Art Meets Poetry in Linda Saccoccio’s Stunning New Limited-Edition Book

A widely exhibited painter and accomplished poet in her own right, artist Linda Saccoccio’s latest project is a limited-edition, hand-bound, letter-pressed ekphrastic collaboration by six unique poets — Carolyn Guinzio, Robert Krut, Heller Levinson, Elizabeth Robinson, Maw Shein Win, and Julian Talamantez Brolaski — who responded brilliantly to a series of 25 of her paintings.

Your new book is beautiful, and it also looks like it must have been a lot of work! Can you tell us about the making of Rigor and Sky: A Communion?

It all started with a small book of paintings and the transition to working in water-based paints. Health concerns led me away from working with toxic mediums and leaning into work with gouache and watercolor on paper. When the book was complete, I felt it must stay together as a whole, and that’s when the idea of making a book from this book of paintings arose. Unfortunately, we all know what happened in 2020. The project was put on hold, and I lost momentum. More recently, when poet Heller Levinson began to “hinge” poems to paintings I posted on social media, this reignited the possibility of the book. In early 2024, I reached out to poets who had been particularly interested in these paintings. Without skipping a beat, I had six poets who gave me an enthusiastic “Yes”!

Then you needed to find a printer.

Right. Ultimately, I worked with Norman Clayton of Classic Letterpress in Ojai. With tenacity and many decisions on design, type, paper, as well as getting it copywritten, we had a book printed by December 2025, shipped to be in New York in time for the Poets House opening of their 40th annual showcase of yearly poetry books. 

The colors in the book really leap off the page, and the facing poems are printed on a lovely cream paper. Why was it so important for you to make the book itself a work of art? 

As a visual artist, immediacy matters to me — that is, the sense of touch with the visual and to create something that has a connection to the original book of paintings, which was raw and a survey of artistic evolution itself. These days, letterpress is mostly used for smaller projects like broadsides and booklets, but I decided to go the distance. 

You have a real range of poets responding to your work. Can you talk briefly about how you came to choose them for this project?

Most of what I do in life is navigated by intuition. The poets in Rigor & Sky had entered my orbit through the mystery of their visions intersecting with mine. I had a rapport with some in person, and some were virtual comrades. We seem to have similar sensitivities, spiritually and creatively. Also, they are all kind humans and that matters. 

In addition to being an artist, you’re also a poet. Indeed, the final poem in the book is one of your own. What is it about ekphrastic poetry, that is, poetry written in response to a work of art, that you find so fascinating as both an artist and poet?

Over the years of my delving into poetry and working smaller in water-based mediums, I found both have a musicality and an intimacy — both are a language. When I lived in New York, a studio neighbor saw my paintings, and instantly said, “You have synesthesia.”

Remind me what synesthesia is.

That’s when one sense triggers another. For me it is how colors have a definite impact on my mood, feelings, and can create a harmony that is more than visual. It is musical; it tangibly links me to my childhood meanderings alone in the woods … or in life itself, a collective history of how I navigate in a sensory relationship to my surroundings. I wasn’t sure if I wanted another tricky label, but here we are. I find that both art and poetry activate the creative impulse. I often will read several poems before I begin to paint, and then one of them resonates with my personal history, and that is a starting point for a painting. I let the poems guide the process spontaneously, with no specific outcome planned but a sense of feelings that run through me and extend beyond me.

Linda Saccoccio’s paintings will be on view in a new group exhibition We’re Very Well Read / It’s Well Known, May 23-September 2026 at the Mural Conservancy in Los Angeles. Recently, her poetry has been published in California Quarterly, Bombay Gin, and in George Yatchisin’s anthology, A Feast for Santa Barbara: Poets Celebrating Food & Drink. Rigor & Sky can be purchased at lindasaccoccio.com.