2020 Miami 100s

When I received a seventh invitation to the Anderson Center at Tower View in Red Wing, Minnesota it was once again an opportunity to work with acknowledged master letterpress printers in Red Wing and the Twin Cities. The Midwest is a place that never lost the traditions of letterpress printing. I had a small dilemma, however. In all the previous residencies, I had filled the walls of my studio with new work upon my arrival. The time in school and printing for the gallery, had kept my production to a minimum. Mid-May I asked fourteen friends and collaborators (all writers) to give me 100 characters each to print on broadsheets. The resulting prose, poems, prayers, and koans are the Miami 100’s. When I put them up in my studio at the Anderson Center, they were a huge hit. Writers have been the river that has carried me through my life so far. I am grateful.

Tom Virgin

Miami100’s, fourteen broadsheets: designed and printed by Tom Virgin at Extra Virgin Press, read by the poets.

  1. John Dufresne
    Call me Archie. Single, seraphic, steadfast, castle-building,
    and somewhat vainglorious male seeks female to woo.
  2. Steve Kronen, Flat Earth Society-Sophie at 2
    Our daughter wedges between us
    and sleeps far from the world’s sheer edges.
  3. Yaddyra Peralta
    The Land: Before the flow was corsetted by canals, big water.
    Today, a dimmed sky reclaims you.
  4. Campbell McGrath
    Talking to the moon,
    Wanting things I can’t afford,
    Rubies, wind, more time.
  5. Christina Frigo, True Love
    I want to show you everything good on the internet.
  6. Denise Duhamel
    My Irma haiku washes out to sea.
    The insurance adjuster says its worthless
    Just like my drenched six year old tv.
  7. Edwidge Danticat
    I believe that children are prayers,
    growing living prayers,
    and love is the greatest prayer of all.
  8. Lynne Barrett
    Explore Florida! 1521. A Calusa arrow dipped in manchaneel sap,
    manzanilla de la muerte, kills Ponce de Leon.
  9. Maureen Seaton,
    Various universes fold in on themselves and create more universes.
    We’re all folded up in here, waiting to reappear.

“My daughter Emily and her high school physics book are to blame for the latent love of Einstein that inspired this little piece. I couldn’t stop reading about theories of reality, seamless universes, space, time, synchronicity. My imagination went wild and voila! (I hope we all reappear soon!)”

  1. Mia Leonin
    The ancient story is not that she gave and he took.
    The ancient story is that I am writing this
    and you are reading it.
  2. Michael Hettich
    The first trees were prayers he explained to us then,
    whose leaves were pressed into oil and charcoal.
    They contained a secret knowledge, only angels ever sang.
  3. P. Scott Cunningham
    You’re at your desk.
    You can’t concentrate.
    Imagine if not concentrating was concentrating.
  4. Nadege Green
    We choose not to see them,
    We choose not to hear them,
    Then we call them “invisible.”
  5. Catherine Esposito Prescott, Erosion
    The ocean eaats this island,
    Gnaws wave-teeth into shoreline. Even poems end too soon.
    Remind me, what am I forgetting?