Supersession Press has published a limited edition of an illustrated, book-length poem, The Orchard, by Mike Finley. The book was designed and printed by book artist Richard Stephens at Minnesota Center for Book Arts in Minneapolis.

What distinguishes this book from ordinary chapbooks is that it is first an art object, bearing original linoleum blockprint, scratch-negative polymer, and digitized polymer images crafted by Stephens, printed on Rives BFK Paper, and bound by Heidi Ferguson using O'Malley Crackle Cave Paper.


The book paints a picture of Finley's childhood living in an old apple orchard – possibly planted in the 1810s by Johnny Appleseed – in the Firelands of northern Ohio.

 

The Firelands, also known as the Western Reserve, was the name given the land given by the United States to victims of fires set by British forces in Connecticut during the Revolutionary War.

A childhood recalled

The idyllic poem has been compared to Dylan Thomas' poem A Child's Christmas in Wales.

 


"What happens in Finley's story? Almost nothing,” writes critic Kenneth Sinnott.

 

“He writes about a St. Bernard that would sometimes lumber through the apple trees … about the 'monkeyball' trees that clustered along a nearby creek … and about the push lawn-mower that he and his brother Patrick hexed, so it would never start again.

 

"It recalls the best moments of Proust -- memory in a teacup -- only more fragile, and more beautiful."