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12 Bars

Out of print

Gift wrapping:
Options available
Dimensions:
8 x 6 1/16
Number of pages:
24
ISBNs:
098871216; 0968871232
Publication Date:
May, 2002

by Stan Dragland

Co-winner of the 2003 bpNichol Chapbook Award

Middle-aged and aint got no sense yet hardly. If I had a dollar for every strained silence I’ve created in my lifetime, I’d be rich. Have mercy, I’d be a rich man today.

from “The Yellow Dory”

Stan Dragland’s prose blues sequence was originally invited for, and published in, Why I Sing the Blues (edited by Brad Cran and Jan Zwicky), but since each of these twelve prose poems is named after a St. John’s bar, it seemed right that the poems should be published by a press located in the city that they celebrate. Witty, sad, and self-probing, the sequence finds a middle-aged man falling in love with his new home town, while his own home is fraught with a failing marriage. A play on words, a play on the music that it celebrates, 12 Bars shows Dragland working beautifully within a form he has made his own.

12 Bars was the second chapbook published by Running the Goat, and the first to feature our current font of preference – Fournier. It marked the beginning of our ongoing association with Michael and Winifred Bixler, makers of truly beautiful lead monotype. The limited edition featured a cover of Japanese paper made of thin sheets of cork fixed onto a blue paper: remarkable for the beautiful of its texture and look, exquisite to the touch.

Printed in two editions; both are in 12 pt Fournier set by Michael and Winifred Bixler of Skaneatles, NY.

The fine paper edition was printed on Hahnemuhle Ingres with dark blue Somegami endpapers and a cork cover, limited to an edition of 100 signed and numbered by the author. Hand-sewn.

The plain paper edition printed on Environment Text in an edition of 300. Saddle-stitched.