Rare Books is a regular column showcasing items from the L.R. Benes Rare Book Room. The L.R. Benes Rare Book Room features artist books, first editions, chapbooks, and broadsides, among many other treasures of literary significance. These holdings are searchable in the Poetry Center catalog and may be viewed by the public upon request during our open hours, Monday through Friday.

Today's feature: Fact-Simile Editions' Poetry Trading Cards, 2010-2014. 

Collect all sixty.

Beginning in 2010, Travis Macdonald and JenMarie Davis, who together constitute Fact-Simile Editions in Philadelphia, published five years of trading-card-size mini-broadsides of the work of their favorite living poets, one per month. And the Poetry Center has collected all sixty cards, one of the more distinctive series in its Rare Book room. Above are nine of the twelve from the 2014 "season." If you recognize some aspects of the designs, that's probably because you collected Topps player cards when you were a kid. Check out this Jack Collum card, and then look again at your Ozzie Smith from 1989, or see the resemblance between the 2013 Clark Coolidge, below, and your 1965 Willie Stargell. Squint at Bernadette Mayer, and you might recall your 1988 Tom Glavine. Where is that, anyway? It might be worth something.

Macdonald writes, in response to our excitement at seeing all the cards in one place, "The evolution of these [Topps] cards from 1950 through 2010 really, in many ways, reflect the corresponding shifting nuances of social and cultural norms over the same period." And it may be that the short poems or excerpts printed on the reverse of the portraits "framed in these iconic designs" likewise remark and track the culture. 

There is something a little wicked in the pleasure of handling these, something that awakens the Tommy Lasorda or Brian Cashman in a person, making changes in a lineup, or releasing to free agency this or that poet, according to performance review or market forces. Who has the hot hand, and who is in a slump? We suspected they have been put to provocative use over the years, and we wondered whether collectors had had fun that got back to the publishers. Macdonald writes, "we've seen them posted on office doors and used as bookmarks, and in the hands of kids and collectors, but perhaps the most interesting use was a picture of a particular poet's card (who shall remain nameless) in one of our subscriber's bike spokes."

  

While the series was suspended in 2015, when Macdonald and Davis gave birth to a son, they "have left the door open to maybe doing another 5-year series in the future." Fact-Simile is reevaluating its press plan and, in the near term, is putting out an issue of the magazine (Fact-Simile) and is completing its open chapbook reading period. 

Meanwhile, we recall the highlights of the first five years. Here, now, hitting cleanup, C. S. Giscombe, at bat:

   

Thanks, Fact-Simile.