Tag Archives: Bardo Matrix

Ira Cohen – Books and Broadsides

SECTION A:
This index includes books, chapbooks, booklets and broadsides

1. Cohen, Ira. POEM FOR LA MALINCHE
First edition:
Kathmandu: Bardo Matrix/Bureau of Surrealist Research, c.1974
Undboud sheets laid into printed wrappers, 500 copies. Cover art by Dana Young (uncredited).

2. Cohen, Ira. BLUE ORACLE
First edition:
Kathmandu: (Bardo Matrix), January 1975
Broadside, 11″ x 7.75″, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Illustrated by Dana Young.

3. Zaõ Gongen [pseud. Ira Cohen]. NEMBUTSU *
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), October 1975

4. Cohen, Ira. 7 MARVELS
First edition:
Kathmandu: Bardo Matrix, 1975
Unbound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 9″ x 11″, 15 leaves of various dimensions, 500 numbered copies, letterpress printed at Sharada Printing Press. Woodblocks hand printed by Nawang Norbu cut by Tibetan craftsmen after Marvel Comix. Colophon illustration designed by John Chick. Published as Starstreams Poetry Series Number 2.

Contents: [untitled] “O Surfer Surfing & Surfed…”, [untitled] “Forests of eyelids…”, “for Geoffrey Humphreys”, “For Frank Herbert & The Bene Tleilaxu Face Dancers”, “Silver Shoetrees in Hermes’ Closet”, [untitled] “1. I have with me the perception…”, [untitled] “The earthstealers have arrived!”

5. Cohen, Ira. POEMS FROM THE COSMIC CRYPT
First edition:
Kathmandu: Kali Press/Bardo Matrix, 1976
Hardcover in paper-bound boards with paper title label, 7.5″ x 9.75″, 90 pages, 500 copies, illustrated by Petra Vogt, introduction by Angus MacLise.

6. Cohen, Ira. OPIUM ELEMENTALS
First edition:
Kathmandu: Bardo Matrix, 1976
Machine-sewn in printed and illustrated wrappers, 12″ x 9.25″, 50 pages, 350 numbered and signed copies, letterpress printed at Sharada Printing Press. Designed and illustrated by Dana Young. Published as A Starstreams Special Edition.

Contents: “Emergent Waxwork” [poem], “The Mirage Poem” [poem]

7. Cohen, Ira. KATHMANDU PORTFOLIO
First edition:
Rotterdam: Cold Turkey Press, 1976.
Folding card wallet containing twelve 3.5″ x 5.5″ black and white postcards featuring photographs by Cohen of Kathmandu and environs.

8. Cohen, Ira. FROM THE DIVAN OF PETRA VOGT
Rotterdam: Cold Turkey Press, 1976

9. Cohen, Ira. GILDED SPLINTERS
First edition:
Kathmandu: Bardo Matrix, 1977
500 copies.

10. Cohen, Ira. BOMBAY BLACK *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Adrian Brooks.

11. Cohen, Ira. NIGHT SONG *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Adrian Brooks.

12. Cohen, Ira. AND AGAIN YOU WILL BE GONE… *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Sidney Hushhour.
[not in archive]

13. Cohen, Ira. BALLAD OF THE GONE MACLISE
First edition:
Kathmandu: (Bardo Matrix), June 1979
Broadside, 8.5″ x 21.5″, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Illustrated by Hetty MacLise.

According to BeatBooks: Written six days after MacLise’s death in Kathmandu in June 1979.

According to Ira Cohen in his essay “The Great Rice Paper Adventure”: In 1979 Angus MacLise died on the Summer Solstice and the cycle seemed to be over. The great rice paper adventure drew to a close as most of us left Nepal and moved on. It became more difficult to continue on limited funds, the emphasis on “bona fide” tourists increased, and the valley was filled with all the worst signs of twentieth century commodification. For a few years we were privileged to help turn the prayer wheels of this Himalayan kingdom which gave us a sense of being Akashic Agents, dedicated to preserving the records of our time, there in Shangri-La.

14. Cohen, Ira. THE STAUFFENBERG CYCLE & OTHER POEMS
First edition:
Heerlen: Uitgeverij 261, 1981
Perfect-bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 48 pages.

15. Cohen, Ira. ON FEET OF GOLD *
First edition:
London: Synergetic Press, 1986
Perfect-bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 142 pages.

16. Cohen, Ira. FROM THE WHOLE MEGILLAH: A CRYSTAL FOR BOB KAUFMAN *
First edition:
Mokum: Visible Voice, 1986
Broadside

17. Cohen, Ira. 6 PICKS *
First edition:
N.p.: Archetypal Images, 1988
Six printed reproductions of photographs on cardstock with printed belly-band, 5″ x 7″.

18. Cohen, Ira. LICKING THE SKULL A RETROSPECTACLE OF PHOTOGRAPHIC WORKS BY IRA COHEN *
First edition:
New York: Cynthia Broan Gallery, 2000
Saddle-stapled in printed and photo-illustrated wrappers, 42 pages, 1008 copies. Commentary by Ian MacFadyen, Allen Graubard and others, as well as a chronology.

19. Cohen, Ira. POEMS FROM THE AKASHIC RECORD
First edition:
Brooklyn: Goodie Publications, 2001
Perfect-bound in printed and photo-illustrated wrappers, 94 pages.

20. Cohen, Ira. CHAOS & GLORY *
First edition:
Salt Lake City: Elik Press, 2004

21. Cohen, Ira. WHATEVER YOU SAY MAY BE HELD AGAINST YOU *
First edition:
Kathmandu: Shivastan Publishing, 2004
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers, 333 copies.

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[*not in archive]

Ira Cohen

Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Cohen lived in Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life.

Ira Cohen Checklist:

Section A: Books and Broadsides
Section B: Contributions to Periodicals
Section C: Recordings
Section D: Publications Edited and Published

· Bardo Matrix

In 1961, Cohen took a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangier, Morocco (the same one Jack Kerouac had taken a year earlier) where he lived for four years. In Tangier Cohen edited and published Gnaoua, a literary magazine, ostensibly dedicated to exorcism, and devoted to Beat-era writings, introducing the work of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Harold Norse and others. Gnaoua also featured Jack Smith and Irving Rosenthal. A copy of Gnaoua can be seen on the mantelpiece on the cover of Bob Dylan’s 1965 album “Bringing It All Back Home.” Cohen also produced Jilala, field recordings of trance music by a sect of Moroccan dervishes made by Paul Bowles and Brion Gysin. The original 1965 LP record was reissued in 1998 by Baraka Foundation/Mystic Fire as a CD.

Cohen returned to New York in the mid-1960s. There he published The Hashish Cookbook (Gnaoua Press, 1966), which had been written in Tangier at Brion Gysin’s suggestion by Cohen’s then-girlfriend Rosalind, under the pseudonym “Panama Rose”. In his loft on the Lower East Side, Cohen created the “mylar images”, styled as “future icons” as developed by a “mythographer”. Among the reflected artists in his mirror were John McLaughlin, Ching Ho Cheng, William S. Burroughs and Jimi Hendrix – who said that looking at these photos was like “looking through butterfly wings”. In 1968, Cohen directed the “phantasmaglorical” film Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda. The original drummer of the Velvet Underground, Angus MacLise, improvised the score for Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda, a smorgasbord of Tibetan, Moroccan and Druidic trance music. A Village Voice reviewer said one left the film “perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana.” Cohen also and produced Marty Topp’s Paradise Now, a film of the Living Theatre’s historic American tour.

In company with former Living Theatre member Petra Vogt, Cohen went to the Himalayas in the 1970s where he started the Starstream poetry series under the Bardo Matrix imprint in Kathmandu, publishing the work of Charles Henri Ford, Gregory Corso, Paul Bowles and Angus Maclise. Here he developed bookmaking art, working with native craftsmen. In 1972 he spent a year in San Francisco reading and performing, and then returned to New York to mount photographic shows.

Following his travels, Ira Cohen wrote countless poems; had photographic exhibitions around the world; did poetry readings; helped edit small literary magazines; released a movie about a Hindu religious festival; and became the president of a nonprofit corporation dedicated to preserving “the hidden meaning of the hidden meaning.”

Online Resources:

· The Ira Cohen Archive

· Big Bridge – Ira Cohen: The Great Rice Paper Adventure Kathmandu, 1972-1977

· Granary Books – Ira Cohen: The Bardo Matrix, Gnaoua, and The Great Society

· Granary Books – Petra Vogt Archive

Bardo Matrix – John Chick

John Chick (1944-2013) was one of the members of the original Bardo Matrix crew, who started out as a psychedelic lightshow or ‘experimental cine’ group in Boulder, Colorado. After moving to San Francisco in 1967, Chick helped set up light shows at the Avalon Ballroom with The Family Dog, with whom he was staying that summer. Doing so, Chick found himself at the heart of San Francisco’s Summer of Love. Once that summer had been spent he moved back to Colorado where he helped The Family Dog set up The Denver Dog – the Avalon Ballroom’s Colorado branch – and helped distribute The Avalon’s psychedelic posters in Denver. At The Denver Dog Chick worked with Blue Cheer, Jim Morrison, Chuck Berry, Janis Joplin and many other musicians and bands. The next year, in 1969, Chick decided to follow the hippie trail to Kathmandu, where he opened the Spirit Catcher bookstore with Angus MacLise and continued the Bardo Matrix imprint. The bookstore became a meeting place for expat poets and musicians and it was under the Bardo Matrix imprint that Ira Cohen and Angus MacLise published their famous Starstreams poetry series on local rice paper. Chick witnessed the arrival of the first Magic Bus in Kathmandu (which had Wavy Gravy and Dr. Larry Brilliant aboard) and many buses to follow. In 1972 he opened the legendary Rose Mushroom Nightclub on ‘Freak Street’ to accommodate the steadily growing flux of hippies.

Online Resources:

Kathmandu Post – How a used bookstore in Kathmandu’s Jhochhen captured the spirit of the hippie movement

Bardo Matrix – Broadsides

>> return to BARDO MATRIX main page >>

SECTION B:
This index includes broadsides of poetry and prose

1. Cohen, Ira. BLUE ORACLE
First edition:
Kathmandu: (Bardo Matrix), January 1975
Broadside, 11″ x 7.75″, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Illustrated by Dana Young.

2. Zaõ Gongen [pseud. Ira Cohen]. NEMBUTSU *
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), October 1975

3. Young, Dana. SECRET HISTORY *
First edition:
Kathmandu: (Bardo Matrix), 1976
Broadside. Illustrated by Dana Young.

4. Cohen, Ira. BOMBAY BLACK *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Adrian Brooks.

5. Cohen, Ira. NIGHT SONG *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Adrian Brooks.

6. Cohen, Ira. AND AGAIN YOU WILL BE GONE… *
First edition:
(Kathmandu): (Bardo Matrix), (n.d.)
Broadside. Illustrated by Sidney Hushhour.

7. [anonymous]. SHIVARATRI
Pashupatinath: Bardo Matrix, February 1979

First edition, broadside, 5″ x 15.5″, letterpress printed on handmade Nepali paper. Designed by Ira Cohen.

8. Cohen, Ira. BALLAD OF THE GONE MACLISE
First edition:
Kathmandu: (Bardo Matrix), June 1979
Broadside, 8.5″ x 21.5″, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Illustrated by Hetty MacLise.

According to BeatBooks: Written six days after MacLise’s death in Kathmandu in June 1979.

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[*not in archive]

Angus MacLise – Books and Broadsides

>> return to ANGUS MACLISE main page >>

SECTION A:
This index includes books, chapbooks, booklets and broadsides

1. MacLise, Angus. STRAIGHT FARTHEST BLOOD TOWARDS (OPENING SECTION)
First edition:
Paris: The Dead Language Press, 1959
Single 6.25″ x 22″ sheet folded three times to make six printed pages and a cover, 5.5″ x 6.5″, letterpress printed and with a block print cover by Piero Heliczer. Angus MacLise’s first publication.

According to BeatBooks: It was after noticing a copy of this title in City Lights Books that La Monte Young first became aware of Angus MacLise. When the latter moved to New York in 1961 they began performing together regularly, and it was through Young that MacLise first met John Cale.

2. MacLise, Angus. YEAR, A WEDNESDAY PAPER SUPPLEMENT
First edition:
New York: The Dead Language Press, 1961
Multiple sheets tape-bound to make a single accordion fold with 12 panels, one for each of the twelve months and an entry for each day, 4.6″ x 9″ (folded), letterpress printed by Piero Heliczer. Cover illustration, “The Ascension of St. Rose of Lima”, by Aubrey Beardsley.

According to BeatBooks: The publication prints MacLise’s renaming of every day of the year, some simply assigned a number, but most given poetic names, such as “day of the hearts blood”, “day of the two daughters”, “the shouts from the sea”, and “last day of the autumn feast”. La Monte Young used the calendar to date many of his recordings from the period, including “B-flat Dorian Blues (Fifth Day Of The Hammer)”.

3. MacLise, Angus. THE NEW UNIVERSAL SOLAR CALENDAR
First Edition:
New York: George Maciunas, (1969)
Broadside, 20.5″ x 23.5″, black calligraphy and illustrations offset printed on white stock. Layout by Paolo Lionni. Production by George Macunias.

Note: Similar to MacLise’s earlier “Year,” The New Universal Solar Calendar renames the days of the year, but in this format prints the phrases in his characteristic calligraphic hand, producing a full artwork that actually seems to take itself a bit more seriously than most of the multiples produced by Macianus at the time. [see Fluxus Codex page 398]

4. MacLise, Angus. THE CLOUD DOCTRINE
First edition:
Kathmandu: Dreamweapon Press, 1974
Saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 7.5″ x 10.75″, 16 pages, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Cover woodblock print from a photograph by Ira Cohen.

Note: The Cloud Doctrine was one of the first books produced by the Kathmandu beat poetry presses, and set the template for the books issued in this style.

5. MacLise, Angus. THE SUBLIMINAL REPORT
a. First edition:
Kathmandu: Bardo Matrix, 1975
Machine-sewn in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 10.75″, 28 pages, 500 numbered copies, letterpress printed on handmade paper. Cover woodblock print from a photograph by Ira Cohen. Published as Starstreams Poetry Series, No. 4

According to Ira Cohen: The Subliminal Report included two photos printed in silver ink on white machine made paper, one a mylar portrait of Angus taken in New York, the other a stone garuda sinking into the ground in Dhoka Tole just in front of the Raj Photo Shop where the negatives were developed and first printed…There was a very special collaboration going on here between the artists and artisans, Nepalis and foreigners, which was mutually inspiring and gives the books their unique quality. The Subliminal Report was the first book to utilize Bhutanese silk paper as cover stock.

b. First edition, revised facsimile:
New York: SZ Press, 1984

Photocopied reissue printed in advance of the publication of The Map of Dusk, with brief introductory text by John Fallon and Carolyn Betensky.

6. MacLise, Angus. THE MAP OF DUSK
First edition:
New York: SZ Press, 1984
This is the first publication of the poem in full. An excerpted version of The Map of Dusk appeared in a previous publication by Piero Heliczer in 1959. Illustrated with calligraphic drawings by the author. Includes introduction by Ira Cohen.

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verdant press