A Memory From Last Summer: David Thomas (Broadside Print)

What is a Broadside Print?

For centuries now, broadsides have been one of the most popular printed formats and disseminators of information in European and American culture. Printed on single, one-sided sheets of paper, broadsides were used to inform the public about current events and public decrees, publicize official proclamations and government decisions, announce public meetings, advocate political and social causes, advertise commercial and private products and services, and celebrate popular literary and musical efforts. Widely distributed and designed to have an immediate impact on the observer, the often richly illustrated broadsides were posted on buildings or handed out to the general population.

Printed by Peter Koch with Hormone Derange Editions, 1991.

Poem by David Thomas, Engraving by Dirk Lee.

Size: 8"x26"

Text Reads:

"He put in many seasons as hay hand cattle feeder fence mender, knew the wind and sagebrush the prickly pear, intimate with dust and waist deep snow he grew old, too old to hold a job in changing times and he came, to the mountains following the bottle the way a creek finds a river he came one afternoon sunny and bright to the Clark Fork, running fast and muddy he pulled off his boots, and waded toward a song he heard in his wine warm blood, and maybe he saw something, something only his bones could name, huge and winged what to those on the bank was only the cris-crossed shadows of Higgins Bridge, and he drove into it, into the light and shadows playing the muddy waves.
d. thomas, February '88, missoula"