Week 5: Flood Gates

   Antique maps are intricately beautiful works of art. Seeing a landscape pared down to lines and grids has a way of making it more intimate while also expanding it's scale beyond the realistically visible. With some imagination, these maps tell a story. This week's book, Flood Gates, is an altered form of a previous book-of-the-week, Week 25, 2014, Flood Gates (http://paperbuttons.blogspot.com/2014/06/week-25-flood-gates.html). The current Flood Gates is set in a specific place, the Mississippi River... after the Great Flood of 1927. The poem is a letterpress-printed broadside over a copy of the historic 1927 map of the flooded areas and relief operations.

the entire broadside, 18 x 7 inches

    Below, is an image of the original map of the Flood and Recovery Field Operations drawn by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey for the Red Cross and the Secretary of Commerce, Herbert Hoover. A closer view can be seen on the link: 1927 Mississippi River Flood.

original map, Records of the Coast and Geodetic Survey

   The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 affected 7 states (Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas) and was the most destructive flood in the history of the United States. John M. Barry describes the flood and its destruction in his book,  Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How It Changed America. Over 250 people died, hundreds of thousands of people were displaced, and over 27,000 acres were flooded after the river rose and over 145 levees broke. 

   An unusually wet summer in 1926 led to a swollen Mississippi river and tributaries in Iowa and Kansas overflowing by September. On Christmas Day, 1926, the Cumberland River in Nashville, Tennessee was at 56 ft, still the highest point ever. On April 15, 1927, Good Friday, rains began falling over Missouri, Illinois, Arkansas, Mississippi, Texas, and Louisiana. In New Orleans, they were recorded to have lasted for 18 hours. All along the river, people worked to build up the levees. On April 21 the first levee broke at Mounds Landing, Mississippi. Waters rushed through the three quarter-mile crevass at the same force as the waters of Niagra Falls. Flooding extended 60 miles east and 90 miles south. Over 185,000 people were displaced from this area alone. A PBS documentary describes the flooding and human conditions in Greenville, MS near Mounds Landing (PBS Documentary). In addition to the property destruction was the tragedy of human condition and reaction towards the African American population during the flooding and recovery period. A large exodus of the African American population out of Mississippi and into the Northern cities followed... National Geographic describes the flood and some of the outrageous choices in its article,  Man vs Nature.

Mounds Landing levee breech, 1927

   Though all floods are catastrophic, this particular flood map seemed most appropriate to cover all of the untold stories behind the words of the poem, Flood Gates. The map was inkjet printed onto Rives BFK paper with an Epson printer. The typeface used for printing the poem was 14-point Bembo and the poem was printed on a Vandercook letterpress at Penland School of Crafts in Penland, North Carolina. Ink color was selected from the Pantone Color Guide to match the river on the original map.

choosing an ink color from the Pantone color guide...

Ink was mixed on a glass plate and then applied to the cylinder rollers of the press for even printing.

mixing the ink

Once the ink was ready, the type was locked into the press bed. To repeat imagery of the two banks of the river, the stanzas were set in two columns. The lines of the poem were set with uneven margins to repeat the convoluted shape of the river. The uneven margin typesetting process was quite fun for this book artist.. and is highly recommended as a letterpress exercise!

lines of type in the pressbed

Printing was begun just below the title and legend of the original map.

titles, map and poem

The poem begins with the title and first stanza on the left...

the first stanza..

the lines of the poem move like the river...

meandering lines of type.. like the river

and the river is soon bordered by two lines of type...

the poem.. on two banks

and converge at the bottom part of the poem.

moving along the river way...

This is the poem.

 Flood Gates

Who knew when it started

it would be such a day?

The clouds came in

    quiet

      filling the sky

           gray

         the air cooled

              the shadows,

                    stillness

         filled the space

In the distance thunder

  rumbled...

      electricity

  moved through the air

as if the gods were whispering

 their heavenly

       beware.

 The first drops 

        fell

 big and sloppy

playfully splattering,

     plopping and pinging

         the sidewalks and lawns,

      forests, highways,

   and farms

    Meanwhile the thunder

  grew louder,

its growl more insistent

        with snap cracks

                of lightening

      that startled the nerves

  frightened the little babies

...and the old folks too.

The wind blew the rain

        sideways

    sent hats a-flying

and umbrellas turned

    upward

      like tea cups scared stiff

     Then the rain came in

  sure and drenching...

pouring sheets and sheaths

             that were flapping and waving

                like clothes on the line...

          washing away the refuse,

 the dust and the grime

           So the drivers slowed down

             it was that hard to see

 and the walkers took shelter

on porches, and in doorways,

    under bridges, and trees

          looking for cover

             as quick as could be.

  Still the water

 kept coming

             the rain never ceased...

         the torrents above

      and the deluge below

     It was a world washed

in wetness

 ...the sky gods were weeping

         and everything not sheltered

was soaked, sodden, or

                   floating...

            and the mud just

          kept rising

    because

the flood gates

        had opened.

 Who knew

     when it started

    it would be such

      a day?

Lake Village, Arkansas, 1927