, Nelson Algren, Harry Crews, Hubert Selby Jr., and Jean Genet.

Perhaps the most moving assessment came from Gerald Locklin, who wrote the introduction to the book:

“I decided early on that Steve Fisher was the best writer of prison life and the drug world I had ever read. He wouldn’t have liked such pigeonholing, but it is high praise indeed. He didn’t get to write as much as, say, Burroughs, but I would in all honesty rather read Steve.”

As a first book from a tiny independent press, Rock Salt & Glissandos had a difficult road. There was no author tour, no interviews, no readings, and no publicity machine behind it. Just a remarkable body of work and a handful of people who believed it deserved to be read.

I still believe that.

If you’re interested in prison literature, drug literature, outsider fiction, William S. Burroughs, Jean Genet, Harry Crews, Nelson Algren, Charles Bukowski, Barry Gifford, or the darker corners of American writing, Steve Fisher is waiting to be discovered.

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Barry Gifford and the synaesthesia press | Books, Broadsides & Collaborations

Barry Gifford has become one of the most important friends to the synaesthesia press.

It began simply enough. When Steve Fisher’s Rock Salt & Glissandos was published, Barry generously contributed a back-cover blurb. He didn’t have to. He barely knew me. But he read the work, believed in it, and offered his support. Looking back, that small act of kindness helped set a great deal in motion.

Barry’s first book with the press was The Strangest One of All, a short narrative recounting a visit to William S. Burroughs’s Bunker in New York City. Accompanied by his son and former baseball player Jimbo Carothers, Barry spent an afternoon with Burroughs discussing subjects that seemed perfectly suited to Burroughs himself: poisonous darts, deadly spiders, and the strange corners of life. Originally published in SPEAK Magazine in 1997, the piece was issued by the synaesthesia press in an edition of 176 copies. The book featured woodcut illustrations by Billy Childish and design by Johnny Brewton. The 26 lettered copies included three additional Childish woodcuts housed in a manila envelope and signed by both Barry and Billy.

The collaboration continued. In 2001, the synaesthesia press joined Barry and Don Ellis of Creative Arts Book Company to produce The Lost Christmas & Other Stories: A Holiday Trilogy. An edition of ninety-nine copies was printed, none offered for sale. Instead, the books were mailed as holiday gifts to friends of the author, the press, and Mr. Ellis.

In 2004 I published Elegies, a pair of poetry broadsides devoted to two of Barry’s literary heroes: Jack Kerouac and Gregory Corso. The poems, “On Viewing The Manuscript Scroll of Jack Kerouac’s On The Road in the Tosca Bar, San Francisco” and “Small Elegy For Corso,” were printed on card stock and housed in a three-panel folder with a die-cut cover inspired by the Dada artists I admire. Barry signed the entire edition at his mother’s kitchen table while we talked about books, films, the novel he was working on, and Barry Bonds. Some publishing memories stay with you forever.

Two hundred copies of Elegies were printed. The text was digitally composed, printed by hand, and letterpress printed on a Vandercook No. 219 Old Style press—the press that remained the backbone of the synaesthesia press until 2025.

When I look back at the history of the press, I see books, broadsides, and collaborations. More than that, I see generosity. Barry Gifford believed in what we were doing long before there was any reason he should have. the synaesthesia press is a better thing because of that.