Tom tit tot

Susan Howe

"Howe created the poems for Tom Tit Tot with slivers of typeset text extracted from her readings in American, British, and Irish folklore, poetry, philosophy, art criticism, and history. Beginning with copies of the source material, and including excerpts from the texts themselves and from surrounding footnotes, tables of contents, and marginalia, Howe cut out words and sentence fragments, then spliced and taped them together while retaining their typefaces, spacing, and rhythms. These re-collected images, formed into arrangements shaped both by control and by chance, were then transferred into letterpress prints."--Colophon. "Quaytman's design for the book is inspired partly by the geographical atlases and histories of Emma Hart Willard (1787--1870), an American author, educator, and civil and women's rights activist. For the frontispiece Quaytman created an artwork based on two of...