The Bewildering Thread (Artist's Book)
Wallingford, Pa: The Elm Press, 1986. Hardcover. Light blue clamshell box with inlaid fabric on cover. Thirty-six pages are hinged in an accordion fold, permitting the images to interweave from page to page. VG+. Item #170404
This artist's book developed from a plan by Ruth Mortimer, former Curator of Rare Books at Smith College, for an anthology of poems using weaving and fabric arts as metaphor.
The text of The Bewildering Thread contains fifteen poems, selected from the work of fourteen contemporary women poets: Sandra M Gilbert, Eleanor Wilner, Jody Aliesan, Carolyn Kizer, Amy Clampitt, Linda Pastan, Maura Stanton, Adrienne Rich, Katha Pollitt, Lyn Lifshin, May Swenson, Margaret Atwood, Susan Snively, and Gjertrud Schnackenberg.
The poem by Emily Dickinson, from which the title of the collection is taken, is printed as an epigraph. This is copy No. 13 of the 50 printed. Eleanor Wilne described the book as "...contained poems about the womanly arts of the thread---spinning, embroidery, lacemaking, weaving—the tapestries in which women spoke before the page and the public stage were open to us." Includes some associated paperwork in the back on the clamshell box. 34 of the 50 copies are held in institutions.
OCLC: 14378069
Price: $1,150.00