Alan Govenar

Midnight Song

Midnight Song depicts an impression of a Hmong shaman, who is both the spiritual leader of his people and a mercenary for the French and the CIA in Laos. The pages are under printed with one of the shaman’s poems in the Miao-Yao language of the Hmong.

The book is printed on Root River Mill paper by Michael Nitsch comprised of Army shirts from 1959 and abaca (fiber from the leafstalk of a banana). The book’s inks are Handschy silver offset and Ernie’s black, and the typefaces are Amos wooden type and Staemel 24-point Optima. The accordion fold of uneven and torn pages is a difficult book structure to create. A compact disc of music from Laos is set into a recess in the bottom of the book’s clamshell box.

Press: Arcadian Press
Date: 1998
Number and Edition: 70 of 123
Size: 7.5” x 14.5”