The Murdered Come Out at Night

Description:	Yousef, Saadi (author)Mattawa, Khaled (translator)OConnell, Bonnie (printer); Original Broadside: Al-Mutanabbi Street Broadsides Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at the FAU Libraries Letterpress with linoleum cut. Edition of 95.This broadside is from the collection of a historic suite of hand-printed literary broadsides which are a part of the Al-Mutannabi Street Starts Here broadside project at the Arthur and Mata Jaffe Center for Book Arts at the FAU Libraries. I was drawn to this poem by Saadi Yousef which speaks for all of us angered by the voracity of another senseless war. I was especially moved by its powerful imagery and while designing the broadsheet recalled equally potent scenes from J’Accuse!, the great anti-war film of Abel Gance, where the dead of WWI rise and march in the streets of Europe to haunt the arms merchants and war mongers with cries of “I Accuse.” Since I planned to print on Neenah Classic Columns paper left from another project, the image of joined shrouds advancing like ghostly sails in the night seemed well suited to the dark gray background. It also provided a light field to support the text, printed in deep red to reinforce the final image of the poem. The type is Melior Bold, a sturdy, open face with both clarity and presence. The white shrouds (as well as the brown limbs) were cut in linoleum and required two impressions since few opaque white inks are opaque enough for coverage on dark saturated colors. This project will not stop the killing or destruction in Iraq, but it has dispelled, at least temporarily, the sense of powerlessness one has in the face of blind evil. To connect with the family of the book across the country and the globe, displaces futility with promise and restores some balance to cynicism.
Origin:	2007
Created By:	Yousef, Saadi; Mattawa, Khaled; O'Connell, Bonnie
Contributor(s):	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition
Publisher:	The Penumbra Press (Omaha, Nebraska)
Source:	http://iuidigital.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/AMSSH/id/41
Collection:	Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here Coalition Collection
Rights:	http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/
Copyright:	In Copyright
Subjects:	broadsides letterpress printing art

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