Zephyrus Image records

Zephyrus Image was a small Northern California press operating from approximately 1969-1983, notable for its socially- and politically-subversive books and ephemera and its fine works on paper. The principals, Holbrook Teter and Michael Myers, were experimental in their use of form and materials and unorthodox in their distribution methods, often producing works for one-time use as giveaways, guerrilla art, or subversive advertising. Zephyrus Image planned and developed roughly 300 printed works of poetry and political and satirical books and ephemera, created for and in collaboration with a host of literary and artistic figures including Edward Dorn, Tom Raworth, William T. Wiley, Lucia Berlin, Stan Brakhage, and Robert Creeley. The press’s creative output lay in two predominant areas: poetic works in the form of carefully constructed artists’ books, booklets, broadsides, and pamphlets; and political and social commentary in the form of fliers, bumper stickers, business cards, flipbooks, miniature books, accordion books, surveys, wrappers, and folded paper.

Holbrook Teter and Michael Myers met in 1969 at Clifford Burke’s Cranium Press, located on Collins Street in San Francisco. Teter was a social worker who took an interest in printing and began taking typesetting classes at Cranium. Myers was a book- and visual artist who had studied book arts under Walter Hamady and had become a skilled linoleum block cutter. For the majority of Zephyrus’s output, Teter planned projects and set type, and Myers cut intricate and Art-Nouveau-inspired linoleum blocks as the press’s visual artist.

At Collins Street, the two collaborated with Clifford Burke under the Cranium imprint, but also began creating works under the imprint “Zephyrous” which later became “Zephyrus Image.” The two also formed Spring Creek Typesetting Service and Hermes Free Press: the former was used to generate income, and the latter served as a platform for charitable print jobs supporting social justice causes. Works under the Cranium imprint included Clifford Burke’s various projects but also works for or in collaboration with Robert Creeley, Diane di Prima, Gino Clays Sky, and Lew Welch, among many others.

Under the Zephyrus imprint at Collins Street, early collaborators included poets Ed Dorn and Tom Raworth and photographer/artist Rob Rusk. A book of poetry, Will Fowler’s Reds in town, was the press’s first publication. Bean News was another early project, an unconventional newspaper that combined letters, articles, poems, puns, and rebuses while experimenting in art, typography, and layout. Poets Ed Dorn, Tom Raworth, Tom Clark, Jeremy Prynne, Michael McClure, Luis Garcia, and others submitted copy, and Bean News became an item of intrigue in the San Francisco small press community. Other Collins Street works included Totem Protectorates, an elaborately-fashioned book sent to each U.S. state senator imploring environmental advocacy, and the Richter Household Seismometer, a satirical piece of experimental ephemera. At Collins Street, Teter and Myers also began their long crusade against the politics of Richard Nixon with the Dick and Pat Fly-Swatter and Fan, a Bean News giveaway which could be assembled with a newspaper to achieve its namesake use.

In 1973, after a falling out with Burke, Teter and Myers moved the press to Geary Boulevard, also in San Francisco. Zephyrus Image collaborated with filmmaker Stan Brakhage on The Seen, an ornately designed transcript of a lecture Brakhage delivered about his experimental use of light in filmmaking. Teter set type for artist William T. Wiley’s first published book, Ship’s Log. The printers produced packaging for their Gary Snyder Brand Pine Nuts in light mockery of the Synder’s neo-tribalist ethos. These packages were filled with various nuts, aspirin, and other items and subversively hung on the racks in San Francisco convenience stores. At Geary, Zephyrus produced additional Nixon materials during the Watergate scandal that included rebus bumper stickers and satirical personal opinion polls.

In 1974, Teter and Myers traveled to Kent State University, where Ed Dorn was a poet-in-residence. The printers collaborated with Dorn, Joanne Kyger, Robert Creeley, Joel Oppenheimer, members of the band Devo, and others for the arts festival held that year, where they printed the works in remembrance of the Kent State massacre of 1970.

In 1976, Teter and Myers moved their operations out of the city to rural Healdsburg, California, where they lived and printed in a repurposed farmhouse and its outbuildings in a communal living experiment. Ed Dorn and his wife Jennifer also lived on the premises for a time. At Healdsburg, the press produced the first edition of Lucia Berlin’s Manual for Cleaning Ladies, and also Tom Raworth’s Common Sense. Zephyrus lampooned Black Mountain poet Charles Olson with their Folger’s flipbook and derided Alice Hinton’s Northern California conservative agenda with a series of ephemeral items. The printers also took up a number of social and environmental causes including opposition to the construction of the Warm Springs Dam as well as the “Plaza of the Flags” suburban gentrification in downtown Healdsburg. For the latter, they printed hundreds of paper “white blackbirds” to beleaguer the plaza developer.

Relationships at the Healdsburg farm grew strained. Teter and Ed Dorn ceased speaking with one another and even erected a barrier to separate their respective living areas. The Dorns left Healdsburg circa 1979, and Teter and Myers both had to take on additional external work in order to maintain the property expenses.

From its inception, and throughout all of its locations, Zephyrus produced commercial job work, working for various authors and poets on commission from various publishing houses. These works included Allen Ginsberg’s Indian Journals, Robert Bly’s The 70’s, and Robert Creeley’s A Day Book. Other job work included Ed Dorn’s most prominent work, Slinger; his never-published play Abiline! Abiline!; and his Recollections of Gran Apacheria, produced in collaboration with Turtle Island Foundation’s Robert Callahan. Job work also included work for William T. Wiley, Rick London, and Tom Raworth, among many others.

In 1982, Myers died in a car accident. Teter closed the press circa 1983, returned to social work full-time, and allied himself with a number of social justice causes. He later wrote Central America: at Home and Abroad (1991) about social justice reform in Central America. Teter died in 1999.

Johnston, Alastair, Michael Myers, Holbrook Teter, and Poltroon Press. 2003. Zephyrus Image : A Bibliography. Berkeley: Poltroon Press.“Zephyrus Image: A Bibliography.” Poltroon Press. Accessed December 2, 2019. http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/zephyrus-image-a-bibliography/.Other information derived from collection.