The Poet’s Press Featured Authors

 

Surveys and Studies

Brett Rutherford has designed and produced a myriad of surveys and studies, and has pioneered in using readily-available desktop tools (especially database programs) to tabulate and analyze survey results and create databases for historical and trends analysis use. He has developed unique methods for the creation of reports and texts spun off from surveys and databases. Projects include:

Color Digital.com. Two annual buyers' guides listing all U.S. installations of digital presses. BR created and managed database, producing typeset output which was used in Buyer's Guide issues for Digital Imaging magazine in 1999 and I/O Magazine in 2000. The database was also output into HTML for use in the Internet web site colordigital.com.

GraphStats (formerly Blue Book Marketing Information Reports ). A quarterly information service in print and on CD-ROM of data compilations and commentary about the North American graphic arts industry. Editor 1995 to 2004. A.F. Lewis & Co., Inc., now Reed Business Services. This product contains about 150 statistical tables analyzing equipment and products for the entire North American graphic arts industry. BR edited and wrote all the trends analysis for this series for nine years, and developed all the software to tabulate and update the data.

TrendWatch Market Reports . 1997 to 2004. Final copy editing, production, design and PDF output for eight major market studies per year, with responsibility for databases, and production of thousands of pages of elaborate charts and tables.

“Changing trends in self-advertising.” Reader survey. National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer .

“Controlled growth through effective management reports [Survey on use of MIS systems].” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer.

“Cost mark up in the printing industry.” Reader and member survey. National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer , 1978.

“Depreciation practices in the printing industry.” Member survey. National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer.

Gravure Industry Buyer's Guide. A comprehensive buyer's guide for suppliers to the gravure industry, compiled and edited by BR. Gravure Magazine, Fall 1988.

“Gravure's big role in cartons and labels [GAA Profile Survey update].” Gravure , Fall 1998. 4 pp. Presents dollar values of market segments, market shares for gravure printing, lists of companies operating gravure equipment, and list of relevant mergers/acquisitions.

“The industry's experience with OSHA [survey and analysis].” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, November 1986.

“Manhattan's printers at 2000's threshold: still here, thank you, and significant.” A statistical study conducted by BR of how many printers remain in Manhattan, along with profiles of their equipment and product specialties. Printing News , December 6, 1999. 4 pp with tables.

“An ounce of preventive maintenance.” Reader survey. National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, 1977.

“The printing industry's computer literacy.” National Association of Printers and Lithographers, 1987. A survey of computer skills required for new hires.

Profile of the American Gravure Industry , Gravure Technical Association, New York NY, 1983. A major market and equipment profile of the U.S. gravure industry covering the years 1976- 1982. 178 pp.

Profile of the U.S. Gravure Industry , Gravure Association of America, New York NY, 1989 edition and 1994 edition. A 320-page market and equipment profile of gravure in publication printing, packaging and product printing. The most comprehensive market study ever undertaken of this $15 billion industry segment.

“The Profile Survey of the U.S. Gravure Industry.” Gravure , Spring 1989. Summary of the market survey noted above.

“Raw materials cost and quality.” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, 1979.

“Survey of sheetfed presses under 22 inches.” National Association of Printers and Lithographers, 1982.

“Survey on overruns/ underruns.” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, 1976, revised and updated in 1978.

“What printers are doing about OSHA.” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, 1978.

“Women move forward in the graphic arts [survey and analysis].” National Association of Printers and Lithographers and American Printer, 1978.

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Three Books

First up is the huge 208-page new collection of Brett Rutherford's The Gods As They Are, On Their Planets. This is available as a free PDF on this site, or can be ordered from Our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. The Providence-based poet has included in this book all the poems he has written and revised since his last big collection, Poems from Providence. CLICK HERE TO READ THE PDF

The second new book is the expanded third edition of Brett Rutherford's landmark poetry collection, Whippoorwill Road: The Supernatural Poetry. This extraordinary 272-page paperback contains all the poet's supernatural poems, including more than 70 pages of new poems since 1998. Praised by Robert Bloch and Ray Bradbury, these poems may be the best supernatural poems of the 20th century. Now you can read the entire PDF free on this site, or order the print edition from our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. To READ THE PDF, CLICK HERE.

The third new book is the expanded second edition of Brett Rutherford's biographical play, Night Gaunts: An Entertainment Based on the Life and Writings of H.P. Lovecraft. The book also includes a number of "ceremonial" poems written to be read at H.P. Lovecraft's grave in Swan Point Cemetery, Providence. The play has been performed twice at The Providence Athenaeum, and was recently adapted as a radio play by New England Institute of Art in Brookline, Mass. You can order the print edition from our NEW ON-LINE BOOKSTORE. To read the PDF, CLICK HERE

The Death of Jocasta The Writer's Circle of Providence selected Brett Rutherford's dramatic scene, "The Death of Jocasta," for a staged reading in April 2004. This reading was at Alumni Hall at Brown University, with a cast of professional actresses and students. The scene, in blank verse in ancient Greek style, is written to be inserted in Sophocles' Oedipus Rex. In the Sophocles original, Queen Jocasta does the "proper" thing by committing suicide offstage when she learns that she has been married to her own son for twenty years. Rutherford's drama is a feminist exploration of Queen Jocasta's dilemma. In this version, she does not commit suicide: she is put on trial and condemned by the women of Thebes, and offers up a spirited self-defense. This small play had a tremendous impact on its audience, many of whom mistook it for a translation.	Printing History & Literature Lecturer Brett Rutherford has written articles and book reviews on printing history and is a book collector. He has given lectures for the John Russell Bartlett Society at The Providence Athenaeum, Brown University, and The Providence Public Library on "Elbert Hubbard and the Roycrofters," "Poe and Mrs. Whitman," and "Illustrated Editions of Edgar Allan Poe." At the Athenaeum, he has lectured on Edgar Allan Poe and Sarah Helen Whitman, and has read his supernatural poems there in a series of annual Halloween readings. For the last two years, Rutherford has been a guest lecturer at New England Institute of Art (AI) in Brookline, Mass, where he has presented on H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allan Poe.
Classical Music Connections An avid collector of classical music and an occasional composer of keyboard music, Brett Rutherford has helped The Providence Athenaeum establish Rhode Island's best and most accessible circulating library of classical CDs. He has donated his entire collection of 4,000 CDs, ranging from Chinese opera to 20th century music, to be the foundation of the new circulating collection. This collection also has a strong emphasis on American music. Brett Rutherford also writes program notes for the invitational chamber music concerts given by pianist Varda Lev, and for the concert series of The Rhode Island Chamber Music Society.	The H.P. Lovecraft Friends Group To foster local and international interest in H.P. Lovecraft and his Providence connections, Brett Rutherford established an informal H.P. Lovecraft Friends Group. This group meets sporadically for luncheons and field trips to graveyards, Lovecraft haunts, and other locales of spectral or literary interest. Rutherford usually runs these meetings and includes informal lectures on such topics as the origin of Gorgons, sea monsters, classic horror films of the 1930s and 1940s, Goethe's Faust, Lizzie Borden, and Poe- and Lovecraft-related topics. Sixteen issues of a tabloid-sized newsletter, titled The Cthulhu Prayer Society Newsletter, have been produced in print and on-line. Rutherford also runs a Yahoo discussion group called "Lovecraft In Providence," which encourages worldwide dissemination of these materials. Some people take delight in these things, although one librarian looked at the newsletter and snapped, "You people are nuts!"
Night Gaunts Brett Rutherford's play, Night Gaunts, was written to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the death of America's greatest horror writer, who spent almost his entire life in Providence. Two staged readings in 1987 and 1990 featured actor Carl Johnson as H.P. Lovecraft and played to sold-out houses. The script was published by The Poet's Press in 1988, and in a new, revised edition in 2005. The play includes two vivid female characters — Lovecraft's mother, who gets a great mad scene, and Lovecraft's New York wife, Sonia Greene, who enacts a kind of "Horror Honeymooners" with the romantically inept author. This play was adapted by Hal Hamilton into a radio drama, broadcast in Boston in October 2004 and soon to be issued as a CD.	Never Far From A Library Libraries are central to Brett Rutherford's existence. He grew up in places where they were minimal if not nonexistent. In recent years, he has donated almost all of his personal collections to libraries where they will be preserved and made accessible to the public. He gave more than 350 specimens of printing by the Roycrofters to The Providence Athenaeum, as well as his collection of 4,000 classical CDs. He has donated a collection of wood engravings by artist John DePol to the Providence Public Library's Daniel Berkeley Updike Collection, along with a number of books on printing history. Complete sets of the editions published by The Poet's Press have been donated to the Harris Collection at the John Hay Library at Brown University, and to Poets House in New York City. Rutherford chairs the Philbrick Poetry Prize Committee for the Providence Athenaeum.