Fundamental, Toy Poems, was published in 1982 by Doris Green Editions. The title says it all: elementary cerebral entertainment. The poems were a selection of Pat Nolan’s minimalist poems that had been published in Rolling Stone and various literary magazines in the early seventies. Produced as a mimeographed book, each page was typed onto a stencil, printed on a clunky hand crank mimeograph machine, cut into half sheets, collated, and stapled in an ink smudged intensive labor of love.
The four original illustrations were drawn by the late Michael Fisher directly onto the wax surface of the mimeograph stencil as a kind of self-referential pun: stencils on stencils (quite meta for its day). The original covers from a design by Michael were printed by George Zastrow at Guerneville Graphics in Guerneville, California.
Approximately two hundred copies of the book were printed although not all were sold or given away. The remaining inventory and unbound covers were long forgotten in boxes in a closet. After shuffling them around for almost forty years, the dilemma was whether to toss them or do something with them. A reissue of Fundamental as a limited fortieth anniversary edition whose purpose was to utilize the remaining unbound covers was deemed appropriate. In another recycling coup, a nearly full case of pin-feed newsprint paper for an old dot matrix printer had been hanging around waiting for just the right opportunity to be utilized as the text pages.
BELOW ZERO
A passing dog
touches me with his nose
the bite in the air
Unfortunately, the plan to use the unbound covers proved to be a problem. Many of them did not survive storage intact and were marred by unsightly foxing (paper rust). The alternative solution was to create an authentic edition befitting Pat and Michael’s collaborative genius, limited to 26 copies, lettered A through Z. Supplementary handmade stencils created by the author were utilized in the printing of the end papers and covers, each unique, emphasizing the use of “stencils” (the original pun) as a “fundamental” concept.
Along with the recycled text paper, the cover stock utilizes repurposed commercial cardboard inserts. The end result is a unique “California Funk” edition bound in the Japanese style and highlights Michael Fisher’s collaboration on a genuine literary objet d’art.
The original four stencils of the 1982 edition were augmented with additional designs by Michael Fisher especially for this limited edition. The designs were realized as actual stencil prints this time with new designs made over the last couple years of his life.
MORE PHOTOGRAPHS
Picture me
pen poised
above the page
what I was going
to write down
gone forever
FOR TOMORROW
That bottle
of wine’s
for tomorrow
I’ll only
drink what’s
in the neck
Michael Fisher was born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1944. He was a multi-talented illustrator, artist. musician, raconteur and actor as well as a beloved preschool educator. He lived in Monte Rio, California much of his adult life, and in Todos Santos in Baja, Mexico. He passed away in December of 2019 from complication due to liver cancer.
Pat Nolan was born in Montreal, Canada in 1943. His poetry has been published in numerous literary magazines and publications in North America, Europe and Asia. As well as being a poet, editor, translator, and novelist, he is also a print and book artist. He has been a resident of Monte Rio since 1973. This special edition is a tribute to Michael’s genius.
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