TRANSCRIPT

I’m Maggie Smith, and this is The Slowdown.

In a world where so much is mass produced — food, clothing, technology, and yes, even art — it’s challenging to imagine a time when almost everything was one of a kind and made from scratch.

When we hear the word “print’ in regards to a painting, we might think of a copy or duplicate — in other words, not the real thing. There’s Gustav Klimt’s famous painting “The Kiss,” worth millions of dollars, and then there are poster prints of the original, which anyone can buy and hang in their home. Printmaking as a technology began just before the invention of movable type allowed for the mass production of books — in both cases, opening the floodgates of knowledge and ideas. Today, many forms of printmaking are practiced as a craft and as an art. Some printmaking, like intaglio, is used to create both limited-edition art that would hang in a museum or a piece of paper money.

The word intaglio comes from an Italian word meaning “to incise” or “to carve.” This printmaking method dates back to the middle of the fifteenth century. The artist engraves an image into a metal plate's surface, then applies ink over the plate and wipes away the excess, leaving ink only within the engraved lines. Then they press dampened paper onto the plate, which picks up the inked image.

It is possible to make multiple intaglio prints from the same metal plate, by applying more ink, wiping it away again, and transferring the inked image to a new sheet of paper. Still, each print is unique, because the process is a human process. More ink might be transferred on the second print than the first, so the color could be darker. Or a little fleck of ink might make its way onto the print where it shouldn’t be. Even when we try to do the same thing over and over, variations naturally occur. That’s the magic of being human.

Today’s poem is evidence of that magic. This poem, this piece of art I’m about to share with you, was made from scratch — from the poet’s mind — and it’s one of a kind.

Intaglio
by Emma Aylor

This early morning, clouds pulled under
us full of breath, in sheets,
completely inhuman, and it was early,

as I said, so the light deepened the relief

of the drifts in the unrolled bolt,
which settled like his curls, or dunes, or hummocks
of substantial ground, and though moved,

I thought continually of something else,

several proofs of which live above: of vapor
I made breath, cloth, hair, sand, earth—
this isn’t exactly failure, I’ll say,

but multiplication; the layers seemed

to add pleasure to the scene.
Start again when the plane surpasses a river
bent as so much else—I won’t, this time,

list—but not quite. What can I be,

such that, as it shakes out,
I can be like both something
and nothing else? I can feel the joint

where each metaphor fails.

Now, of course, I’m aware of you
reading, but while I thought in flight
(constructing a motivation), it was as if

someone had asked me, before, to prepare

the views for them, all through
my life. What would I say, I’d asked
myself, apparently—what is it that I’d tell you

of that cloud if you were here?

"Intaglio" by Emma Aylor. Used by permission of the poet.