Erratic Printing - the Evolution of Phony Lid

The First Phony Lid Book

The first book published by Phony Lid was a collection of poems by Marie Kazalia. I'd first started publishing Marie's work while I was still in Birmingham, in the pages of Vagabond Review and the FYUOCUK broadside. But Marie had so much material, all relating to her experience living in a run down hotel in the Mission District of San Francisco, that I wanted to put a collection together, the first Phony Lid book. 

Marie sent me numerous emails fulls of poems and I read them all, making a short list and then my final selections. These became the book. Since I had no idea how to make a book, I handled the printing the same way I handled the printing of Vagabond. I was only doing 200 copies, so I went the OfficeMax and ran off the pages on their self service machines. I had the covers done behind the counter. They didn't come out that great, but I figured the work out, over saturated look went with the material. 

I knew the photographer, a friend of Marie's, wouldn't be too thrilled with the result... he'd gone through a real hassle trying to get a decent shot of the actual hotel in the Mission District written out in the poems, The Crown.


I found a bindery in Pasadena and dropped everything off. 
When I picked up my order, I was dismayed that the ink on the cover came off on my fingers. 

I didn't know what to do at first. The covers looked horrible. I set them out in the sun, hoping to dry the ink. But after a day, there was no improvement.  I went back to OfficeMax and complained and a guy I had dealt with several times before agreed to print new covers for me on the color printer. Since I couldn't rebind the book and I had 200 copies of the book already printed, I ended up printing dustjackets and solved the problem that way. 

The black and white photo came out great on the color copier and I was satisfied with the result. The dustjacket was a little annoying, but it was better than having the ink come off on the reader's fingers. 

When it came time to reprint the book, I knew for sure that I wasn't going to handle the printing on my own. I had already redesigned the entire book, from the interior pages to the cover, and found a printer in East LA that would do the covers offset. The bindery in Pasadena would print the inside pages and do the binding. 

The final product came out great. Though over the years, the covers have become incredibly rubbed, since the printer didn't use a coating. But I kind of like how they look worn out, not due to some printing mishap, but through use, even though they've mostly been in books on on shelves.  

Erratic Sleep in a Cold Hotel

ERRATIC SLEEP IN A COLD HOTEL

by Marie Kazalia

In this collection of 46 poems, Marie Kazalia, whose work has been described as "hellmouth candids," offers a vivid reality of a disengaged life through sometimes disturbing yet intriguing images of a woman immersed in the urban struggle, faced with compromising accommodations in run down hotels in San Francisco's Mission District, encounters with street derelicts, homelessness and her own sense of sexuality. The poems capture with poignant vitality the observations of the author as she readjusts to American life on her return to San Francisco from 4 years as an expatriate in the Orient.

As she says in the introduction:"When I arrived, I entered into such a state of culture shock I didn't feel like I belonged anywhere. Stayed in a tourist guesthouse South of Market. I made friends there who were living rent free because they managed to stay past the 28 day limit, and had become legal residents so couldn't be kicked out. They taught me lots. I stayed for 27 or 28 days then the manager asked me to leave. … so ended up going to a shelter for women, not even knowing what a shelter was or what to expect. Right away I became interested in the lives of the people there. Stayed 3 months, at what the staff psycho-logist called my "free rent gig," which it basically was."

From there she bounced around until she came to the Crown Hotel. Here, she found "the conditions under which I can write."

"And so I lived and wrote in that tiny room at the Crown Hotel— an old wooden 4 story structure— hammering under my feet, below my single bed— the health food grocery in the street level storefront under construction for months, replaced by too loud new-age muzac coming up through the thin old carpet on the floor when the store finally opened. Cold air seeping in through every crack visible and invisible— the antique steam heater in a corner of my tiny room hissed for about 30 minutes most evenings— unless I heard the manager—one of the members of the endless Patel family of India—finding his wrench, disengaging the old elevator to take him down to the basement where he clanged on pipes and did something to the ancient boiler to get it going yet one more time."

Like black and white photography, these confessional poems explore, without contradiction, the reclusive and sacred, elements akin to the struggling class. They will draw you into a world that is frighteningly beautiful and deeply personal.

"Ugly People Fucking" from Erratic Sleep in a Cold Hotel, as printed in the vis-a-septic zine

"[Marie Kazalia] "has a real, strong voice. I'm tempted to say she writes like a female Bukowski but I'm not sure that's a compliment or not... Some of those poems make your skin crawl with their immediacy and intensity - you just know that she lived the life... I can't say that I remember ever reading anything of hers before but I honestly say, I certainly will look forward to reading whatever I see of her." -- Alan Catlin, author Killer Cocktails

"Marie Kazalia's evocative and powerful narrative poems take the reader through pockets of intriguing urban ecology, poverty hotels in near Third-World conditions in our cities for a revealing look at the cheap hustles of drug addicts, dejects, schizoids, and the unfortunate. Her acute observations are tempered with an understated humor to all the more poignantly engage the reader in a woman's struggles with the disengaged lives of substandard conditions of American life where her courage is evident in every poem..." -- Koon Woon, author The Truth in Rented Rooms

"Marie Kazalia has gone out of her way to experiment with the low brow life, and these bin-rummaging poems stand testament to the value thereof. They also provide a surprise-inspection glimpse into some of the low-lifes to be found on the other side of the globe, as well." -- Mark Brimm, editor Royal Vagrant Press

"Marie's book carries on the tradition of writers going to the society's underbelly to capture the reality of the outcasts...she does it chillingly" -- Frank Moore, The Cherotic (r)Evolutionary

"Kazalia finds the perfect poetic medium between saying too much and not enough. Her poems end like a severed reel of film leaving the rest to resonate in the reader… Sometimes sad; sometimes funny or witty, yet always on the mark, these poems made me feel the full extent of my posh, suburban white-boy existence and step outside into the terrors of the poor and forgotten… Kazalia establishes herself not only as a fine poet, but a competent story-teller as well." -- Nathan Graziano, editor The Brown Bottle

Read "Erratic Printing - The Evolution of Phony Lid" about the printing of Erratic Sleep in a Cold Hotel

"Mother Adventure Krim Kramed in theCity" broadside

the first printing - the ink came off on your fingers

the first printing with the dust jacket, to solve the ink problem