“The three simple, almost starkly working-class issues of Measure followed glorious and overlooked “underground” poet John Wieners from Black Mountain College home to Boston, across country to San Francisco, and back to Boston again. In his years in San Francisco, from 1958 to 1960, Wieners attended (sometimes serving as host at his Scott Street apartment) the legendary Sunday afternoon poetry workshops of the charismatic poets Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer. Also present at the workshops were George Stanley, Harold Dull, Robin Blaser (The Pacific Nation), and many others…”
— from A Secret Location on the Lower East Side (Granary Books, 1998)

1. MEASURE, No. 1, edited by John Wieners
Boston: Measure, Summer 1957
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 48 pages, letterpress printed at the Press of Villiers Publications.

“Measure is edited by John Wieners. It will be issued with the four seasons only through your support… Please understand that the opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the city.”

• Contents:
  1. Tom Balas – “Le Fou”
     Charles Olson – “Le Bonheur!”
     Charles Olson – “The Charge”
     Charles Olson – “Spring”
     Edward Marshall – “One:”
     Edward Marshall – “Two:”
     Robin Blaser – “Poem”
     Robin Blaser – “Letters to Freud”
     Robin Blaser – “Poem by the Charles River”
     Edward Dorn – “The Rick of Green Wood”
     Larry Eigner – “Millionem”
     Larry Eigner – “Brink”
     Frank O’Hara – “Section 9 from Second Avenue”
     Fielding Dawson – “Two Drawings”
     Stephen Jonas – “Word on Measure”
     Stephen Jonas – “Expanded Word on Measure”
     Michael Rumaker – “Father”
     Gavin Douglas – “The Blanket”
     Jack Spicer – “Song for Bird and Myself”
     Jonathan Williams – “Two Poems for Whitman, the Husbandman”
     Robert Duncan – “The Propositions”

2. MEASURE, No. 2, edited by John Wieners
San Francisco: Measure, Winter 1958
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 64 pages, letterpress printed at the Press of Villiers Publications.

“Magick is for the ones who ball, i.e. throw across”

• Contents:
  1. Michael Rumaker – “The Use of the Unconscious”
     Robin Blaser – “The Hunger of Sound”
     Robert Creeley – “Juggler’s Thot”
     Michael Rumaker – “8 Dreams”
     Jack Kerouac – “4 Choruses”
     Charles Olson – “Descensus Spiritus No. 1”
     Robert Duncan – “The Maiden”
     Robert Creeley – “They Say”
     Robert Creeley – “She Went to Say”
     Jack Kerouac – “235th Chorus”
     Edward Dorn – “Notes from the Fields”
     Robert Duncan – “The Dance”
     Stuart Z. Perkoff – “Feats of Death, Feasts of Love”
     V. R. Lang – “The Recidivists”
     Gregory Corso – “Yaaaah”
     James Broughton – “Feathers or Lead”
     Michael McClure – “The Magazine Cover”
     Michael McClure – “One & Two”
     Robert Creeley – “The Tunnel”
     Robert Creeley – “Just Friends”
     Richard Duerden – “Musica No. 3”
     Stephen Jonas – “Books 3 & 4 from a Long Poem”

3. MEASURE, No. 3, edited by John Wieners
Milton: Measure, Winter 1962
First edition, saddle-stapled in printed wrappers, 5.5″ x 8.5″, 36 pages, letterpress printed at the Press of Villiers Publications.

“THE CITY / 1 AM – Unreasonable fear, of the shadows of Harry Lime, of the dead reappearing”

• Contents:
  1. James Schuyler – “Shed Market”
     James Schuyler – “Joint”
     Gerrit Lansing – “Explorers”
     Barbara Guest – “Safe Flights”
     Barbara Guest – [untitled] “Once when he was a small boy…”
     Barbara Guest – “Abruptly, as if a Forest Might Say”
     Helen Adam – “Anaid si Taerg (Great is Diana)”
     Madeline Gleason – “Wind Said, Marry”
     Robert Duncan – “What do I Know of the Old Lore?”
     Jack Spicer – “Central Park West”
     Larry Eigner – “Poem”
     Tom Field – [untitled] “Form is never more than the extension…”
     Edward Marshall – “Times Square”
     Edward Marshall – “2”
     Edward Marshall – “3”
     John Wieners – “The Imperatrice”
     Philip Lamantia – “Opus Magnum”
     Sheri Martinelli – “Ruth Gildenberg”
     Michael Rumaker – “The River at Night”
     Charles Olson – “The Year is a Great Circle…”
     Charles Olson – “The Post Virginal”
     Charles Olson – [untitled] “Descartes, age 34…”
     John Haines – “Poem”
     John Haines – “Pawnee Dust”