Kyle Schlesinger

Kyle Schlesinger is a poet, critic, and book artist. His research focuses on typography, visual art, and new media. He is an assistant professor and co-Director of the Graduate Publishing Program at the University of Houston-Victoria.
Life
Schlesinger earned his BA from Goddard College (1999) and his Ph.D. from the University at Buffalo (1995). His dissertation is entitled "Letterpress Printing in the Postmodern Era: Poetry, Media, Typography".
Schlesinger learned to print letterpress in 1996, and in 2001, established Cuneiform Press, a non-profit publishing house specializing in artists' books, poetry, and criticism. Cuneiform has published over 40 books to date, including titles by Bill Berkson, Johanna Drucker, Alan Loney, Robert Creeley, and Charles Olson.
He served as the editor of: Kiosk (2000-2005) with Gordon Hadfield and Sasha Steensen; ON: Contemporary Practice (2008-2010) with Thom Donovan and Michael Cross; and Mimeo Mimeo (2008-present) with Jed Birmingham. He has also guest-edited American Book Review and Journal of Artists' Books.
He worked as a curator at the St. Mark's Poetry Project (2008-2009) and with Steve Clay, serves as the co-curator of the Threads Lecture Series. In 2010, he curated Poems & Pictures: A Renaissance in the Art of the Book 1946-1981, an exhibition that traveled from New York City to Houston to Buffalo to Chicago.
Schlesinger is the author of twelve creative publications and two books of criticism. In 2005, he received a full fellowship to attend Rare Book School at UVA, and in 2008, he gave the keynote at the Research Group for Artists Publications in London. In 2011, he was artist in residence at the Center for Book and Paper Arts at Columbia College Chicago. Professor Schlesinger has published and lectured throughout Europe and North America.
Creative Publications
* Parts of Speech. Tucson: Chax Press, 2014
* Picture Day. Victoria, Australia: Electio Editions, 2012.
* What You Will. Colorado Springs: New Lights Press, 2011.
* Bad Words to the Radio and Other Poems. Northampton, MA: Least Weasel Press, 2011.
* Commonplace. Chicago: Cuneiform Press, 2011.
* Dark Glasses. Calgary, Canada: No Press, 2010.
* The Pink. Chicago: Kenning Editions, 2008.
* Look. Calgary, Canada: No Press, 2008.
* Hello Helicopter. Buffalo: BlazeVOX Books, 2007.
* Schablone Berlin. Tucson: Chax Press, 2005. With Caroline Koebel.
* Moonlighting. Berlin, Germany: Cuneiform Press, 2005.
* Mantle. Buffalo: Atticus Finch, 2005. With Thom Donovan.
* A Book of Closings. Berlin, Germany: Cuneiform Press, 2004.
Critical Publications
* Poems and Pictures. New York: Center for Book Arts, 2010.
* The Perishable Press Limited. New York: The Grolier Club, 2003.
Reviews
The subtext of the book is a comment on cultural difference, on the conviction that somehow alternative culture--radical, subversive, activist, and chaotically but collectively organized--is thriving in Berlin in a way that it has been expunged from the sanitized and surveilled spaces of contemporary America. If that is true, we have something more urgent to learn from this book than how to appreciate this stencil art.
This art and text project by Caroline Koebel and Kyle Schlesinger is a loving drift through the streets of Berlin to examine and to be inspired by its raw, lively, lustful, sometimes esoteric stencil culture. Exquisitely photographed, this work plays in the in betweens of poetics and politics, the trivial and the insightful, the amusing and the disturbing, the immediate and the aloof. One way or another, this book will seduce you. Critical Art Ensemble
The Pink, in both form and theme, shows a work that, in the words of George Oppen, "shows confidence in itself and its materials." Thanks to Kyle, we are gratefully taken into this confidence.

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