A limited edition letterpress printed poem, Manual for Seers, by Michael Trocchia

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"Manual for Seers" is the titular poem of an unpublished manuscript collection loosely inspired by the stories and lives of ancient seers*. But this poem is fully also in the present, calling each of us into the Now, to open ourselves in this bodied world, and then to discover what can meet us there — the extraordinary mystery of being that itself opens us to our true nature. In a manuscript full of arresting poems, this particular one called to me to be held in the hand and the mind-heart, the way the poem itself invites, receives, and gives again. So, with permission of poet, writer, and teacher Michael Trocchia, I began to design a smaller format that could offer the piece in a larger way — typesetting it letter-by-physical-letter, printing with a foot-treadled press, and creating a poem-card that just fits the hand, a “manual” to be opened as it opens the reader. May it be a little portal for you to truly see yourself, held in the ever-unfolding world.

• Limited edition of 92 numbered prints in matching envelopes (77 of which are for sale).

• Hand-set in Centaur & Arrighi metal type, with a metal decorative ornament.

• Letterpress printed with a foot-treadled press in black and dark-red ink on stone-grey Arturo deckled paper.

• Size: Print card is 5” x 3.25”, with slightly larger envelope.

Michael Trocchia’s poetry is forthcoming in Ploughshares and has appeared in journals such as Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics, Asheville Poetry Review, Baltimore Review, The Bitter Oleander, Black Sun Lit, Chicago Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, Mid-American Review, The Midwest Quarterly, New Orleans Review, Tarpaulin Sky, UCity Review, and The Worcester Review. His work has been anthologized in Southern Poetry Anthology, Volume IX: Virginia (Texas Review Press). He is a creative director for Eunoia Theatre and teaches philosophy and works in the library at James Madison University.

*The term seers, broadly speaking, refers to those gifted (or cursed) with prophecy as well as to those who practice divination. Methods of divination include (though are not limited to) interpreting the flights of birds, the entrails of animals, the hands of humans. In ancient (and mythical) times, seers were held in high regard and often sought out for their insights in all sorts of areas--for instance, in political matters, military strategy, as well as for personal decisions. Examples from Greek myth and culture include Tiresius in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex, Calchas and Merops in Homer's Iliad, Cassandra in Aeschylus' Agamemnon and the Oracle of Delphi. (Michael Trocchia)