This delightful handmade concertina book extends vertically to reveal two poems about mountains, “Flatirons” by David Yezzi and “Glacier” by Ernest Hilbert. Only twelve copies available for sale at $30.

YEZZI, David and HILBERT, Ernest [MOFFA, Melissa and MERCER, Jennifer]. Two Ranges [Vertical]. Philadelphia: Nemean Lion Press, 2013. Squat oblong quarto, cobalt blue cloth boards [two specially bound author copies in heavier, darker cloth], concertina paper column. 14pp. Measures 7 by 5 ½ inches on shelf, 36 inches fully extended.

US$30

Signed limited-edition chapbook featuring two alpine poems, one each by David Yezzi and Ernest Hilbert, on opposite facings of the vertically extendable concertina paper column, one of only sixteen total copies signed by both authors, only twelve for sale (two authors’ and two artists’ proofs, hors série), including Hilbert’s distinctive chop stamp featuring the Nemean Lion logo which doubles as his personal sigil, derived from an ancient Minoan figure seal. 

Two Ranges [Vertical] is the third book from Nemean Lion to feature contrasting poems by David Yezzi and Ernest Hilbert. The first in the series, A Fletching of Hackles, showcased spirited dueling by way of light verse between the mutually aggrieved authors. Their second collaboration, 3 X 5, bound in dark blue snakeskin, addressed themes of freedom and obsession. Two Ranges [Vertical] displays David Yezzi’s sonnet sequence “Flatirons,” which debuted in the pages of Poetry magazine, and Ernest Hilbert’s four-decker “Glacier,” which first appeared in the Oxonian Review. Yezzi’s poem details the spiritual effects of a hair-raising free-climb on the infamous Flatiron rock formations near Boulder, Colorado (geomorphologically speaking, a flatiron is a precipitously sloping wedge-shaped surface formed by differential erosion of a rock layer that inclines in the same direction as but at a steeper angle than an exposed slope). Hilbert’s poem describes a brutal though considerably more gradual ascent through a summer storm to the lip of the Arapaho Glacier at 12,000 feet, also in Colorado. The two other climbers alluded to in the poem are David Yezzi and Charles Doersch (who led both ascents). The book is designed in a delightful concertina, or accordion, style that extends vertically to a full 36-inch spread in the reader’s hands, thereby suggesting the dizzying heights of the summits described in the poems. The bookmaker wrapped the cloth-bound boards and glued the concertina columns entirely by hand. Books signed by both Yezzi and Hilbert are certain to become increasingly scarce.

[Photographs by Yujean Park, used by permission]