Calypso

(N.p., 1989. Leavitt, Nancy. Small quarto. 10ff. A one-of-a-kind manuscript, completely hand-bound, lettered, painted, and signed by the artist Nancy Leavitt. Leavitt's superlative skill as a calligrapher is clear in this illustration of Suzanne Vega's song of loss and unrequited love, "Calypso." Vega retells the beginning of the Odyssey from the perspective of Ulysses's captor, the nymph Calypso, and the wild flourish of Leavitt's letters captures the raw emotion expressed by Calypso as she lets her long-captive lover go. The pages are speckled and blotched with color, as if by the nymph's tears or the spray of the ocean that surrounds her island home, and which now carries away her sole companion. Pages of rainbow-hued text are interleaved with soft, translucent paper with dried flowers. At the center of the book is a painting of Calypso's island paradise, created with overlapping layers of paper painted with flowers and brushed with green and gold. The book is meant to be read along with Vega's song, and this center section corresponds with an instrumental section. Leavitt plays off of Vega's notes and chords using colors, textures, and lines. Extremely fine in cloth-covered boards painted with vibrant, abstract swatches of purple, yellow, and teal. Housed in a matching handmade clamshell box which contains a cassette tape of the song, signed by Vega.