To visit Sherman Asher
by Nancy Fay
Sherman Asher Publishing began with an impulse to produce beautifulbooks. Judith Asher hadbeen in love with books and bookmaking since childhood when she would playat printing books andbinding them. It was her vision in 1994 to create a presswith the trademarked slogan:“Changing the world one book at a time.” The slogan comes from theTalmudic teaching:“Tikun Olam,” which translates as “Mend/ repair/ transform the world”. Isigned on as editorbefore the first book appeared, spending all my spare moments when notat my other jobsimmersed in page proofs. When the press had a dozen titles in print in 1997, forsaking all others, I agreed to workfor Sherman AsherPublishing as a legitimate job with known hours and a paycheck. Judithbrings to the press herpowerful sense of engaging the world through Judaism, and I through myBuddhist practice. Witheach book the press has found a new level of its pragmatic path ofcreating books that change theworld.
In our quest for books as beautiful objects, we tried hiring bookdesigners, but Judith quicklydiscovered a ferocious passion in herself for the intricacies of font,page design, and creatingcovers that expressed the essence of the books. She now workscollaboratively with Janice St.Marie, a graphic artist, who provides technical support on realizingJudith’s design ideas. Theearliest awards for the press (Benjamin Franklin Award and PEN West) in1997 for Listening forCactus by Mary McGinnis, a first book of poems by a brilliant writerwho has been blind sincebirth, was partially credited to our design decision to bind in aBraille frontispiece. Our initial hopehad been a Braille / English format, but this did not work due to the more extensive spacerequirements for Braille and English on facing pages. Judith and I hadlong been involved withdisability rights and proponents of barrier free buildings. After yearsof attending Mary’sextraordinary readings, watching her hands skim along the raised dotsand markings of hernotebooks as well as many instances of including her poetry in our anthologies, it seemeda natural progression topublish Mary’s book. Our inside joke was that we invented “publishing ondemand” as we wouldtell Mary repeatedly, “Just give us the poems. You’ve got a great booklurking in those big blacknotebooks. Hand over the poems and we will make a beautiful book.”
We didn’t know how hard it would be to cross genres when we decided toedit the anthologyWritten With a Spoon: A Poet’s Cookbook. We simply wanted a book thatcombined our twoloves; great food and great poetry. Since this was a book we would buy,we naively figured wehad a market. If I had known beforehand the special nightmares ofcopyediting both poetry andrecipes I might have deserted the project on the spot. Ah, but then camethe bliss of taste testingthe recipes for Nectarine Pie and Handcranked Peach Ice Cream. Followingyour passions canlead to some odd, yet wonderful, places.
We were already great admirers and friends of both Joan Logghe andMiriam Sagan, so when theypitched us the idea for Another Desert : Jewish Poetry of New Mexico (for a review of Another Desert) wewere eager to workon it. Spotlighting the rich Jewish legacy of New Mexico appealed to us.The Jews of the frontierWest and the hidden converso Jews among the early settlers from Spainhave little officialvisibility in books. Judith is active on regional, national, andinternational boards for Jewisheducation and is fond of saying that as soon as there is a board forintergalactic Judaism she willserve on that too. The hidden work was proofing poems that looped intoand out of Spanish,Hebrew, Ladino, ( a mixture of Spanish and Hebrew) Yiddish , and thearchaic Spanish that isspecific to Northern New Mexico and Southern Colorado. My unlimitedgratitude to ReubenCobos for his meticulously researched dictionary of the region. To ourdelight this book was afinalist for the 1998 Mountains and Plains Awards, and has miraculouslygone into a secondprinting. Que milagro!
Likewise, when Marjorie Agosín brought us the manuscript for Miriam’sDaughters: JewishLatin American Women Poets (for a review by J.C. Todd) it seemed a natural progression of ourinterests in Judaism and inbilingual texts. Work by these poets was frustratingly hard to obtain,and we were attracted tomaking their work more visible and available. We had publishedMarjorie’s poetry in a bilingualedition Lluvia en el desierto / Rain in the Desert (for a review) the year before,and so we felt we could stretchour skills to encompass a book in English, Portuguese, and Spanish with multipleauthors. This noble projectwould have been worthy of a well-endowed university with graduatestudents assisting in theendless logistics. What in the world was a micro press without grantsthinking when we decidedto orchestrate such an international project? We thought it would be abook we’d love to read, and it was!
While Judith was in Spain she stopped to visit one of our favorite poetswho had poems in two ofour prior anthologies, The XY Files and The Practice of Peace.Lawrence Schimel hasauthored or edited over 40 books and had just had a press drop out of anagreement to publish hisanthology by and about gay Jewish men. He gave us several stories to read andwe were wild aboutthem. Judith saw the appropriateness of a press known for its interestin Judaica presenting thewritings of gay Jewish men. Never mind that we knew little aboutmarketing frankly erotic stories.The writing and the content were compelling, and so we leapt in topublish what became KosherMeat. The reviews were overwhelmingly positive from Publishers Weekly, Salon.com, and Tikkun who devoted a surprising amountof ink to praising thebook. When Kosher Meat was a finalist for both ForeWord Magazine‘s2001 Book of the YearAward and the Lambda Literary Awards, we felt that our faith wasjustified.
In a similar vein, I had first heard Alvaro Cardona-Hine read with JoanLogghe when these twoNEA winners read together one wintry afternoon. I solicited his work foranthologies and thepress was honored when he brought us two of his memoirs. A History ofLight follows theprose poem tradition so beautifully realized in the classic Platero YYo by Jimenez. Alvaro’stranslucent and tender meditation on the mind of childhood was afinalist for the 1998 Small PressBook Awards. The Bloomsbury Review wrote that A History of Light“dazzles us with affectionand delight.” A native of Costa Rica, Cardona-Hine is a celebratedcomposer of music and textsfor music, an artist whose work is exhibited nationally, an editor for adecade of MankindMagazine, a translator of Vallejo’s España, Aparta de Mi Este Calizand the author of 14additional books in English and Spanish. His most recent memoir,Thirteen Tangos forStravinsky which considers his coming-of-age years as a immigrant inLos Angeles in the 1940s,was a finalist for the ForeWord Book of the Year Awards in 2000. Hispaintings have graced fourof our book covers and his invaluable advice on translation has made anumber of our otherprojects richer, more precisely nuanced, and we are grateful for hisartistry.
Marjorie Agosín called us one day and announced that she had a wonderfulpresent for us, anintroduction to a gifted author, Genie Zeiger, who had written adeeply moving memoir abouther mother. I promised to read it, if only out of respect for Marjorie.I knew from the first page I read that it was exactly right for us:tender, exquisitely written, brave and clear-eyed as the author facedtheirremediable onslaught of Alzheimer’s on her vibrant mother—a memoir thatonly a poet could write. Then I panicked. I was afraid I would be theonly one who liked such abook. What if readers were scared away because it was sad? because therewere no easy slogans putforth as answers? because as a reader, you care so much about thismother and daughter in theircomplex relationship and then the mother dies? However, the reader response wasstunning.
Oprah picked HowI Find Her : A Mother’s Dying and a Daughter’s Life as suggested summerreading in hermagazine. We sold the German rights to Kindler Verlag who publish SalmanRushdie. Magazinesand newspapers wrote glowing reviews. As an editor, I was relieved tofind that I have no ideawhat the public wants. Maybereaders are still looking for meaning and beauty. We went to a secondprinting in three months,and the book is continuing to find grateful, devoted readers.
Each book has its own story illuminating another step that showed us howto turn our passionsinto carefully crafted books that find homes among readers. Ourdecisions to pursue and publishcertain authors and projects have an icing of logic spooned on top, butthe overwhelming reasonwe commit to a book is simply that we are in love. We fall in love withlanguage and craftrepeatedly, we are infatuated with narrative, we feel we have a seriouscommitment to translation,we have something special going with memoir, and we crave a good story.Our commitment topoetry stems from the conviction that the insights received from thesymbolic messages of poetryare a necessary and potent precursor to making changes in the world.Poetry and memoir offersuch an intimate view that our contact with them changes us, underminingour sense of whois “the other”, decreasing our sense of isolation, and as the work getsunder our skin, past therational cool mind, and gets in our blood, yes, it changes the world.
Years ago I was given some exceptional advice by two wise friends. Petersaid, “Do what isobvious to you that needs to be done. Trust your sense of what isnecessary. What is obvious toyou will not be what is obvious to others.” Miriam Sagan said, “A goodidea is not a poem. Youstill have to do the work. Apply the craft to the good idea.” These twoideas have been crucial tomy life and practice, to what I bring to the press, and what the pressbrings forth to the world.
