Tag Archives: Jack Kerouac

Writers Forum

Writers Forum was a small publisher, workshop and writers’ network established by Bob Cobbing. The roots of Writers Forum were in the 1954 arts organization Group H, and the And magazine that Cobbing edited. The writers’ branch of Group H was called Writers Forum. In 1963 a press with the publishing imprint “Writers Forum” was begun and administered by Cobbing, John Rowan, and Jeff Nuttall. Between 1963 and 2002 Writers’ Forum published more than one thousand pamphlets and books including works by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, and P. J. O’Rourke, as well as a wide range of British Poetry Revival modernist poets, such as Eric Mottram, Bill Griffiths, Geraldine Monk, Maggie O’Sullivan, Paula Claire, and Sean Bonney. While publishing was integral to the Cobbing-led workshop, it also provided an opportunity for poets to read their works in a supportive and non-critical environment.

Reference consulted: Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum, edited by Peter Mayer. Published as Ceolfrith 26, October 1974 (ref. Mayer)

Check List of Writers Forum publications:

1. AND, No. 1, edited by Bob Cobbing and Mary Levien
London: Hendon Arts Together, July 1954
(Mayer 1)

2. POEMS BY TWELVE MEMBERS OF WRITERS’ FORUM, edited by Bob Cobbing and John Rowan
London: Writers Forum, August 1959

First edition, saddle-stapled in illustrated wrappers, 4” x 5”, 16 pages, 220 copies, mimeograph printed, cover design by W.H. Nessler. (Mayer 2)

Contributors include: Mary Berry, Lois Hieger, Wendy Stockham, Ninette Quinn, Norman Wallace, Bob Cobbing, John Rowan, Nancy Taylor, Gerda Mayer, Maurice Langham, Jean Salisbury, Brian Gould.

3. AND, No. 2, edited by Bob Cobbing and Mary Levien
London: Arts Together, February 1961
(Mayer 3)

4. AND, No. 3, edited by Bob Cobbing and Mary Levien
London: Arts Together, February 1963
(Mayer 4)

5. Musgrove, Keith and Jeff Nuttall. THE LIMBLESS VIRTUOSO
London: Writers’ Forum, June 1963

First edition, side-stapled and bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 6.5” x 9”, 40 pages printed recto only, 220 copies, mimeograph printed, cover linocut by Jeff Nuttall. Published as Writers Forum Poets, No. 1. (Mayer 5)

According to Mayer, “This was the real beginning of Writers Forum as a publishing venture; though it had existed as the literary branch of Arts Together since December 1952, when it was Hendon Writers’ Group.”

6. Cobbing, Bob and John Rowan . THE MASSACRE OF THE INNOCENTS
London: Writers Forum, July 1963

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 6.75” x 8.75”, 34 pages, 220 copies, mimeograph printed, cover linocut by Jeff Nuttall. Published as Writers Forum Poets No. 2. (Mayer 6)

7. Roberts, Derek and Michael McGrinder. TOMBSTONES
London: Writers Forum, August 1963
(Mayer 7)

8. Ball, David and Anselm Hollo. WE JUST WANTED TO TELL YOU
London: Writers Forum, October 1963
(Mayer 8)

9. Ginsberg, Allen. THE CHANGE
London: Writers Forum, November 1963

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 6.75” x 9”, 24 pages, 220 copies, mimeograph printed, cover linocut by Jeff Nuttall. Published as Writers Forum Poets No. 5. (Mayer 9)

According to Mayer, the “first twelve copies of this had ‘Ginsburg’ on cover, altered by hand to ‘Ginsberg'”. This was the first state, described in Morgan (A7). The corrected state is reprinted with the linocut revised to correct the spelling.

10. Hieger, Lois. THE HUMAN DRESS
London: Writers Forum, February 1964
(Mayer 10)

…

References consulted:

      • Better Books/Better Bookz: Art, Anarchy, Apostasy, Counter-culture & the New Avant-garde, edited by Rozemin Keshvani, Axel Heil, and Peter Weibel
        London: Koenig Books, 2018
      • Bob Cobbing & Writers Forum, edited by Peter Mayer
        Ceolfrith Arts/Sunderland Arts Centre, October 1974
        Published as Ceolfrith 26. (ref. Mayer)

Morgan, Bill. The Works of Allen Ginsberg
Wesport: Greenwood Press, 1995

little magazines

The Floating Bear

THE FLOATING BEAR: A NEWSLETTER, No. 24, edited by Diane di Prima and LeRoi Jones (New York, September-October 1962)

The subtitle “A Newsletter” is the key to The Floating Bear’s chief contribution to literature of the 1960’s; it was a newsletter, a speedy line of communication between experimental poets. Diane di Prima, in the introduction to the reprint edition of Floating Bear, recalls Charles Olson’s tribute to the magazine: “The last time I saw Charles Olson in Gloucester, one of the things he talked about was how valuable the Bear had been to him in its early years because of the fact that he could get new work out that fast. He was very involved in speed, in communication. We got manuscripts from him pretty regularly in the early days of the Bear, and we’d usually get them into the very next issue. That meant that his work, his thoughts, would be in the hands of a few hundred writers within two or three weeks. It was like writing a letter to a bunch of friends.”

>>> further reading >>>

little magazines

Once Series

The final issue of the Once Series with Joe Brainard cover art.

An eclectic periodical, published coincident with Tom Clark’s Fulbright study and posting as Instructor in American Poetry at the University of Essex. The titles varied but each was denoted “A One Shot Magazine… No Copyright No Nothin.”

>> further reading >>

Once Series

Edited by Tom Clark, the Once Series is an eclectic periodical, published coincident with Clark’s Fulbright study and posting as Instructor in American Poetry at the University of Essex. The titles varied (all words concluding with ‘CE’) but each was denoted “A One Shot Magazine… No Copyright No Nothin.”

According to Tom Clark: “When I went on from Cambridge to the U. of Essex in 1965 I began editing a mimeograph magazine of my own, the Once series, and through that project got into long-distance postal contact with many younger American poets, particularly those living on the Lower East Side of New York…

“The magazines had deliberately uncataloguable titles: Once, Twice, Thrice, Thrice and a Half, Frice, Vice, Ice, Nice, Slice, Slice Vol. 1, No. 2, and Spice. I filled up the mimeo series with the spillover of poems I was receiving for the Paris Review — which could handle only a fraction of the good new work that was coming in to me — as well as with some ‘assignments’ from friends far and near…

“Joe’s series of covers, a throwaway tour de force of periodical art, lent class, consistency and uniformity to the Once series, bringing a surprising illusion of orderly design to an otherwise rather undisciplined and chaotic enterprise.

“Most of the works I published in the Once series were somewhat or in some way more outlandish or strange than what I could cull for the Paris Review.”

  • Excerpt from Kevin Ring interview with Tom Clark published as Jacket 21 in Jacket Magazine, 2003.

1. ONCE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 14 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed.

  • Contents:
    1. Robin Blaser – “Psyche”
      Robin Blaser – “Sophia Nichols”
      Steve Jonas – “Ode for Garcia Lorca”
      Ed Dorn – “A Provisional Fragment, Congested with 3 Titles”
      Ron Padgett – “Poem after Reverdy”
      Ron Padgett – “Light in the Nineteenth Century”
      Aram Saroyan – “The Sentence”
      Max Finstein – [untitled] “You, sonofabitch love you…”
      Edward van Aelstyn – [untitled] “In the morning night…”
      Edward van Aelstyn – “Poem Ending with ‘George Orwell’”
      Phyllis Harris – “The Giant One Legged…”
      Philip Lamantia – “Without Props”
      Sam Abrams – “The 1st Day”
      Allan Kaplan – “Billy and Franz”
      Gerry Gilbert – “The Stakes”
      Tom Raworth – “Not Under Holly or Green Boughs”
      Tom Raworth – “She Sd, Bread, Fred”
      Tom Raworth – “The Third Retainer”

2. TWICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 7 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed.

  • Contents:
    1. Robert Howell – “from Ten Great Poetry Readings: VI”
      Ron Padgett – “On Ten Fingers” [translation of following Reverdy poem]
      Pierre Reverdy – “Sur Les Dix Doigts”

3. THRICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, March 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 25 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed.

  • Contents:
    1. Max Jacob – “from Le Cornet à Des” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      F.J. Lauria – “Crazyface”
      Joanne Kyger – “This is Water Sons”
      Joanne Kyger – “The Sky Vault. Its Own Legend”
      Joanne Kyger – “Dear, Dearest”
      Aram Saroyan – “Poem” [“I seldom remember what…”]
      Ted Berrigan – “February Air”
      Ted Berrigan – “From a Life for Teresa Mitchell”
      Ted Berrigan – “Epithalamium for Bernie Mitchell”
      Ed Dorn – “Box Score”
      Pamela Millward – “17 November 1965”
      Larry Fagin – [untitled] “Which way is it you want me…”
      Gael Turnbull – “Song”
      Gael Turnbull – “An Intent”
      Gael Turnbull – “A Good Man”
      Richard Kolmar – “Aristophanes”
      Charles Olson – “Maximus to Gloucester, Letter 27”
      Gerry Gilbert – “Living at Claude & Ardie’s”
      Gerry Gilbert – “Bicycle”
      Gerry Gilbert – “Train”
      E.A. McGregor-Plarr – “An Ode”
      Clark Coolidge – “Noon Print”
      Clark Coolidge – “In Land Trip Machine”
      Clark Coolidge – “The Beings There, Not There, House”
      Clark Coolidge – “Scrub Brush, in Lansing Michigan”
      Clark Coolidge – “More Group Slab Reach”
      Clark Coolidge – “Hall Crawl & Tuba Ode”
      Thomas Clark – “Change”
      Thomas Clark – “Doors”
      Thomas Clark – “The Archer”
      Thomas Clark – “You”
      Thomas Clark – “You (II)”
      Thomas Clark – “You (III)”
      Thomas Clark – “You (IV)”
      Aram Saroyan – “Letter to the Village Voice”
      Thomas Clark – “You (V)”
      Harold Dull – “The Dice”
      Harold Dull – “The Door Poem”

4. THRICE AND A HALF: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 2 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed.

  • Contents:
    1. Tom Pickard – “The Bodies are Touching”
      Tom Pickard – “Daylight Hours”
      Tom Pickard – “Forbidden Birth”

5. FRICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, April 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 24 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Fielding Dawson – “Hernando’s Hideaway”
      Fielding Dawson – “Oblivion Calling for Philip Guston”
      Michael Benedikt – “Fraudulent Days”
      Michael Benedikt – “Developments”
      Michael Benedikt – “Mr. Rainman”
      Michael Benedikt – “Bedouin Tents”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Portland Aug. 27, 1965”
      Aram Saroyan – “Signs”
      Max Jacob – “Christmas Story” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      Max Jacob – “The Key” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      Max Jacob – “Adventure Story” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      Max Jacob – “Valiant Warrior on Foreign Soil” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      Ron Padgett – “Talking Neutrality”
      Ron Padgett – “Words to Joe Ceravolo”
      Larry Fagin – “Occasional Poem”
      Lee Harwood – “Summer”
      Tristan Tzara – “Volt” (translated by Lee Harwood)
      Tristan Tzara – “The Jugglers” (translated by Lee Harwood)
      Philippe Soupault – “2 Songs” (translated by Lee Harwood)
      John Perreault – “The Americans”
      John Perreault – “Punishment”
      John Perreault – “Renaissance”
      John Perreault – “These Trains”
      Guillaume Appollinaire – “The Chaste Lise” (translated by Thomas Clark)
      Edward van Aelstyn – “Information Explosion”
      Gertrude Stein – “Shakespeare”
      Ted Berrigan – “Living with Chris for Chris Gallup”
      Ted Berrigan – “A Dream”
      Ted Berrigan – “Poem for Ed Sanders”
      Steve Carey – “Sand”
      Ted Berrigan – “A Personal Memoir of Tulsa, Oklahoma”
      Ted Berrigan – “After Breakfast”
      Ted Berrigan – “American Express”
      Robert Desnos – “Take Off Your Clothes” (translated by Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett)
      Max Earnst – “Poem” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Guillaume Apollinaire – “Epigram” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Ted Berrigan – “Selflessness”
      Thomas Clark – “Telephone Poem”
      Thomas Clark – “Afternoons”
      Thomas Clark – “Poem” (“You dream things…”)
      Thomas Clark – “The Last Poem”
      Hart Crane – “Chaplinesque”
      Thomas Clark – “Michelin Poem”

6. VICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 27 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Ed Sanders – “The Fugs”
      Gregory Corso – “But Surely Yahweh’s Not Dead?”
      Gregory Corso – “O Mighty Tug”
      Gregory Corso – “In Honor of Those the Negroes are Revolting Against”
      Gregory Corso – “Not This”
      Larry Eigner – [untitled] “Entering and going out…”
      Andres Segovia – [untitled] “True it is…”
      Ron Padgett – “Joe Brainard’s Painting ‘Bingo’”
      Joe Brainard, Ron and Patricia Padgett – “An Interview with Joe Brainard”
      Blaise Cendrars – “Ten Poems” (translated by Ron Padgett)
      Fielding Dawson – “Two Reviews” (reviews of recent Kyger and O’Hara books)
      Ron Padgett – “Reading Reverdy”
      David Shapiro – “From a May Night”
      Ted Berrigan – “from Clearing the Range, Charter 25”
      Thomas Clark – “from Cluttering the Ranch, Chapter 90”
      Thomas Clark – “Clavier”
      Joe Pinelli – “from Striations, The Season’s Change”
      Michel Couturier – “Maison-Dieu” (translated by Lee Harwood)
      Lee Harwood – “The Tractors are Waiting (for Larry Fagin)”
      Aram Saroyan – [untitled] “Gradually money…”
      James Brodey – “Vice, 1966”
      Thomas Clark – “from Cluttering the Ranch, Chapter 2”
      George Tysh – “Plus”
      Joe Perreault – “Vice”

7. ICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 20 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed.

  • Contents:
    1. Ted Berrigan – “Blueprint for a Poem to be Written…”
      E.A. McGregor-Plarr – “Two Serious Ladies”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Amsterdam Avenue Bar”
      Joanne Kyger – “May 29”
      Bernadette Mayer – “Earthworks”
      Harlan Dangerfield – “Der Geisterseher”
      Joe Pinelli – “from Striations:The Season’s Change”
      Robert Howell – “Poem” [“Such deep failure…]
      Robert Howell – [untitled] “Recently I was struck…”
      Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer – “I am Davis”
      Tom Clark – “Martha’s Millions”
      Tom Clark – “What I’m Trying to Say”
      Tom Clark – “To Himself”
      Fielding Dawson – “Some History”
      Diane di Prima – “Song for the Spring Equinox”
      Robert Howell – “I Dream I Suppose Indefinitely of Yourself”
      David Shapiro – “For Chagy”
      Richard Kolmar – “Part of an Elegy”
      Richard Kolmar – “Love Letter I Forgot to Mail”
      Richard Kolmar – “The Intoxicating Thing”
      Doreen – “Humans”
      Jack Kerouac – “from Visions of Cody”
      Aram Saroyan – “Guarantee”
      Edward Kissam – “Shards, Pottery”
      Ted Berrigan – “A Cranny of Life”
      Peter Schjeldahl – “Contemporary Lights”
      Ted Berrigan and Ron Padgett – “Uncas”
      Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Tom Veitch, and Dick Gallup – “In the Foundry”

8. NICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 20 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Joe Brainard – “Life”
      Charles Goldman – “Smoke Dance”
      John Perreault – “Memorandum”
      John Perreault – “Elbow”
      Aram Saroyan – “Quote”
      Aram Saroyan – “from Songs & Buttons”
      Richard Brautigan – “The Armored Car”
      Tom Clark – “Hitching”
      Tom Clark – “from The Riot at the Garrick Theatre”
      Lee Harwood – “His July Return”
      Clark Coolidge – “Soda Gong”
      Clark Coolidge – “Cellary”
      Harry Fainlight – “Exercise 1”
      Harry Fainlight – “Spider Eclipse”
      Harry Fainlight – “Laws”
      Harry Fainlight – “H”
      Frank O’Hara – “Ode to Willem de Kooning”
      David Shapiro – “For Chagy”
      Harry Fainlight – “The Gates of Albion”
      Dick Gallup – “An Idea that Reaches the Moon”
      Peter Schjeldahl and Ted Berrigan – “Juking”
      Peter Schjeldahl and Ted Berrigan – “Pictures from Breughel”
      Peter Schjeldahl – “Soft Letter”
      Ted Berrigan – [untitled] “Before the orgasmic platform…”

9. SLICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1966

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 26 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Dick Gallup – “Death and the Maiden”
      Dick Gallup – “The Georgics”
      Dick Gallup – “The Bingo: Act III”
      Bruce Maddox – “The Engagement Ring Cycle”
      Joe Ceravolo – “Surface”
      Joe Ceravolo – “Leaped at the Caribou”
      Joe Ceravolo – “In the Grass”
      Joe Ceravolo – “Stars of the Trees and Ponds”
      Lewis MacAdams – “The Dazzling Day”
      Lewis MacAdams – “The Witch”
      Joe Ceravolo – “Stillness”
      Jack Collom – “Count K. in the Wind”
      Steve Carey – “Something of Nothing”
      Steve Carey – “Silhouette”
      James Brodey – “Someplace/Utah”
      Thomas Clark – “Spectacles”
      Thomas Clark – “The Fire-Dance”
      Thomas Clark – “Mudball Gathering”
      Thomas Clark – “The Trial”
      Thomas Clark – “Baseball”
      Thomas Clark – “Pancakes”
      David Shapiro – “Poem” [Light became audible…”
      David Shapiro – “Any Plant that Turns Toward the Sun”
      David Shapiro – “For Son II”
      Ted Berrigan – “Corporal Pellegrini”
      Max Jacob – “Genre Biographique” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Max Jacob – “The War” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Max Jacob – “The Enemy of the Citadel” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Max Jacob – “Symbolic Egyptienne” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Guillaume Apollinaire – “A Poem” (translated by Ted Berrigan)
      Ron Padgett and Ted Berrigan – “from A Little Anthology of Modern Verse”
      Ed Dorn – “2nd Quarter”
      Sotere Torregian – “Lionine, An Elegy”
      Sotere Torregian – “In the Year of Reredos”
      Sotere Torregian – “The Museum of Famous People”
      Aram Saroyan – “Two Poems”
      Sotere Torregian – “from The Uncollected Poems of John Wesley Hardin”
      LeRoi Jones – “Labor and Management”
      Tom Raworth – “The Circle”
      Sotere Torregian – “Fire on Leon Blum”
      Peter Schjeldahl – “Gauge”

10. SLICE: A One Shot Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 2, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1967

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 7 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Fielding Dawson – “Spring Sequence”
      Bernadette Mayer – “The Earmark”
      Michael McClure – “Dream Table”

11. SPICE, edited by Tom Clark
Brightlingsea: Tom Clark, 1967

First edition, side-stapled in illustrated cover, 8″ x 13″, 24 leaves printed recto only, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Ted Berrigan – “Looking for Chris, Part I”
      Anne Waldman -”After the Circus”
      Ron Padgett – “A Katz”
      Ron Padgett – “Injured Nancy”
      Steve Carey – “P.M.”
      David Shapiro – “The Divine Comedy”
      John Giorno – [untitled] “A former janitor…”
      John Giorno – [untitled] “Seven Cuban army officers…”
      Robert Avid – “The Sooner the Better”
      Ed Dorn – “An Idle Visitation”
      Ed Dorn – “A Notation on the Evening of November 27, 1966”
      Lewis MacAdams – “Red River, in Memory of Frank O’Hara”
      Lewis Warsh – “All the Earmarks of a Plan”
      Larry Fagin – [untitled] “Well known is the long parade…”
      Alan Kaplan – “Through New Jersey, via the Greyhound”
      Tom Veitch – “You’ve Got a Point There, Pop”
      Lewis MacAdams – “Turn Out the Lining on your All-Time Great Men”
      Michael Brownstein – “Highway 31”
      Kathleen Fraser – “Letters: To Barbara”
      Tony Towle – “Fable”
      Tony Towle – “Poem” [“The bus stops…”]
      Ted Berrigan – “The N.Y. Jets, a movie”
      Jon Cott – “The House”
      Tom Clark – “The Ted Berrigan Story”
      Ted Berrigan – “The Tom Clark Story”
little magazines

Yugen

YUGEN, No. 3, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen.

Edited by Beat poet LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen, Yugen was devoted to “A New Consciousness in the Arts and Letters”. Bringing together the Beats, Black Mountain poets, and the New York School poets of the late 1950s, Yugen took its name from the Japanese aesthetic term meaning “a profound mysterious sense of the beauty of universe … and the sad beauty of human suffering.”

>> further reading >>

Yugen

Edited by Beat poet LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen, Yugen was devoted to “A New Consciousness in the Arts and Letters”. Bringing together the Beats, Black Mountain poets, and the New York School poets of the late 1950s, Yugen took its name from the Japanese aesthetic term meaning “a profound mysterious sense of the beauty of universe … and the sad beauty of human suffering.” Cohen, later Hettie Jones, had worked at the Partisan Review and brought with her a background in little-magazine design that gave Yugen an air of respectability and professionalism. The contents represented a new and untraditional approach to poetry. Jones and Cohen also founded Totem Press, which published important early books by Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Allen Ginsberg, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, Jack Kerouac, and many others. Like Yugen, Totem Press books typically feature calligraphic covers that mix American abstract expressionism and Japanese Zen painting.

1. YUGEN, No. 1, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1958
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 24 pages. Printed in New York by Troubador Press. Cover art by Peter Schwartzburg with calligraphy by Rachel Spitzer. Illustrations by Hector Stewart, Peter Schwartzburg, Tomi Ungerer, and Allen Ginsberg. Titles and composition by Rachel Spitzer and Michael Aleshire

  • Contents:
    1. Philip Whalen – “Further Notice”
      Philip Whalen – “Takeout, 4:II:58”
      Philip Whalen – “Takeout, 15:IV:57”
      Ed James – [untitled] “Mother, be soft and unremembered…”
      Ed James – [untitled] “Hawks will cry…”
      Judson Crews – “Potaphor in a Wretched Wind”
      Judson Crews – “When We Were Young”
      Tom Postell – “Gertrude Stein Rides The Town Down El to New York City”
      Tom Postell – “I Want a Solid Piece of Sunlight and a Yardstick to Measure it with”
      Allen Polite – “Beg Him to Help”
      Allen Polite – “Touching Air”
      Stephen Tropp – “Early Poem for 2 People”
      Bobb Hamilton- “Judgement Day”
      LeRoi Jones – “Slice of Life”
      LeRoi Jones – “Lines to Garcia Lorca”
      Diane Di Prima – “Poem”
      Diane Di Prima – “For Pound, Cocteau & Picasso”
      Ernest Kean – “The Glass is Shattered”
      Jack Micheline – “Steps”
      Allen Ginsberg – [untitled] “We rode on a lonely bus…”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Hitch-Hiking Key West”
      Allen Ginsberg – “In a Red Bar”
      Allen Ginsberg – “On Burroughs’ Work”

2. YUGEN, No. 2, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1958
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 24 pages. Printed in New York by Troubador Press. Cover art and titles by Tomi Ungerer. Illustrations by Peter Schwarzburg.

  • Contents:
    1. Gregory Corso – “A Spontaneous Requiem for the American Indian”
      Tuli Kupferberg – “4 Haiku”
      Thomas Postell – “Harmony”
      LeRoi Jones – “Suppose Sorrow was a Time Machine”
      Barbara Ellen Moraff – “Poem for Theo”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “The Colossus of Havana”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “The Trucks”
      Diane Di Prima – “The Lovers”
      Oliver Pitcher – “Tango”
      James Boyer May – “The Back of Mind”
      Harold Briggs – “Being”
      Bobb Hamilton – “A Sentence”
      Gary Snyder – “Chion-in”
      Ben Spellman – “Fool”
      George Stade – “To a Candidate for the Ph.D in Seventeenth Century Literature”

3. YUGEN, No. 3, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1958
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 24 pages. Cover art by Peter Schwartzburg. Illustrations by Stanley Fisher.

  • Contents:
    1. Gary Snyder – “Praise for Sick Women”
      Gary Snyder – “Another for the Same”
      William S. Burroughs – “Have You Seen Pantapon Rose?”
      Charles Farber – “Morning Highway”
      Barbara Moraff – “Poem for Tamara”
      Barbara Moraff – “In a Hospital Room from a Halfclosed Lid”
      Barbara Moraff – “Wednesday Understands That”
      C. Jack Stamm – “Now When I Hear”
      Philip Whalen – “Soufflé”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “The Darkness Surrounds Us”
      Allen Ginsberg – “A New Cottage in Berkeley”
      Mason Jordan Mason – “The Curse of Ham”
      Diane Di Prima – “Lullaby”
      George Stade – “To the White Goddess”
      George Stade – “Advice to the Lovelorn”
      Peter Orlovsky – “First Poem”
      Fivos Delfis – ”A Bird” (trans. Charles Guenther)
      Ray Bremser – “Part III (Poems of the City Madness)”
      Robin Blaser – “Quitting a Job”
      Thomas Jackrell – “Got Them”

4. YUGEN, No. 4, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1958
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 28 pages. Cover art by Fielding Dawson.

  • Contents:
    1. Charles Olson – “The Librarian”
      Peter Orlovsky – “Second Poem”
      Frank O’Hara – “To Hell with It”
      Frank O’Hara – “Music”
      Max Finstein – “The Deception”
      Max Finstein – “Savonarola’s Tune”
      Fielding Dawson – “My Old Buddy, for Leonard”
      Allen Ginsberg – “A Crazy Spiritual”
      Ray Bremser – “Penal Madness (Part 1)”
      Edward Marshall – “Jonah at Danbury”
      Edward Marshall – “At Tudor City”
      Joel Oppenheimer – “In the Clutch, for M.F.”
      Joel Oppenheimer – “Fugue”
      Judson Crews – “White Hollyhocks”
      Michael McClure – “The Chamber”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “7.20.58 – for Sue”
      Gary Snyder – “from Myths & Texts”
      Jack Kerouac – “2 Blues and 4 Haikus”
      John Wieners – “Spring 1956”
      Robert Creeley – “New Year’s”
      Robert Creeley – “Saturday Afternoon”
      Gregory Corso – “Away One Year”
      LeRoi Jones – “Parthenos”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “A Fixture”
      Mason Jordan Mason – “Yes Yes Yes”
      Gregory Corso – “For Black Mountain”

5. YUGEN, No. 5, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1959
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 40 pages. Cover art by Basil King. Illustration by Fielding Dawson.

  • Contents:
    1. William Carlos Williams, – “A Formal Design”
      Allen Ginsberg – “from Kaddish”
      Barbara Guest – “Sunday Evening”
      Barbara Guest – “The Crisis”
      David Meltzer – “15th Raga / for Bela Lugosi”
      David Meltzer – “from Night Before Morning / Book One”
      Max Finstein – “A Blue Whale’s Heart”
      Paul Blackburn – “Ramas, Divendres, Diumenga”
      Paul Blackburn – “A Purity Defined”
      Philip Whalen – “I Return to San Francisco”
      Diane Di Prima – “Earthsong”
      John Wieners – “A Poem for Virgins (excerpt)”
      Walter Lowenfels – “The Nightingale, for D.H. Lawrence”
      Michael McClure – “Rant Block”
      Rainer Gerhardt – “Fragment” (trans. Jerome Rothenberg)
      Rainer Gerhardt – “Voices” (trans. Jerome Rothenberg)
      Frank O’Hara – “Ode on Causality”
      César Vallejo – “Black Stone on a White Stone” (trans. Lillian Lowenfels)
      Bruce Fearing – “Scenic Viewpoint”
      Jack Kerouac – “Sitting Under Tree Number Two”
      Barbara Moraff – [untitled] “Like a bowlegged woman…”
      Gregory Corso – “Food”
      Larry Eigner – [untitled] “No-one here…”
      Joel Oppenheimer – “The Issue at Hand”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – letter to the editor

6. YUGEN, No. 6, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1960
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 52 pages. Cover art by Basil King.

  • Contents:
    1. Michael McClure – “The Column”
      Charles Olson – “As of Bozeman”
      Charles Olson – “The Distances”
      Charles Olson – “Letter, May 2, 1959”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “Trees / 6”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “Etude, with Chair”
      Philip Lamantia – “Blank Poem for Poe”
      Paul Blackburn – “Song of the Wires”
      Robin Blaser – “Out to Dinner”
      Hubert Selby, Jr. – “Episode from Landsend”
      David Meltzer – “4th Raga / for John Kelly Reed”
      Ray Bremser – “Backyards & Deviations”
      Ed Dorn – “The 6th”
      Ed Dorn – “The 7th”
      Rochelle Owens – “Groshl Monkeys Horses”
      Paul Carroll – “By Its Familiar Accent We Recognize The Ghost”
      Robert Creeley – “The Joke”
      Robert Creeley – “Letter”
      Robert Creeley – “What’s for Dinner”
      Tristan Tzara – “Wheat” (trans. Daisy Aldan)
      Gary Snyder – “A Walk”
      Gary Snyder – “Wild Horses”
      Gary Snyder – “After Work”
      Gary Snyder – “On Vulture Peak”
      Edward Marshall – [untitled] “We as scoffers undercut the sea…”
      LeRoi Jones – “Node”
      LeRoi Jones – “The A, B, C’s”
      Jack Kerouac – “Rimbaud”
      David Wang – “II. Invocation”
      Kenneth Koch – “From a Book of Poetry”
      Larry Eigner – [untitled] “Night. Everything falls flat…”
      Edward Dahlberg – “On Passions and Asceticism”
      Frank O’Hara – “Personal Poem”

7. YUGEN, No. 7, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen
New York: Yugen, 1961
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 65 pages. Cover art by Norman Bluhm.

  • Contents:
    1. LeRoi Jones – “Putdown of the Whore of Babylon”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “2 Book Reviews”
      Bruce Boyd – “Summer Nightmusic”
      Bruce Boyd – “This is How the Wind Sings…”
      Bruce Boyd – “A Quarrel of Minstrels”
      Bruce Boyd – “Water”
      Bruce Boyd – “Song”
      Bruce Boyd – “Poem”
      Robert Creeley – “The New World”
      Kenneth  Koch – “Guinevere, or The Death of the Kangaroo”
      George Stanley – “Parallels”
      George Stanley – “Winter”
      George Stanley – “Shapes”
      Frank O’Hara – “Personism: A Manifesto”
      Gregory Corso – “On Chessman’s Crime”
      Gregory Corso – “For Black Mountain-2”
      B. Smith  – “Empty Bed Blues”
      Stuart Z Perkoff, – “To Orpheus”
      Stuart Z Perkoff – “Poem”
      Stuart Z Perkoff – “Pithecanthropus Erectus”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “Some Notes…”
      John Ashbery – “From a Comic Book”
      John Ashbery – “Leaving the Atocha Station”
      Philip Whalen  – “Literary Life in the Golden West”
      Philip Whalen – “Sincerity Shot, 23:III:58”
      Philip Whalen – “A Manuscript in Several Hands 3:III:60”
      Larry Eigner – “K in the USA”
      Larry Eigner – letter to the editor
      Max Finstein – “For Fair Eleanor”
      Joel Oppenheimer – “Morning Song”
      Diane Di Prima – “The Jungle”
      Charles Olson – “Theory of Society”
      Edward Marshall – “Sept. 1957”
      Joel Oppenheimer – letter to the editor
      Allen Ginsberg – “The End”
      LeRoi Jones – “Public Notice”
      Norman Bluhm – untitled drawing
      Frank O’Hara – “Denouement”

8. YUGEN, No. 8, edited by LeRoi Jones and Hettie Cohen-Jones
New York: Totem Press, 1962
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 66 pages. Cover art by Basil King. Illustration by Aaron Roseman.

  • Contents:
    1. George Stanley – “The Message Held up to the Speeding Train on a Willow Hoop”
      George Stanley – “Punishment”
      George Stanley – “The Meteor”
      George Stanley – “The Implicit Acknowledgements”
      George Stanley – [untitled] “The larks…”
      George Stanley – “Valentine”
      George Stanley – “A False Start”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – book reviews of Duncan and Spicer
      Steve Jonas – “No. IV Orgasms”
      Steve Jonas – “Tensone with Relent”
      Steve Jonas – “Discourse”
      Steve Jonas – “To a Strayed Cat”
      Steve Jonas – “A Long Poem for Jack Spicer”
      William Burroughs – “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin”
      Speckled Red – “Red’s Dozens”
      George Stanley – book reviews of Finstein and Sorrentino
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “The Meeting”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “The Memory”
      Edward Dorn – “Notes about Working and Waiting Around”
      Robert Creeley – “Some Notes on Olson’s Maximus”
      Edward Marshall – [untitled] “One writes when…”
      Edward Marshall – “Memory as Memorial in the Last”
      LeRoi Jones – “The Largest Ocean in the World”
      Charles Olson – “Place; & Names”
      Charles Olson – “Book ii, Chapter 37”

Online Resources:

· From a Secret Location – Yugen

· Reality Studio – Yugen

 

little magazines

CALL IT BIG TABLE

BIG TABLE, No. 1, edited by Irving Rosenthal and Paul Carrol.

“Big Table was launched in Spring 1959 following the suppression of the Winter 1958 issue of The Chicago Review. An exposé in the Chicago Daily News revealed editors Irving Rosenthal’s and Paul Carroll’s plans to publish work by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other Beat writers, and the administration quashed the magazine…”

— from A Secret Location on the Lower East Side

>> further reading >>

Big Table

“Big Table was launched in Spring 1959 following the suppression of the Winter 1958 issue of The Chicago Review. An exposé in the Chicago Daily News revealed editors Irving Rosenthal’s and Paul Carroll’s plans to publish work by William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and other Beat writers, and the administration quashed the magazine.

Rosenthal and Carroll, along with other Chicago Review editors, resigned and with the suppressed material started Big Table. The first issue was edited by Rosenthal and Carroll, though Carroll had to withdraw his name in order to avoid being fired by Loyola University where he was employed. This issue contained work by Jack Kerouac (who named the magazine in a telegram: “CALL IT BIG TABLE”), Edward Dahlberg, and Burroughs (a section from Naked Lunch), and was summarily impounded by the US Post Office.

The lawsuit was unsuccessful and Big Table continued through 1960 and five issues. Rosenthal left the magazine after the first issue and Carroll stayed on as editor for the duration, publishing such writers and artists as Paul Bowles, Antonin Artaud, Leon Golub, John Logan, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Robert Fulton, Harry Callahan, Douglas Woolf, Aaron Siskind, Paul Blackburn, Franz Kline, Diane di Prima, and Gregory Corso.”

— from A Secret Location on the Lower East Side

1. BIG TABLE, No. 1, edited by Irving Rosenthal and Paul Carroll
Chicago: Big Table, Spring 1959
First edition, sewn signatures bound in printed wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 158 pages, printed by The Profile Press of New York.

  • Contents:
    1. Irving Rosenthal – “Editorial”
      Jack Kerouac – “Old Angel Midnight”
      Edward Dahlberg – “Further Sorrow of Priapus”
      Edward Dahlberg – “The Garment of Ra”
      William S. Burroughs – “Ten Episodes from Naked Lunch”
      Gregory Corso – “Power, for Allen Ginsberg”
      Gregory Corso – “Army”
      Gregory Corso – “Police”

2. BIG TABLE, No. 2, edited by Paul Carroll
Chicago: Big Table, Summer 1959
First edition, sewn signatures bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 124 pages. Cover art by Leon Golub.

  • Contents:
    1. John D. Keefauver – “The Daring Old Maid on the Flying Trapeze”
      Serge Essenin – “The Tramp’s Confession”
      Lawrence Alloway – “Heroes & Monsters & Mothers”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Horseman”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Burnt Man”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Kaddish”
      John Logan – “Fire”
      Antonin Artaud – Three Exhortations”
      Alan Ansen – “Anyone Who Can Pick Up a Frying Pan Owns Death”
      Paul Bowles – “Burroughs in Tangier”
      William S. Burroughs – “In Quest of Yage”
      Gael Turnbull – “The Priests of Paris”
      Brother Antoninus – “Zone of Death”
      Andre Breton – “Despair”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Birth VII”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Orestes”
      Edward Dahlberg – “Because I Was Flesh”
      Paul Blackburn – “The Signals”
      Margarita Liberaki – “Wedding”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Abraham Lincoln”
      Leon Golub – “Plate: Columnar Head”
      Lawrence Ferlinghetti – “The Great Chinese Dragon”

3. BIG TABLE, Vol. 1, No. 3, edited by Paul Carroll
Chicago: Big Table, 1959
First edition, sewn signatures bound in printed and photo-illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 120 pages. Cover photograph by Aaron Siskind.

  • Contents:
    1. Allen Ginsberg – “Kaddish”
      John Rechy – “The Fabulous Wedding of Miss Destiny”
      Robert Duncan – “Evocation”
      John Ashbery – “How much longer will I be able to inhabit the Divine Sepulcher”
      John Ashbery – “April Fool’s Day”
      Aaron Siskin – “Terrors & Pleasures of Levitation: four plates”
      Edward Dahlberg – “Because I was Flesh”
      Robert Creeley – “The Way”
      James Wright – “A Whisper to the Ghost who woke Me”
      Paul Carroll – “Father”
      Norman Mailer – “Quick & Expensive Comment on the Talent in the Room”
      Paul Blackburn – “Banyalbufar”
      Edward Dorn – “The Air of June Sings”
      Renee Riese Hubert – “Sizes”
      Peter Orlovsky – “First Poem”
      Lawrence Ferlinghetti – “Her”
      Jean Genet – “The Beggars of Barcelona”

4. BIG TABLE, Vol. 1, No. 4, edited by Paul Carroll
Chicago: Big Table, Spring 1960
First edition, sewn signatures bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 144 pages. Cover art by Robert Fulton.

  • Contents:
    1. William S. Burroughs – “But is all Back Seat of Dreaming”
      Richard G. Stern – “Two Talking”
      John Ashbery – “Europe”
      Douglas Woolf – “Wall to Wall”
      Franz Kline – “Plate: Mister”
      John Logan – “from Monologues of The Son of Saul”
      Robert Creeley – “The Awakening, for Charles Olson”
      Robert Creeley – “The Wife”
      Robert Creeley – “The Memory”
    2. Robert Creeley – “The Snow”
      Harold Norse – “I Am in the Hub of the Fiery Force”
      Harold Norse – “The Fire Sermon”
      James Wright – “Snow Storm in the Mid-West”
      James Wright – “A Young One in a Garden”
      Lawrence Ferlinghetti – “New York – Albany”
      Paul Blackburn – “The Idiot”
      Paul Blackburn – “Homage to the Spirit”
      Frank O’Hara – “Les Luths”
      Frank O’Hara – “Joe’s Jacket”
      Robert Duncan – “Four Pictures of the Real Universe”
      Denise Levertov – “The Rainwalkers”
      Gregory Corso – “Rembrandt – Self Portrait”
      Gregory Corso – “Emily Dickenson”
      Gregory Corso – “Walk”
      Kenneth Koch – “Lunch”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Message”
      William Hunt – Song from the End of the Earth”
      Michael McClure – “Two Poems from a Small Secret Book”
      Bill Berkson – “Poem”
      Paul Carroll – “34′-23′-35′”
      Diane Di Prima – [untitled] “I am a woman and my poems…”
      Philip Lamantia – “Still Poem 8”
      Philip Lamantia – “Cool Apocalypse”
      David Meltzer – “from Notes for a History”
      Gary Snyder – “The Manichaeans”
      Leroi Jones – “For Hettie in her Fifth Month”
      Charles Olson – “Maximus, to Gloucester, Sunday, July 19”
      Robert Creeley – “Olson & Others”
      Allen Ginsberg – “Notes on Young Poets”
      Paul Blackburn – “Writing for the Ear”
      Paul Carroll – “Five Poets in their Skins”

5. BIG TABLE, Vol. 2, No. 5, edited by Paul Carroll
Chicago: Big Table, 1960
First edition, sewn signatures bound in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5″ x 8″, 128 pages. Cover art by Harry Callahan.

  • Contents:
    1. Douglas Woolf – “Stand Still”
      Frank O’Hara – “Naptha”
      Edward Dahlberg – “Because I was Flesh”
      Frederick Tristan – “The Bread Tree”
      Frederick Tristan – “The Whole Sea is yet to Come”
      Robert Duncan – “Apprehensions”
      Paul Bowles – “He of the Assembly”
      Kenneth Koch – “Farms’ Thoughts”
      John Rechy – “Between two Lions”
      Bill Berkson – “Poem for Frank O’Hara”
      Pablo Neruda – “Lone Gentleman” (trans. Clayton Eshleman)
      Pablo Neruda – “Death” (trans. Clayton Eshleman)
      John Updike – “Archangel”
      John Ashbery – “Night”
    2. John Ashbery – “A Last Word”
      Harold Rosenberg – “from Arshile Gorky”
      David Meltzer – “Rain Poem”
      David Meltzer – “Heroes: Zap, the Zen Monk”
      Alain Robbe-Grillet – “Scene”
      John Schultz – “Witness”

Online Resources:

From a Secret Location – Big Table

Reality Studio – Big Table

References Consulted:

Maynard, Joe and Barry Miles. William S. Burroughs: A Bibliography, 1953-73
Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1978

The White Dove Review

While working at the Lewis Meyer bookstore on 37th and Peoria in 1959, Ron Padgett had an idea. Taken with the work of the era’s literary giants and New York-based “little mags” like the Evergreen Review, Padgett, barely 17 and still a junior at Central High School, decided that he would start his own avant-garde lit journal. He and his best friend Dick Gallup would be co-editors.

By high school, they were hanging out at Lewis Meyer Bookstore so often that Meyer offered Padgett a job. In addition to introducing the boys to a slew of edgy, contemporary authors, the store owner gave Padgett his first glimpse of what would lay the foundation for his concept: those avant-garde journals like Evergreen, Yugen, and Semina that contained short-form work from the same Beat and Black Mountain writers he was then devouring.

With two enthusiastic editors, the ambitious concept was becoming a reality. The next step was to recruit art editors. Padgett recruited classmate Joe Brainard as the journal’s art editor. They then invited Michael Marsh, a classical pianist who introduced the growing team to the work of Debussy and Capote, to be Brainard’s co-editor.

They called their magazine the White Dove Review, an homage to Evergreen, which featured on the cover of its sixth issue a striking black and white photograph of a young Asian woman holding a white dove. To fund its publication, they enlisted the help of Padgett’s mother, who donated $20 of the first issue’s $90 production cost. To typeset the journal, they borrowed the state-of-the-art IBM Presidential from their good friend and fellow classmate George Kaiser, who, Padgett said, “provided moral support for the magazine.”

They had their own poems, their own artwork, their own typewriter, and their own start-up funds. But then the White Dove editorial board took a bold step. Padgett and Gallup decided to fill the White Dove’s pages with the work they solicited from their heroes.

“Dick and I made a list of the living writers we were excited by,” Padgett explained. “Kerouac, Ginsberg, e.e. cummings, Malcolm Cowley, Paul Blackburn, etc. Then we wrote to them, care of their publishers, asking—begging, really—them for material. Our letter was rather immature, but in it we did confess to being in high school.”

According to Padgett, “a surprising number of writers responded” to the solicitations, and with the submitted work he and Gallup were able to choose what best fit their vision. The crown jewel of the premiere issue is Jack Kerouac’s “The Thrashing Doves,” a poem submitted by the Beat godfather as a knowing salute to the Review’s avian imagery:

“The thrashing doves in the dark, white fear,
my eyes reflect that liquidly
and I no understand Buddha-fear?
awakener’s fear? So I give warnings
‘bout midnight round about midnight

“And tell all the children the little otay
story of magic, multiple madness, maya
otay, magic trees- sitters and little girl
bitters, and littlest lil brothers
in crib made of clay (blue in the moon).

“For the doves.”

[excerpted from Joshua Kline’s essay on The White Dove Review]

1. THE WHITE DOVE REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Ron Padgett, Richard Gallup, Joe Brainard, and Michael Marsh
Tulsa: White Dove Review, 1959
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 16 pages.

  • Contents:
    1. Clarence Major – “In”
      Clarence Major – “A Protest Against the Wooden Average Man”
      Ron Padgett – “Bartok in Autumn”
      Paul Blackburn – “Winter Solstice”
      Vernon Scannell – “Killing Flies”
      John Kennedy – “Portrait of Barbara”
      Joe Brainard – “Portrait”
      Michael Marsh – “Opel Thorpe”
      Bob Martholic – “Portrait”
      Jack Kerouac – “The Thrashing Doves”
      Simon Perchik – “Cape Canaveral”
      Kitasono Katue – “A Black Chapel”

2. WHITE DOVE REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 2, edited by Ron Padgett, Richard Gallup, Joe Brainard, and Michael Marsh
Tulsa: The White Dove Review, 1959
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 16 pages. Cover design by Michael Marsh.

  • Contents:
    1. Ron Loewinsohn – “The Scent of the Rose”
      LeRoi Jones – “For Hettie”
      Ted Berrigan – [untitled] “Seven thousand feet over…”
      Ted Berrigan – [untitled] “One green schoolboy…”
      Marsha Meredith – “Street Light in the Snow”
      Wes Whittlesey – “Notes from the Village”
      Stephen Stepanchev – “Dinner for Two”
      Stephen Stepanchev – “Tenement Fire”
      William A. King – “Blackbird”
      Nyla Joe – “Boy and the Grasshopper”
      John Kennedy – “Flower”
      Paul England – “Nude”
      Simon Perchik – “Children Picking Clams”
      Martin Tucker – “Graffiti Station”
      Martin Tucker – “Private Domain”
      Paul Blackburn – “Redhead”
      Fielding Dawson – “Manhatten Crackup 2”
      Clarence Major – “The Act of Love”

3. WHITE DOVE REVIEW, Vol. 1, No. 3, edited by Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Betty Kennedy
Tulsa: The White Dove Review, 1959
First edition, saddle-stapled in photo-illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 20 pages. Cover photograph of Chrissie Bartholic by John Kennedy.

  • Contents:
    1. Allen Ginsberg – “My Sad Self”
      David Meltzer – “1: from The Desciple”
      David Meltzer – “I Believe”
      David Meltzer – “Satori”
      David Meltzer – “Look Down & Watch”
      David Meltzer – “For the Poet: VII”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “Trees/1”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “Trees/2”
      Ron Loewinsohn – “Trees/3”
      Judson Crews – “An Unspecial Mirth”
      Judson Crews – “Spots of Lone West”
      Peter Orlovsky – [untitled] “A death scream…”
      Peter Orlovsky – [untitled] “A cherry splits…”
      Jack Kerouac – “To Allen Ginsberg”
      Jack Kerouac – [untitled] “Jazz killed itself…”
      O.W. Crane – “Synthesis”
      Johnny Arthur – “Drawings”
      O.W. Crane – “Silver Birds”
      Carl Larsen – “Crap and Cauliflower”
      Idell Romero – “Mash Note”
      Idell Romero – “My Sullen Art”
      David Winegar – “Haiku”
      Charles Shaw – “Conversation Piece”
      Charles Shaw – “Invisible Spectator”
      Clarence Major – “Poem for William Carlos Williams”
      Ron Padgett – “Poem for Chrissie”

4. WHITE DOVE REVIEW, Vol. 2, No. 4, edited by Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Betty Kennedy
Tulsa: The White Dove Review, 1960
First edition, saddle-stapled in photo-illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 16 pages. Cover design by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. David Omer Bearden – “Walking at Evening”
      David Omer Bearden – “Poem for Martin Edward Cochran”
      David Rafael Wang – “Drinking Song (for William Carlos William)”
      Rozana Webb – “Home Town”
      Sue Abbott Boyd – “Of Related Themes”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “Memorial Day (for Elsene)”
      Jean Arsenault – “Singing Cool”
      Ron Padgett – “One Will Forget (for Carolyn)”
      Ron Padgett – “Before I Said (for Carolyn)”
      Jack E Lorts – “Poem for Her”
      Harold Briggs – “Tell me Mr. Teller”
      Paul England – “Graphics”
      Fielding Dawson – “Massachusetts Breakdown 1”
      Ted Berrigan – “A Wish”
      Ted Berrigan – “For Teresa Mitchell”

5. WHITE DOVE REVIEW, Vol. 2, No. 5, edited by Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard, and Betty Kennedy
Tulsa: The White Dove Review, 1960
First edition, saddle-stapled in photo-illustrated wrappers, 5.5” x 8.5”, 24 pages. Cover by Joe Brainard.

  • Contents:
    1. Ted Berrigan – “Song”
      Jack Anderson – “The Gift”
      David Omer Bearden – “The Most Ancient Law”
      David Omer Bearden – “Another has come to the Silver Mirror”
      Richard Dokey – “Baptism”
      Richard Gallup – [untitled] “Lonliness is red…”
      Joe Brainard – untitled drawings
      Carl Larsen – “An Age of Winter”
      C. Cleburne Culin – “Lambeth Field”
      LeRoi Jones – “Ostriches & Grandmothers”
      Dan Teis – untitled illustrations
      Dan Teis – “Art as Expression”
      Dan Teis – “Art as Communion”
      Gilbert Sorrentino – “Hello Again”
      Martin Edward Cochran – “Song for April”
      Martin Edward Cochran – “White on White”
      Martin Edward Cochran – “August 1958”
      Martin Edward Cochran – “Joy for a Pumpkin”
      Robert Creeley – “A Token”
      Ron Padgett – “Another Poem for P.”
      Ron Padgett – “A Pansy Told Me that Poetry Is”
      Ron Padgett – “The Pastel Pansy of Her Wide Eyes”
      Ron Padgett – “Poem for P.”
      Ron Padgett – “6th Street Noon”

Online Resources:

Granary Books – The White Dove Review 

—

little magazines

The White Dove Review

White Dove Review, Vol. 1, No. 1, edited by Ron Padgett, Richard Gallup, Joe Brainard, and Michael Marsh. Tulsa, 1959

While working at the Lewis Meyer bookstore on 37th and Peoria in 1959, Ron Padgett had an idea. Taken with the work of the era’s literary giants and New York-based “little mags” like the Evergreen Review, Padgett, barely 17 and still a junior at Central High School, decided that he would start his own avant-garde lit journal. He and his best friend Dick Gallup would be co-editors…

>> further reading >>