by Jim Koss (Author)
This first compilation of Jim Koss's poetry offers a selection of textual work previously known only through his one-of-a-kind and small edition artist's books. In Koss's work thrives the idea of constant discovery alongside a timelessness and quiet enormity of scale. The enormity exists in reserved guises: a meeting in two creeks; a tulip petal, fog, changing light, remnants of spirits, a stillness as of colored glass. Often, landscape is the vocabulary of the poems, influenced by sojourns in the Midwest, West, Japan, and in between. The power of place affords spaciousness for reminiscence, inquiry, reconciliation. Koss's meticulously crafted work translates vast ideas into intimate contemplations beheld, like a book, in the hand.
Author Biography
Jim Koss was born in 1952. At age 10, he decided to be an artist. He learned painting, drawing, printmaking & poetry at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago; woodblock printing at Osaka University of the Arts, Japan, & letterpress printing at Mills College, Oakland, California. In 1984 he received a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For forty-two years he has created books making his own images & texts, many of which appear in this volume. Jim lives with his wife Kate Leonard in Seattle, Washington.