This was the second artist book of the Arion Press, after A Travel Book (No. 4), and the first in a series of collaborations with internationally known contemporary artists. It was the beginning of a long partnership between Jim Dine and Hoyem that has resulted in nine books containing original prints.

The text was broken into poetic lines, set in two sizes of type to differentiate the speakers. The prints were titled with excerpts from the text.

For wood blocks, the publisher supplied the artist with oak boards cut to 11 3/4 inches by 8 3/4 inches, the size of the text block, and milled to type height. But when the artist ran out of the supplied wood, he used any wood that came to hand, including his wife's cutting board and a piece from a lumber pile that was badly cracked and warped, neither of these pieces being type high. The printer managed with careful make-ready and by modifying the ink roller height.