JB
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The Missing Center Piece
JB
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For All the Insomniacs Out There
Paper Dreams: Writers and Editors on the American Literary Magazine is due out this Summer from Atticus Books. Click Here Ideal summer reading for those obsessed with the little mag.
Here is Mimeo Mimeo doing some pre-publications publicity for you all.
Don't worry I am not letting the cat out of the bag as these essays are not in Paper Dreams but just a little bedside reading for those of you who can't sleep out of anticipation.
John Bennett of Vagabond planned a book much like Paper Dreams back in 1974. It remained largely a dream except for the introduction by Bennett, an essay by Marvin Malone and a pseudo-rant by Hugh Fox. Fox's piece is so good that I will post it separately.
Enjoy and pre-order Paper Dreams.
JB
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Hugh Fox on the Little Mag and Greed
Fox brings it strong on how greed corrupted the 70s little mag scene.
JB
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Mother on Father's Day
Louis Zukofsky's After I's is a brother from another Mother in an interesting sense. Mag fans might be aware of the New York School influenced Mother published at various point out of Northfield MN (where the James-Younger Gang got shot to pieces while attempting to robb the First National Bank on September 7, 1876), Galesburg, IL, New York City, and Buffalo. Secret Location includes Mother (NY) in its checklist appendix as well as a brief paragraph on the magazine in the introduction. The appendix also lists Mother Press and its three publications: Bingo by Dick Gallup, Poems by John Giorno and the Zukofsky. Slight problem though as there are two Mother Presses. Mother (NY) printed the Gallup and the Giorno, as you might expect given its New York focus. After I's was published by Boxwood Press and Mother Press out of Pittsburgh, PA. Mother (PA) was also a magazine, which ran for twelve issues, under the editorship of Ron Caplan.
Mother (PA) gets no love from the Secret Location. If you want to, you can take this erasure of Mother (PA) as indicative of the Secret Location's general glossing over of the mimeo scene outside of NYC and SF. This view is definitely valid and even more so given the mistake regarding the Zukofsky. It should be kept in mind that Secret Location was intended as volume one of a series of books archiving the Mimeo Revolution. Sadly and, again if you want to be nasty, not surprisingly, those subsequent volumes have yet to appear.
Yet this mistake is useful as it highlights that many times there is more to a mimeo magazine than just the magazine. Several mimeo mag editors made the jump establishing a press imprint in order to print chapbooks. Fuck You did it as did C, or TISH or Kulchur for that matter. Floating Bear did not. And neither did Beatitude or Measure for that matter. (By the way Matter did.). It is interesting to consider who made the jump, what they published, and how often. With this in mind, Mother (NY) printing After I's would seem rather out of place. Gallup and Giorno make perfect sense, but the Zukofsky does not quite fit the Mother (NY) mold.
There have been several large collections of Mimeo Revolution magazines coming up for sale in the last few months or so, but for the most part they are being sold as collections of little mags. In my opinion this is selling the magazines of the Mimeo Revolution short. If you are going to study or understand Mother (PA), you have to take into consideration not just the twelve issues of the magazine but also After I's. The decision on Caplan's part to make this jump and the story of how he did it, in terms of design, financing, and production, is a major part of the Mother (PA) story. As derek beulieu demonstrated in Mimeo Mimeo, such considerations are crucial to understanding the history of TISH. To get the full gist of TISH, you have to get a hold of all the issues of TISH (45 in all), the TISHbooks (as well as addressing the failed projects), and Motion, a prose version of TISH. The same holds true for any of the other little mags out there that experienced the hubris of establishing a press. By the same token, you can not really get a grasp on Floating Bear until you address the fact that it was issued only as a magazine, despite its long and ambitious run. Yet Diane DiPrima issued chapbooks under a separate press: Poets Press. As did Leroi Jones with Totem Press. What is the rationale behind the establishment of a separate imprint? What the need to keep the name of Floating Bear pure?
The history of the little magazine extends beyond the format of the magazine and a "complete" little magazine archive should make an effort to include the publications of little mag presses.
JB
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There is no C Press in the game of Bingo
Here is Dick Gallup's Bingo published by Mother Press (NY). The Mother Magazine (NY) was banged out by a gang of editors that included at various times, David Moberg, Jeff Giles, Peter Schjeldahl, and Lewis MacAdams and others, according to Secret Location. The publications of Mother Press (NY) were edited by Schjeldahl, MacAdams and those mysterious others. Who might they be? Bits and pieces of Bingo were printed in C: A Journal of Poetry and Kulchur. Berrigan, Padgett or Hornick would be a few of the usual suspects for that "others".
I wonder why Bingo was issued by Mother Press. C and Kulchur both had presses associated with the magazine. The Joe Brainard cover gives Bingo that C and Kulchur look, but for whatever reason C and Kulchur passed on the opportunity. Or maybe they threw Mother (NY) a bone to play with and get into the chapbook game.
Again this is another instance of the history of a little magazine comprising of more that just the magazine format. No doubt a network of connections between C, Kulchur and Mother (NY) magazine could be narrated through the back story of the publication of Gallup's Bingo.
If anybody want to throw me a bone on some info or leads, I would appreciate it.
JB
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Mother I Would Like . . . to Know More About
And here is Poems by John Giorno with a cover by Robert Rauschenberg and a frontispiece by Les Levine. Schjeldahl is listed as the editor. He and MacAdams are listed as editors for Bingo. No mention of others. That said parts of the Giorno were printed in Spice and C as well as Mother. So let's add Tom Clark to the mix. Or did Berrigan send this off to Mother (NY)? How involved was Giorno? How did Rauschenberg and Levine come on board?
Here is a selection from The American Book of the Dead
I can't get no
satisfaction
I can't get no
satisfaction
cause I try
and I try
and I try
and I try
I can't get no
I can't get no
no no no
that's what I say
I can't get no
I can't get no
I can't get no
satisfaction
no satisfaction
no satisfaction
no satisfaction
How about coming on and telling me some useful information? Help a brother out on this Mother.
JB
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The Complete Oannes Press Whether You Realize It Or Not
I knew that Ebbe Borregaard's Oannes Press only published two titles, Helen and Pat Adam's San Francisco's Burning and James Alexander's Eturnature. I was unaware that more limited edition titles were planned. The back cover of San Francisco's Burning lists the entire projected series:
San Francisco's Burning - Helen and Pat Adam
James Alexander - Eternatur (it was eventually published as Eturnature)
This Here Other World - Jess Collins
A Book of Resemblances - Robert Duncan
Joe Dunn - The Dream House
Music for San Francisco's Burning - Helen Adam
These editions were published in standard mimeo revolution numbers. For example I have No. 412 of 500 of San Francisco's Burning, but it appears Oannes Press stopped operating after the first two titles. As far as I know, This Here Other World was never issued. The typescript is located in Jess's papers at the Bancroft with a date of 1968 on it, but the idea for that project clearly existed earlier. Duncan's A Book of Resemblances had its own troubles getting printed. Oannes Press dropped it as did Auerhahn Press (read the bibliography for some of the story there). The book was eventually published by Henry Wenning out of New Haven in 1966. Washington University has some great archival material on this project: http://digital.wustl.edu/r/revision/Duncan_Publication/index.html.
White Rabbit Press published Joe Dunn's The Better Dream House with illustrations by Jess in 1968. The full score for San Francisco's Burning was not published until 1985 in a complete edition by Hanging Loose out of Brooklyn.
Unrealized projects are standard operating procedure in the Mimeo Revolution. The two realized Oannes Press title are miraculous and it is something of a miracle they were even published from what I can gather from the even more scarce information surrounding what was in essence a fleeting blip on the mimeo scene.
JB
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Developing the Language of the Mimeo Revolution
I recently finished reading Lev Manovich’s The Language of New Media and it got me thinking about the language of the Mimeo Revolution. What came immediately to mind were Dan Saxon’s Poets of Le Metro and Deux Megots mimeos. If the language of new media builds upon the foundations of the media and media theory that came before it, maybe it is not crazy of me to always think of Freud’s Notes on the Mystic Writing Pad from 1925 whenever I see an issue of Saxon’s mimeo publications.
The Mystic Writing Pad was Freud’s attempt to conceptualize a model of memory. The Wunderblock is a children’s toy, which is comprised of a plastic sheet layered over a wax tablet. The pressure of the stylus makes the sheet stick to the wax and produce a drawing, some writing or whatever. This writing then disappears by lifting the sheet, but the wax tablet retains the markings. For Freud this toy re-enacted the constant influx of new impressions and persistent traces that comprise one’s memory.
The mimeo stencil is not a true Wunderblock but with a mimeo like Saxon’s Freud’s notes and the legions of theorists who have riffed off of it come in handy. Unlike any mimeo that I know of Le Metro and Deux Megots are mimeos as memory devices. Before poetry readings, Saxon brought blank stencils for the reading poets to document their evening’s performance. Some poets handwrote their stencil right there in Le Metro and others would take the stencil home and type them up. In any case the idea was that the mag would preserve the reading. With Freud and company in mind, some interesting issues immediately arise, such as the contrast between performance and writing, speech and text and their levels of permanence or ability to be retained in memory. Also I am sure some of the readings archived in Saxon’s mimeos were recorded. I am unaware that anyone has compared the poems as they appear in the mimeo with the sound recordings of the readings. I would bet they do not match up highlighting issues of improvisation and spontaneity as well as the imperfect nature of Saxon’s project as faithful archives, to say nothing of all the elements of the Le Metro/Deux Megots experience that Saxon’s magazine fails to record, like audience response or the general bustle of a filled or half-empty coffeehouse. That said the materiality of a mag like Le Metro or Deux Megots suggests memory’s ephemeral nature as well as its stubborn persistence in a way that a sound recording just does not, to say nothing of the used stencils themselves. (We can also discuss the same concepts in terms of digital reproduction as these poor resolution images attest.).
All this is a rather inarticulate attempt to suggest that there needs to be developed some conceptualizations of the language of the Mimeo Revolution along the lines that Manovich attempted for new media. Do the publications of the Mimeo Revolution speak the same language and how does the publishing technology dictate just what is being said? For example, the 1960s saw a revolution in poetry and prose as evidenced by the New American Anthologies edited by Donald Allen and Robert Creeley, but the Mimeo Revolution is largely one dealing with poetry. How much of that is due to the limitations of the mimeograph and the difficulty of creating prose stencils? The Mimeo Revolution, as Len Fulton as documented, is also a hotbed for Concrete Poetry. Is that because Concrete Poetry is easy to type up on a stencil? Does the supposed speed of mimeograph publishing create a shortness of breath in the Olsonian sense in terms of the poetry being published? How does the preparation of a stencil affect an editor’s impulse to make corrections or changes to the work given that editing a stencil is difficult and time consuming? Or does the transfer to a stencil encourage the mag editor to insert his or her own hand into the working manuscript?
Like the Wunderblock, these ideas are fun to play with and anything but child’s play.
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Respect For Your Elders
A bookseller on Abebooks states that Kauri ran for "only" 33 issues. Poor Will Inman is definitely not getting his props here. In the mimeo world that is a TON of issues. In fact the daunting prospect of trying to gather together all 33 issues is the sole and only reason I do not own a single issue of Kauri. To say nothing of the New Kauri. Which I am inclined to hate by the way. Cannot stand it when a magazine ends and then sputters up again. It is uncomfortable and brings up all times of questions. Do I have to have the New Kauri to have a complete run of Kauri? Are they separate magazines? Evergreen Review pulled the same shit. I do not care what anybody else thinks but a complete run of Evergreen Review ends in 1973 with issue 96. All the drips and dribbles after that are imposters and pretenders. I want to take a baseball bat to the mag like in a Looney Tunes cartoon and beat it into submission. Die already and with some dignity. It is perfectly okay to stop publishing a mimeo mag, particularly if you have been grinding it out for 33 issues. Nothing to be ashamed about and to be honest it is a major accomplishment. Few slog it out that long despite what they might say on Abebooks. That is like a rare bookdealer being in business for "only" a decade. If it is so easy why don't you get out there and try and do it.
JB
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This Is the Shit I Am Talking About
You are sitting on the computer idly looking through Abebooks enjoying your morning coffee listening for a loon or two and then somebody goes and poops in your cup of joe. Here is an image of what is listed as "Kauri 6." I put it in quotes because it is definitely not Kauri 6. Or is it? The words "New Kauri 6" are there in the upper right corner, but there is a touch of embarrassment about it. It is not out and proud that is for sure. It is awkward, this New Kauri business.
There will not be a New Mimeo Mimeo after years of inactivity when Kyle and I get the band back together for a totally unnecessary reunion tour that everybody is ashamed to go see but will anyway out of an obligation for the good old days. No, Kyle and I will start up the same old magazine with a new name like Retro Mimeo or Mimeo Re-Tread or Zombie Mimeo. Look out for it 15 or 20 years from now, unless Kyle and I are one of the unfortunates out there like Marvin Malone or the Rolling Stones who never quite know when to stop but persistently argue that the last issue or that last album was the best they have ever done despite the fact that the audience stopped reading or listening to anything new you have done years and years ago. Heaven forbid we just fade away gracefully like the ink on a poorly printed mag that has been put out on a coffee table in a bright, sun filled room in an old folks home.
JB
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Drinking Ballantine as Art Form
Last year it was books at the Ellsworth Dump but it seems that this summer I am drinking, not book scouting, in the gutter. My brother-in-law sent me a link to a list ranking 36 cheap beers, which is just about all I drink nowadays. In this economy!! Although interest rates are going up so I guess I will have to invest in something better than Icehouse (a tenement of a beer if there ever was one). Here is a link to the list http://deadspin.com/36-cheap-american-beers-ranked-638820035. Let the debate begin, I guess. The best part about the article is the comments. Way too many people treat Yuengling like holy water. The lager is complete shit. I would drink the porter, the black and tan, the premium and, best of all, the Lord Chesterfield Ale way before I would choke down a Yuengling Lager. Back in the day you would head over to the Northeast Taproom in Reading PA and order a Classic: a goblet of Porter and a bottle of the good Lord. The original Yuengling black and tan. It was about a buck and a bit. When Pete owned it, the Taproom was one of the best beer bars in the country before every shit burg in the country had a beer bar. Let’s all make way for the Captain, the tall ships are coming to harbor. The Captain was a barroom Maximus before I turned a page of Olson. I learned of the Captain from The Bars of Reading book by Suds and Dregs, who happened to be two teachers at my high school. They were minor celebrities, who appeared on the Johnny Carson show and were written up in the New Yorker by Calvin Trillin. To me, they were gods. Before there was Kerouac or Hemingway or Bukowski or Rimbaud, there was Suds and Dregs. They were the epitome of literature and drinking.
Along those lines, it was with some dismay that the Deadspin list of beers did not include Ballantine Ale. I was at Tradewinds in Blue Hill today and saw a six pack of the half quarts. Not a pint, not 16 ounces, not a pounder but a half quart. A can of Ballantine just seems massive. It is like you are hanging out with Franz Kline and Pollock at the Cedar. Ballantine Ale is a work of art. Every time I see a can of Ballantine I think of the Jasper Johns sculpture. A Johns Ballantine is at the National Gallery in DC and I check it out everytime I go there. Just before I do, I spend about 30 minutes with Pollock’s Lavender Mist. Intoxicating to be sure. If the Johns sculpture was not enough, Ballantine Ale has the Hemingway ad going for it. I have touched on Ballantine Ale, Johns and Hemingway on RealityStudio: http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/minutes-to-go-and-mad-men/.
I literally cannot pass a six pack of Ballantine Ale without buying one and toasting 1950s New York City. I may be here in Maine on my deck with a Ballantine in hand I feel like I am at 24 University Place not 82 University Place, where I suspect I would be drinking something more refined.
JB
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The Hangover After An Epic Night of Drinking
Deadspin definitely had it right with Coors Banquet Beer. You really want it to suck so you can drink it once, say you tried it, and then dismiss it because its taste is just not to your liking. If beer paralleled politics, Coors should taste like a warm, skunky Rolling Rock that has been sitting in a cooler in the trunk of your car for a month, but sadly, Coors Banquet tastes righteous. In a good way.
I did not always feel this way. Back in college, when I was a beer snob, my friend went to college with Melissa Coors, Pete’s daughter. In fact, she was dating one of his roommates. During parents’ weekend senior year, Pete came to a house party for which my friend ponied up the dough for a keg of Yuengling Porter. Sounds of The Bogmen played in the background. This keg, of course, had a velvet rope around it and you had to be a VIP to get any, so my friend carefully poured a full goblet (read a red Solo cup) of the dark, full-bodied goodness with a perfect head on it. Pete took a sip, set his goblet down and pronounced his verdict: “We do not have to worry about these guys.” My buddy had to be restrained at the card table so as not to kick Pete and his sorry-ass palate into oblivion.
There is a saying that every man is a revolutionary in his youth and dies a conservative. I must be getting old because the days of mugs and mugs of Yuengling Porter are in the rearview mirror and the twilights on the porch with a case of Coors Original are upon me. I was a true firebrand years ago in the early days of the Beer Revolution. In days of yore, I drank with relish a brew that tasted like you were chewing on a Cascade hop. Now just make it cold and crisp as a mountain stream and I am a happy man. A simple kind of man. Pardon me if mix beer metaphors here. Different mountain but you get the idea.
As I sip a Coors Original, my thoughts often wander to Ezra Pound. He is the Coors Original of modernist poetry. You want him to suck, so you can read him, say you tried, and then dismiss him because his poetry is not to your liking. Pound should read like a Rolling Rock, but he does not. I am a Pound guy. No, I do not drink the Kool-Aid like Hugh Kenner, but I have read The Cantos and, like a cold Coors Banquet, I enjoy reading through it every once and awhile when I get the urge. Sometimes, reading Pound’s letter and reading about him in the teens and twenties running lit mags and establishing the taste for experimental writing in America, I think Ole Ez might sit in a bar with the guys and knock back a Coors, but probably not. He is a lambic-type of guy. A sour beer with fruit in it. No doubt an apricot. Served in a sophisticated glass. It is the troubadour in him.
As for me, a couple of days ago I pulled down my trusty Norton Modern Poetry from the shelf and popped a Coors Original from the fridge and read the first poem of The Cantos on the deck as the sun went down. My dog had dug a hole in the yard and into this pitkin I poured a libation for the dead and listened for a loon to call its mate home. And it was epic.
And as it got dark, I took a pull on my commemorative 1936 Coors stubby, looked at the label, and my thoughts immediately went to the epics of Leni Riefenstahl and Olympia. With Coors and Pound, you just cannot shake the past, which buzzes in your ear and nips at you repeatedly like a mosquito, until the epic spell is eventually broken and you run inside to the house slapping yourself straight into the shower.
JB
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A Long Night Drinking Kingfisher with Olson
Kingfisher Premium qualifies as a cheap beer in my book. I drink it in those cheap Indian buffet places where you get a 3 portion mix-and-match, usually all veggie for me. I’ll order Allo Gobi from a cheap Indian place that operates out of a bathroom stall in a bus station. Love it, and a couple of beers to wash it all down. Kingfisher and Taj Mahal are my go-tos. I think these beers are like a Bud here. Kingfisher is the number one selling Indian beer, right. Obviously, they are not on the Deadspin list because they are Indian beers, but if the list ever goes international, I would suspect an Indian beer or two would make the grade. Maybe not the Taj Mahal. According to reviews, it looks like sophisticated beer quaffers, turn their nose up at the Taj, but I like it just fine. The bigger the bottle the better. Usually a 22 ounce.
I googled “Charles Olson” poet beer, and the first hit comes from the Art of Poetry (No. 12 in the series) interview in Paris Review with Olson printed in the Summer of 1970. Gerald Malanga conducted the interview and Olson was dead before it went to press. Malanga writes:
When I awoke a few hours after the all-night conversation, I found the flat empty. The cool blue sunlight of morning filtered through all the southern-exposure windows of the flat. In the kitchen on a table cluttered with beer cans, cigarette and cigar butts, and unanswered correspondence, I found a draft of a new Olson poem scribbled on the back of an envelope, which read:
To build out of sound the walls of the city & display in one flower the wunderworld so that, by such means the unique stand forth clear itself shall be made known.
Malanga steals that scrap and this scene which mixes beer, cigars, and collecting is irresistible to me. Like Malanga, I have made that trip to Glouscester. In my case, just to hear the echoes of a conversation that Malanga described as “a deep and most enchanting experience.” It would be interesting to ask my writer/artist friends, their list of people they would like to have a beer with. Olson would make my list. With my luck the beers and conversation would flow long into the evening but my memory tape would slip the reels well before Olson stopped talking. Usually does.
I wonder what beer was available at Ma Peak’s Tavern down by Black Mountain College. Might be in Duberman. Michael Rumaker would know. I cannot remember it, if I happened to read about it. But definitely not Kingfisher, which was first brewed in 1978, well after Olson had passed on. Yet it would be a time machine moment to go back to Black Mountain in the early 1950s after Olson’s first, long major work The Kingfisher was written and pull up a chair with a case of cold Kingfishers and let Olson talk.
JB
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Paul Blackburn and Das Rhinegold
I had my first Rheingold at the Mars Bar in New York City a few years ago when I was doing a tour of some Old School bars. In the area around Houston, I walked into Milano’s, the 7B, and the Parkside Lounge. Then I walked up past Cooper Square, where Floating Bear was mimeographed for time, and spent the good part of an afternoon at McSorley’s.
Like Ballantine Ale, Rheingold makes me think of 1950s/1960s New York City, particularly of landmarks like the Parkside Lounge. And the poet I most associate with that time and those places is not Frank O’Hara or Ted Berrigan, but Paul Blackburn. He died in 1971 of throat cancer at the age of 44, a few years old than I am now. I quit smoking a couple weeks ago on my doctor’s advice. It has been much easier than I thought, but I am sure that the next time I am sitting alone in a place like McSorley’s or the Parkside surrounded by empty mugs of brown ale or bottles of Rhinegold I will feel the itch for a smoke and the conversation of a guy like Blackburn, who treated McSorley’s like a poetry workshop. Such a McSorley’s and Parkside are nowadays merely utopias. Even if I was smoking, it is tough to find a bar on the Eastern seaboard were you can have a smoke. Do poets still corrupt the youth in smoky bars? Or does that all occur strictly during designated office hours in a non-smoking building?
When I was a young teenager, I read Suds and Dregs’s Bars of Reading until it fell apart and then I bought another copy. Here is the New Yorker article by Calvin Trillin that I mentioned earlier: http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1982/02/15/1982_02_15_112_TNY_CARDS_000335221. I could not wait to have a beer at Stanley’s. (Later I would learn that the Lower East Side had its Stanley’s too, and I wanted to go there just as badly.) No women allowed and it would be a rite of passage to piss at the trough urinal. Or to saddle up for a drink at Al Kline’s Paddock. And then I watched in horror as all these places went out of business a discussed as fossils of a pre-historic era whose time has come, before I turned 18 let alone 21. So for me, my knowledge of those bars was and is based only on the myth-making of Suds and Dregs, and surely they had to be exaggerating. No bar could be so seemingly wonderful. Yet the whispers persist. The rumors remain strong on message boards.
On Stanley’s: “As to Stanley's its claim to fame was that it did not allow women in the bar. Many have tried but Stanley would just ignore them. A quaint anachronism and a step back in time for better or worse. It also had no bar stools, a stand-up bar as it was called. In the early '80's when I lived there beer, as with many places in Reading, cost 25 to 35 cents a glass. A decent lunch could be had for a couple bucks. I lunched with female coworkers in the dining room having its own ladies entrance.”
On the Paddock: “My favorite bar, now gone, was Al Kline's Paddock. Huge neon signs adorned the neighborhood facade. Inside, you were greeted by a horsey theme where booths looked like horse stalls and several bar stools were saddles. German clockwork machines of horses and horse racing memorabilia including a sulky decorated the walls. It was a theme but not kitchy or ‘concepted.’ It was sincere reflection of the man behind the bar, Al Kline a former horse racer, retired but not gone from his sport and vocation. That was his life and his history up on the walls. A beer, conversation and a sardine sandwich was a couple dollars but worth thousands.”
Paul Blackburn would hang out at Stanley’ and the Paddock. These bars were the McSorley’s of Reading, and Suds and Dregs were their Joseph Mitchell. And that is why Calvin Trillin wrote about them in the New Yorker, it was step back in time to Mitchell’s McSorley’s, which I would expect that Trillin himself felt he had missed out on back in the 1930s.
Like with Olson, I am quite happy being a historian rather than an active participant. The cheddar and crackers at McSorley’s really do not taste that good and the bartenders give you more foam than beer. Blackburn would not want to talk to me anyhow. I would gag on a sardine sandwich at the Paddock. All this history is fake and repackaged anyway. Rhinegold Brewing was shut down in 1976, and the company that revived it also produces Trump Vodka and Dr. Dre Cognac , for christ’s sake. In any case, it is healthier that I am no longer smoking and it is better that bars have become clean, well-lighted places where both sexes can share a drink and a conversation. Things have evolved; we are progressing.
But I am a collector and a historian at heart. And one that is easily and deliberately deceived at that. I missed out on Stanley’s and I never walked into the Paddock, but I did spend quite a bit of time at the Northeast Taproom in Reading and I sat in the corner looking at all the regional memorabilia, such as photos of Sally Starr or the various Reading Beer cans from days of old. Or I just kept quiet with some friends and watched Pete and the Captain play their roles to perfection. And to this day, the Taproom remains my most beloved bar, it is my McSorley’s, partly because it, like Stanley’s and the Paddock, has changed and has passed into history.
JB
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Lite Beer by Kenner
You walk into the Beer Kave at the Circle K on High Street in Ellsworth or just about corner store from Main Street to Broadway and you are going to find some Miller Lite. Likewise if you browse a used bookstore, you are no doubt going to find a collection of essays. The definition of the essay is vague and can encompass a wide field of writing, but you know a good one when you read one. I particularly like essays on the arts, be it literature, film, art, music, or architecture. Like with Miller Lite, I can indulge in a pack of literary essays all day long.
I stopped at a used bookstore in Blue Hill, and I found a case of lite beer from Kenner. Historical Fictions by Hugh Kenner to be exact. A collection of book reviews, occasional writings, and other flotsam and jetsam from the academic writing life. No Pound Era here; these essays are not pounders by any stretch but pony bottles on whatever caught Hugh’s fancy or whatever he was assigned by an editor to write on. Pound (of course), Beckett, Harriet Shaw Weaver, Nabokov, Riddley Walker, Pope, Leslie Fiedler. The essays taste great and are less filling than The Pound Era, but there are still enough intellectual calories and alcohol content to stick in the old grey matter and give you a bit of a buzz.
I have just dipped into the book thus far, and I am thoroughly enjoying myself. It is like spending a pleasant happy hour by some water at sunset. You just hang out, dip into your Kenner Lite and look out over the horizon contemplating Pound’s conception of Odysseus via Dante and Homer. What a way to spend an evening.
Take Kenner’s review of a biography on Harriet Shaw Weaver of The Egoist. The review is not a rave, but Kenner wonders if anybody could do Weaver justice and if, in fact, given Weaver’s guarded nature and penchant for silence, whether such a biography is possible. Kenner concludes, “Perhaps only Henry James could have written an intelligible biography of Harriet Shaw Weaver, and he would have been guessing.” That is a nice finish to a lite beer. Very satisfying.
In a review on The Collected Stories of Seán O’Faoláin, Kenner has a few throwaway lines on the story story and the magazine format. He writes, “One thing the short story in English can’t quite shake off is its magazine provenance. It is the commercial form par excellence, and the more accomplishment you bring to it the more you court slickness, contrivance, the neat nail driven home, the quick paraphrase to assist the dentist’s office browser.”
Reading such a line at a happy hour in the evening, you might be encouraged to think of the Mimeo Revolution and how the great true mimeos, like C, Floating Bear, Ole, and Fuck You, have little to no story stories in them. Essays, reviews, plays, maybe, but not “the commercial form par excellence.” And those mimeos that do feature the short story, like Berge’s Center, seem very concerned with grants and subscriptions. In fact, those mags that print short stories often view themselves as a minor league to the big, corporate publishers. Succeed with a well-polished, though maybe experimental short story, then you might get called up with a contract for a full collection that leads to a gig with a creative writing program.
The publications that I view as participants in the Mimeo Revolution were not members of a minor league at all; they took their ball into their communities and played a different game altogether. For themselves and for the fun of it. Something like a neighborhood softball game with coolers of beer and pot smoke in the twilight. Something like that documented in Toni Basil’s short film of the Semina Circle, Game of the Week.
JB
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Exile on 48th Street
The POP project was begun with the idea of cold calling potentially interested and interesting people with the sales pitch of entering into a correspondence. In a world dominated by electronic social media, POP was decidedly lo-tech and seemingly out of touch with current means of communication. I figured that if somebody got in touch with me because of a POP publication, they must really have something to say. And urgently.
Well, Christopher Byck has something to say. He operates 48th Street Press, which publishes chapbooks of “outlaw poets” as well as going full steam ahead with a massive broadside project that in less than four years has issued around 4000 broadsides. Here is an idea of where he is coming from (which you might think is tough to pin down since he travels all over the world). The following quotes come from an interview with Ben Smith of Horror, Sleaze and Trash:
The broadside project was partly inspired by a poetry series that Nettelbeck published from 1980 to 1997, called, This Is Important. These poetry pamphlets were 4" by 11" strips of paper with poems on both sides, folded into a pocket sized reader; each held four to six poems depending on length. They were modeled after religious pamphlets you'd find on a bus, or the subway. In the 80s, Ginsberg and Burroughs, who had largely gravitated away from the small presses, were still submitting to Nettelbeck, along with countless other known (and unknown) poets. He distributed these simple pamphlets wherever people would find them - gas station bathrooms, laundromats, coffee shops, etc. The pamphlets were certainly not 'high-art', but a method to spread poetry.”
My idea is similar. The broadsides are 8.5" by 11" and printed, from a laser printer, on card stock paper of varying colors. Each poet can submit as many poems as they like; generally I will pick two and print them in a numbered edition of 20. The poet signs, numbers and distributes. They can be given away to lovers, waitresses, strangers, at reading, compliments to a book order, or sold for a buck by the poet. I ask that each poet sends me back two broadsides, signed and numbered, to spark distribution and act as a record of the project. This eliminates the need for me to distribute and allows to poet to put a poem into the hands of a reader. They aren't letterpress, no silken paper, just simple ink on card stock - words on paper - each touched by the poet.
I printed nearly 1,100 in 2010, from Philadelphia, and another 1,200 in 2011, from my current home in Caracas, Venezuela. I plan to replicate the project in 2012. I spend about six months perusing online, small press magazines, and chapbooks for what I consider fresh poets. Then, I send off a request for poems. I try to capture a wide range of poets and styles. There are some small press legends, such as John Bennett and A.D. Winans, along with some comparatively new voices to the scene, like u.v. ray and Paul Harrison. I also included some language and visual poets, like John M. Bennett and Richard Kostelanetz. Broadsides have always acted as a 'commercial', if you will, for poets to introduce their work to a reader. I hope my series carries on the tradition.
I do not want to imprison 48th Street with a label but Byck is intensely interested in getting the work of outlaw poets out to general population. Byck describes the Outlaw Poet as follows:
It is difficult to describe an 'Outlaw Poet', mostly, I think, because so many claim to be outlaws. The Kerouac and Bukowski traditions have been beat to hell. If a poet is going to take that road, they had better be exceptional. I think ray and Harrison tread that path and put a unique spin on the content. It's been done, but they elevate the style, add a perspective, and breathe a bit more into it. It's good for a poet to write about drinking, women (or men), and a society that they largely feel disassociated with. However, an outlaw poet needs to possess the unique gift of reporting what they experience in such a way that it hits a reader, creates an image, and allows the reader to share, or relate to the experience.
Here is a good idea of who and what we are talking about: http://outlawlibrary.blogspot.com. The publications of 48th Street are well represented here. This is a remarkable archive compiled by Dave Roskos. Check it out.
Byck got a hold of POP’s The Critical Writings of Douglas Blazek from OLE. In the world of lo-fi publications, a blind squirrel just might find a nut, and Byck has been more than slightly touched by the work of Blazek. He states, “It is impossible to follow the small presses and not see Blazek's named referenced. I read a few, albeit scant, online biographies and the introduction to James DenBoer's bibliography of Blazek’s extensive work. There hasn't been enough written about Blazek, which fueled my curiosity.”
Byck’s curiosity got the best of him yet again, and he sent me a copy of Blazek’s The Song That Ends Ends Our Singing, which 48th Street issued in 2012. It is a small collection in a simple chapbook format, of poems that previously appeared in magazines, like Ecstatic Peace Poetry Journal, Lummox Journal and Prism International. I am blinded by the supposed splendor of the past so I have not seen these current incarnations of the Mimeo Revolution spirit (duplicator), which is truly my loss and to my detriment as someone interested in the history of the little magazine.
The Song That Ends is dedicated to Byck with these lines:
scavenger in the dumpster
Of the poetic past discovering
The secret of dangerous trash
Blazek hits home with me right there, but let’s be clear, unlike the work published by POP, 48th Street is not an operation in ancient archeology. These are not recycled greatest hits. The Song That Ends does not pluck poems from the dumpsters of dangerous trash in which Blazek appeared in the 1960s. These are new poems, which demonstrate Blazek’s current mode in poetry. As Byck states, “It is nearly impossible to recognize the old Blazek in his new work. Essentially, he has re-written hundreds, if not thousands of his previously published poems.” We can debate the merits of this new direction in poetics all day but what interests me is that Blazek has not abandoned the Mimeo Revolution vehicle as a means of distribution. He remains true to the DIY chapbook. And I think Byck has done him a solid in return. The Song That Ends is a joy to get in the mail, a joy to hold in the hand, and a joy to experience on the page. Just like a 45.
Byck also sent me Corrugator by Paul Harrison, a Belfast (Ireland) born poet living in “the world’s most isolated city, Perth, Western Australia.” Harrison could have come straight from the pages of OLE. His work has the Meat School flavor. Last night I had a bone marrow blood pudding with foie gras. Likewise, Harrison’s work is a distillation of blood, guts, sweat, and grit. Not to everybody’s taste, but for those who savor the work of the Meat School, Harrison serves up in Corrugator a collection worth sinking your teeth into.
Harrison reminds me a lot of a poet I have written about before named John Thomas Menesini, out of Pittsburgh. See http://mimeomimeo.blogspot.com/2011/12/john-thomas-menesini.html. What makes John different from Paul is that John really gives you a sense of time and place: white trash, rural, suburban Western PA from the 1980s, which I really like and know a little bit about coming from Eastern PA. Harrison is definitely on the edge, but he is also on the edge of the world in Perth. I get little to no sense of that place although he has clearly taken Belfast with him out there on the ledge. Yet at the same time the poems really do capture a terrifying sense of the void, edge and abyss, a kind of internal Perth. It would be interesting to me if he connected that with the everyday sense (sights, sound, smell, etc) of Perth. But that might be merely interesting to me, not Harrison. In any case, Corrugator is a harrowing act of perception and a raw act of self-examination.
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The Archaeology of Deep Storage
Going along Route One in Maine between Searsport and Belfast (home of Eat More Cheese), there is an oasis of a bookstore, Penobscot Books, which specializes in art monographs. My father dragged me through this store for years, long before I had any interest in art books. Back then I had no time for art and music. I was a serious reader and I did not wander through museums or sit in my room with headphones. I did not realize that you could read art and not just look at it. Nowadays I find art criticism to be some of the most interesting and innovative material out there. I eat this stuff up like a rich triple cream. So when I am in Maine, Penobscot Books is a must-stop for books, just like Blueberry Hill outside of Ellsworth is THE place for soft serve ice cream or Thurston’s Lobster Pound in Bernard is THE place for a lobster roll. Stopping off at the yellow building has become a tradition.
Now I am not going to lie, Penobscot Books is an incredibly frustrating place. Art books that are still in print and widely available online are marked as “As new” or “Still in Shrink Wrap” and then marked up needlessly. More often than not I find the shop a great place to perform some shameless showrooming (a horrible practice I know, but one I am definitely guilty of), but if you dig around and spend the time you get rewarded with a great find or two.
This is just what happened when I saw a softcover edition of Deep Storage: Archiving, Storing, and Collecting in Art, which accompanied a traveling exhibition that originated out of Germany in the late 90s. See here. Like many art related books, this title has become rather expensive, but in my opinion it is worth the expense. The book traces a trend in post-WWII art that obsessively unpacked the philosophy of Walter Benjamin and the art of Marcel Duchamp into new configurations that I personally find absolutely riveting and inspirational. The book collector of true ambition and creativity comes out of this tradition, not those who stockpile books as financial investments.
With this in mind for my purposes, the companion books to Deep Storage are Gwen Allen’s Artists Magazines (here) and Clive Phillpot et al. In Numbers (here). It is no surprise that several of the magazines listed in the checklists and indices of these now essential and seminal works on the little magazine have links to the artists featured in Deep Storage. The little magazine is all about archiving, storing and collecting. A while back I wrote that the little magazine should be examined in terms of RAM and storage and an exhibition like Deep Storage does nothing to shake a belief has fast become a conviction. See here.
The philosophy and theory that provides the most interesting insights into the publications of the Mimeo Revolution spring like a rabbit out of Duchamp’s suitcases and boxes and and are available for windowshopping in Benjamin’s Arcades Project. For me, Duchamp and Benjamin are the prime movers around which the great little magazines revolve. An archaeology of the sites of those who built on their foundations, from Foucault to Warhol, only helps dig the act of collecting more deeply.
JB
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Ephemeris: Love Is The Song We Sing
Digging around the internet or maybe even in a brick and mortar store (!!), you come across a mimeo that you’ve never seen before. What do you do? Go to OCLC first. That is what all the book dealers do if they come across a seemingly unusual item. Dealers cross their fingers that it is not listed at all. If so, they can put NOT LISTED ON OCLC and mark it up 1000%. (By the way, there should be an official scale of mark-up relating to OCLC. No copies: 1000%. One copy: 500%. Two copies: 250%. And so on to five copies. More than five copies you have to start discounting your price against the hundreds of other copies available on Abebooks.)
Take Ephemeris, edited by David Schaff, out of San Francisco. You’ve been around the block a few times so chances are if it is new to you it is pretty rare, right? Do not flatter yourself. There are so many mimeos out of just San Francisco that nobody can read (or own) them all. So I generally do not beat myself up when I remember that I once thought Interim Pad was some prime real estate from the Mimeo Revolution just because it had slipped under my radar. Turns out Interim Pad was not a true flophouse of a mimeo (because everyone knows that in mimeo, the flophouses are worth more than the penthouses), but just another tourist trap located in the neighborhood of City Lights.
So what about Ephemeris? Well, there are 20 institutions that have Ephemeris in some form or another. Yet do not despair, because OCLC does not always tell the whole story. There is another way of judging if a mimeo is a true lost classic. All fans of mimeo are no doubt aware of Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. Compiled as a double album by Lenny Kaye in 1972 for Elektra, this LP became a major influence for the soon to emerge punk scene. In fact in the liner notes, Kaye makes use of the term punk rock, not for the first time, but early on nonetheless. (Like with OCLC, book dealers like to bump up the price on book, magazine or LP that used the term punk rock before 1975.) In the 1980s, Rhino released 15 other Nuggets related compilations. Knockoffs followed, like Pebbles, Rubble and Back from the Grave, which dug around the garage for any audio ephemera to set into wax. As Wikipedia notes, “Nuggets spawned an entire cottage industry of small record labels dedicated to unearthing and releasing obscure but worthy garage and psychedelic rock music from the 1960s.”
Secret Location on the Lower East Side by Clay and Philips is the Mimeo Revolution equivalent of Lenny Kaye’s Nuggets. This is the book that in large part spawned the cottage industry in collecting the Mimeo Revolution for a generation of collectors who did not actually live through the era. If Nuggets influenced punk, then Secret Location inspired all the hipsters who are going to take over PS I for the Book Arts Fair in September.
Yet in terms of a lost classic what matters most is not that the magazine was featured in Secret Location. No, a featured write up in Secret Location is like being played on Top 40 radio. The Preliminary Checklist in the back is more on target, and is the Secret Location equivalent of Back from the Grave. It is here in the corners and dark places of the garage that the real mimeo rarities lurk. And the real obscure shit does not appear in the Preliminary Checklist at all. Ephemeris is nowhere to be found there and neither is Interim Pad for that matter.
There will be those of you out there that will say the absence of Ephemeris and Interim Pad from Secret Location is merely proof of their irrelevance. If Clay and Phillips missed them, they must not be worth reading. They must not be important. You may have a point. But for true mimeo fanatics, for the visionaries and the pioneers, this is precisely what makes these mags even more interesting than a boring, old Fuck You that everybody knows about. The logic goes: If everybody has forgotten about it, it must be truly memorable.
For these pioneers I would suggest adding Christopher Harter’s Author Index to Little Magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution and George Butterick’s list of Periodicals of the Beat Generation that appeared in the Dictionary of Literary Biography on the Beats (Vol. 16 – The Beats: Literary Bohemians in Postwar America A-Z) as a further layer of obscurity on top of the Preliminary Checklist in Secret Location. Butterick’s list, in particular, is fairly deep. He lists Interim Pad, but Ephemeris is nowhere to be found.
I will not go on record and say that Ephemeris is a lost classic that is going to change how we approach the Mimeo Revolution, but I will say that it provides some insight into the magazine scene that developed in and around Spicer’s San Francisco. David Schaff and Ephemeris are not mentioned in Ellingham’s and Killian’s Poet Be Like God, but Schaff is very much drunk on the Spicer spirit. Ephemeris came “out of the shadow of the late Cassiopeia,” of which the first issue featured Spicer poem. (Cassiopeia, which ran for only two issues and was also edited by Schaff, is yet another lost classic. Unfortunately this also means that it is tough to find. Cassiopeia I has thus far eluded me.) From Ephemeris II: “That old Bodega Bay salt Lew Ellingham perservered through the typing of this sheet and weathered many a gale at GINO AND CARLO, beloved by all and where all end up at one time or another – while they last, copies of this issue are available for the price of a drink.” As a little-known song suggests, that spirit was still available in 1969.
Ephemeris is very much an apparition of the late J and Spicer’s ghost is all over it. In Ephemeris II, Schaff writes of Spicer in terms of ghosts and hauntings. Throughout all three issues, poems are dedicated to Spicer and written in the Spicerian manner. Poets who played in Spicer’s shadows, like Ellingham, Persky and Stanley, flitter about its pages as you would expect, but so does the specter of Frank O’Hara, who you would not. O’Hara appears care of Donald Allen, who was preparing O’Hara’s unpublished poems for posthumous publication. Ebbe Borregaard, Joanne Kyger, and Charles Olson appear as well. So Ephemeris has some big names in it and you might expect the mag to have turned up in Secret Location or elsewhere.
Ephemeris II features a map on the cover and Issue one has an astrological chart. The magazine is truly a chart and a map of late 1960s San Francisco and the vestiges of the Spicer Circle. For example, Ephemeris features several advertisements for what is now a lost book culture: Serendipity and Dave Haselwood Books for example. And therein lies Ephemeris’s importance: it documents an ephemeral scene that threatens to fade away like newsprint in the California sunshine. The third issue switches to a newspaper format and continues down the White Rabbit hole of New Age Frisco with pieces on Merlin, the Birth of Venus and the Apocalypse accompanied by numerous illustrations and drawings. My copy is inscribed by Ellingham to Harold Dull, which itself is a nice association that tells of a history that goes back to Spicer. The entire issue is a trip at sunrise down by the Bay with appearances by Ellingham, Persky, Stanley, Hoyem, Bromige, Mary Norbert Korte, Richard Duerden, Wieners and Blaser.
JB
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Synapse: Seeking a Nerve Center
Synapse, edited by D.R. Hazelton, ran for four issues out of Berkeley from 1964 to the Poetry Conference the next year. Synapse slipped under the Clay and Phillips radar despite being a Left Coast mimeo. It is listed by Butterick as a Beat periodical, and this is especially so for the third and fourth issues, which were edited under the supervision of Gary Snyder. Jim Thurber’s memoir, “The Rube,” published by Big Bridge, provides great background information on the foundational history of Synapse. See http://www.bigbridge.org/BD-JT-R.HTM. Thurber writes:
Another signature event that triggered crucial and ongoing friendships and, for me, becoming part of a community of poets, was meeting Doug Palmer and Dave Hazelton in a poetry class at S.F. State taught by Mark Linenthal. The class was either in Spring or Fall of 1964. I believe it was a Modern Poetry class, although the reading of poems aloud seemed to involve a lot of time—interspersed throughout whatever lectures or discussions Linenthal gave. It seemed to us young, unbridled riff-raff of poets that the whole conduct of the class was a mirror reflection of the times—the stultifying effect of the Academe and the classroom on the actual experience of poetry. Ludicrously, the most important thing the entire term was whether or not we could arrange our chairs in a semi-circle so we could see and freely talk to each other or whether the class would take place with the desks in the traditional, authoritarian manner where we could simply look at the back of someone else's head for an entire hour each day. Doug Palmer and Dave Hazelton were in the class and we became fast friends. Linenthal didn't care to talk about poets that weren't dead or in the so-called "canon" of modern poetry so our desire to discuss the Beat poets was dismissed. To counter this, Doug, Dave and I would spontaneously stand up during class and read our own poems aloud—often interrupting his lectures. Palmer was the most sincere, down-to-earth, salt-of-the-earth guy that has ever walked. He believed he should only work with his hands and never for money—only barter. He had an ancient pickup truck, super-wife Ruth and his young son Tad, and lived in Berkeley. His penchant for "found objects" meant that he spent hours picking up string, coins, bottles, cans and almost anything you can think of from the sidewalks and "saving" it for other uses. Hazelton had gone to Oberlin in voice class and met and married Jeanne Lee there. She won the Downbeat Jazz Singer Poll in '63 and we used to go to some of her concerts. She was the real deal. They had a daughter named Naima.
The first issue of Synapse opens with Thurber and includes poems by Hazelton and Palmer. The appearance in Synapse is Hazelton’s first published appearance. I would guess that the first issues were run off at S.F. State (Later poems were run off the Wobbly Hall mimeo). Hazelton and Palmer would soon drop out of the program but the second issue still lists Hazelton as a graduate student at S.F. State. The mag is clearly part of an effort make their voices be heard outside of the classroom. The later issues with appearances by Snyder, Welch, Ginsberg and Whalen give further proof of their “desire to discuss the Beat poets.” They did better than that as Hazelton, Thurber and crew got into discussion with the Beats directly, particularly with Gary Snyder, who took the Synapse group under his wing.
The story of Synapse is, in fact, the story of circles. This is particularly true in San Francisco and Berkeley, where it could be argued that the Mimeo Revolution began with the publication of Circle in the late 1940s. That is in making connections and forming a community. Synapse began in the attempt to form a circle in the classroom of S.F. State and continued in the search to find a circle that would include them without the strings and obligations of sexual politics. Spicer, Duncan and Ginsberg were out. Snyder provided the sense of community they were looking for. Thurber writes,
We lost the battle with Linenthal over chair arrangement but he sponsored us for student readings at the Student's Union during the noon hour. The first S.F. Poetry Center Readings were going down and I remember hearing Snyder, James Wright and Leroi Jones around then. Doug, Dave and I all eventually dropped out of the class and began having a lot of “face time’ with the various poets around town who were open to mentoring us. The most available ones were Snyder, Welch, Whalen, Blaser, Duncan, George Stanley, Jack Spicer, Michael McClure, Rexroth, and Ginsberg when he was in town. Basically, sexual politics made it easier to pick a mentor. For some reason Duncan, who mentored so many wonderful poets, was not as available in S.F. as he was in Berkeley—which was like going to a foreign country to me at the time. Spicer (he was helpful as long as you stayed on the fringe), and Ginsberg were definitely out. Snyder, Welch and Whalen were the poets we most gravitated toward. Snyder, by far and away was the best. His poetics (if he had any) were all-inclusive. He saw poets as contributing members to the community like carpenters or electricians would be. He still was an I.W.W. member and went to their leadership to establish a new worker's “category”—a Poet's Union. He got the paperwork done and we all signed up as card-carrying I.W.W. “Wobbly Poets.” We each had a little red membership card. Beyond that we then could use the Wobbly Hall (on Minna St.) for regular poetry readings and the use of their mimeo on which we duplicated hundreds of poems to pass out on the streets. Besides the Wobbly Hall readings, Snyder had an informal seminar-class we dropped by. It was his and Palmer's idea for the Peace & Gladness Anthology—which took more hard core work than anyone could have believed at the time. Even better, Gary went to the organizers of the Berkeley Poetry Conference in '65 and created a “New Poets” reading selecting nine poets from among our commonly known group. Apparently that was the first time I had heard Gail Dusenbery or met her. We later became friends, arguing poetry and magic when she lived at 1360 Fell St.
The starpower of these later issues would lead one to believe that Synapse would merit a mention in the Secret Location checklist, particularly given the magazine’s ties to the Berkeley Poetry Conference. The final issue documents many of the poets involved in the various readings, seminars, and lectures, including several of the Young Poets from the Bay Area, who closed the Conference with a large group reading on July 25, 1965. In fact, the final issue of Synapse ends with the schedule for the Conference. Synapse gave a group of poets from the fringe access to backstage passes to the big show. In a sense, the Young Poets from the Bay Area reading made the Synapse poets’ dreams come true. Their poems were heard in public by their peers and their idols. Thurber writes,
The ‘64-65 time slot was our “15 minutes of fame.” (Of course, many of the poets like Lu Garcia and others have kept on “keeping on” right up to the present.) I read someplace with Kyger, Welch & McClure (I think.) Of course, it was a big reading. Also the Longshoremen's Hall with Ginsberg, et al. after which the Lovin' Spoonful played live.
Synapse is strictly lo-fi and no-frills, especially so in the first two issues. A straight-up poetry mag without any manifestos to set it apart. Maybe this is why it stands outside the Secret Location. The mag did not speak up for itself like Fuck You or Open Space. That is not to say there are not paratexts worth a closer look. By issue three, the magazine begins to develop a voice for itself outside of the poems it prints, such as with advertisements and inserts. The Conference program is one example. And it is here that things get really interesting. But that is a story for another post.
JB
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I AM FACINO
Cruising down the information superhighway late at night, you might get the impression that Doug Palmer, aka Facino, was the original street poet. This is not even true for San Francisco, where Bob Kaufman roamed the area around North Beach a full five years earlier. Hell, Joe Gould played out his Seagull Routine in Greenwich Village in the 1930s. In fact, Palmer has a sense of belatedness that gives him a Maynard G. Krebs feel. I would be tempted to dismiss him altogether as a beatnik in the derogatory sense but for the fact that he took to the Berkeley streets during the Free Speech Movement and the nationwide riots the next year. Palmer performed in the streets a full four years before students worldwide tore up the cobblestones in 1968. To make matters more interesting, with the prodding of Gary Snyder, Palmer attempted to bridge the gap between poets and workers by getting involved in San Francisco labor around Wobbly Hall. Granted, Palmer with his bowl haircut and Hippie mannerisms seems downright cute and he definitely lacks the outlaw element of a Kaufman, but his street poetry could still ruffle a few feathers of the Mother Hens.
Mimeo handbills are the epitome of street literature so I was a cool thing when I opened my copy of Synapse #3 and saw a handbill documenting Palmer’s arrest for begging during his street poetry routine. Again Big Bridge proves to be a great source. See here. Palmer writes,
On Saturday night of my first week writing street poems in San Francisco, I was arrested. The charge was begging. This was mid-January, 1965. Dave Hazelton, editor of the magazine SYNAPSE, was with me, also writing street poems, using the name CINZANO. Subsequently, through our mutual friend, Mark Morris, who was involved with Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA), a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle interviewed me, photos were taken, and a couple days later, the story of the arrest made the front page, with accompanying photo.
Mark mimeographed the Chronicle article, along with some of the street poems I had written before my arrest – I kept copies of all those first poems. Dave’s wife Jeanne Lee (Hazelton) was appearing at the Jazz Workshop. Dave encouraged all his poet friends to go hear Jeanne sing, so that among the audience were Gary Snyder and Lew Welch.
The handbill above must be the Morris mimeo. The Chronicle article tells the basic story and Palmer’s memoir provides some background, but for me the handbill really captures the spirit of this act of street theater. Like the poems, Palmer distributed the handbill on the street to fellow poets like Lew Welch and Gary Snyder and general passersby. Palmer wore a placard announcing himself as a street poet, but this handbill describing his arrest stated to all interested parties that he meant business. Like the participants of the Free Speech Movement, Facino demonstrated that he would put his shoulder to the wheel in order to make his voice heard and his presence felt.
JB
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