Tag Archives: Peter Orlovsky

The Floating Bear

February 3, 2023 jason

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.”

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little magazines

Adventures in Poetry

December 31, 2022 jason

Published between 1968 and 1975, Adventures in Poetry was edited by poet Larry Fagin and printed and assembled at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery.

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Adventures in Poetry

Published between 1968 and 1975, Adventures in Poetry was edited by poet Larry Fagin and printed and assembled at The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery. Featured in its pages is writing by many poets associated with the first and second generation of the New York School. Surreal and often playful, the work provides a valuable access point into a vibrant and social community of writers who overlapped both in life and on the page.

Alongside poetry and art, Adventures in Poetry also includes a number of journal, diary, and travelogue entries.

1. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 1, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, March 1968

First edition, side-stapled in printed and photo-illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 70 pages. Cover by Ron Padgett. Illustrations by George Schneeman and Joe Brainard

Contents:
1. Joe Ceravolo – “Night Ocean”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Night Swim”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Consolation”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Panorama”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Separation”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Forgive Me”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Holiday Dinner”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Fog”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Sleep”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Jungle Love”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Nothing”
  James Schuyler – “Amy Lowell Thoughts”
  James Schuyler – “Milk”
  Ted Berrigan – “For Tom Veitch”
  Dick Gallup – “The Boot-Blacks, A Play in Three Acts”
  Anne Waldman – “Economy”
  Anne Waldman – “Getting Light”
  Ron Padgett – “8 Ball”
  Johnny Stanton – “from Mangled Hands”
  Tom Clark – “Bijous”
  John Giorno – “Flavor Grabber”
  Ted Berrigan – “from Clear the Range”
  Guillaume Apollinaire – “Julie or The Rose” (trans. Christine Grodzicki and George Tysh)
  Dick Gallup – “La Boheme”

2. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 2, edited by Larry Fagin
San Francisco: Adventures in Poetry, July 1968

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 90 pages. Cover by Joe Brainard. Illustrations by Leon, George Schneeman, Ron Padgett, and Bob Jenney.

Contents:
1. Edwin Denby – “from Scream In A Cave”
  Beaumont & Beaumont – “from Furtive Days”
  Joe Brainard – “Jamaica Diary”
  Lewis Warsh – “New York Diary”
  Tom Clark – “from Riot the Garrick Theatre”
  Dick Gallup – “Life of Tom Veitch”
  Tom Veitch – “from The Transfigured”
  Johnny Stanton – “from The Jissom Trail”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Peaches Littlejohn”
  Anne Waldman – “from The Egypt Journal”
  Ron Padgett & Tom Veitch – “from Star Gut”
  Jim Carroll – “from a diary”
  Ron Padgett – “The New Plagiarism”
  Bill Berkson – “In the American Rain”
  Larry Fagin – “Two Dog Stories”
  John Ashbery & James Schuyler – “from Nest of Ninnies”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Breach Baby”
  Michael Brownstein – “Kites”
  Francis Picabia – “5 Minute Intermission”
  Tom Disch – “Sinking Into Trouble”
  Johnny Stanton – “In the Moonlight”
  Pierre Reiter – “Craze Man Whiliiker”

3. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 3, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, January 1969

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 58 pages, mimeograph printed by Don Santina at the San Francisco Neighborhood Arts Program. Cover by Gordon Baldwin.

Contents:
1. Clark Coolidge – “Amount”
  Francis Picabia – “Drawings by the Girl without a Mother” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Tom Veitch – “from The Luis Armed Story”
  Aram Saroyan – “Electric Poetry”

4. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 4, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, Summer 1969

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 56 pages. Cover by Ed Ruscha. Illustration by Joe Brainard.

Contents:
1. Ted Berrigan – [untitled] “Thirty-five is gone…”
  Ted Berrigan – [untitled] “Bobbie, when I punch you…”
  Ted Berrigan – “Entrance”
  Ted Berrigan – “El Greco”
  Ted Berrigan – “It’s Important”
  Ted Berrigan – “Grey Morning”
  Ted Berrigan – “Hash for Breakfast”
  Ted Berrigan – “Dial-A-Poem”
  Ted Berrigan – “Cock of the Walk”
  Ted Berrigan – “Anne’s Birthday: April 2nd 1968”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Waking Up”
  John Giorno – “Cunt”
  Lewis Warsh – “Questions of Travel”
  Lewis Warsh – [untitled] “The woodchuck waddles away…”
  Lewis Warsh – “Hatred”
  Lewis Warsh – “Two People”
  Lewis Warsh – “Drops”
  Dick Gallup – “Eskimoes Again”
  Dick Gallup – “Nite Light”
  Dick Gallup – “Add Water to this Urn”
  Dick Gallup – “The Sharpest Knives in the World”
  Dick Gallup – “Life Says OK”
  Dick Gallup – “Dive Bomber”
  Dick Gallup – “Chicken Wire”
  Michael Brownstein – “The Fledgling”
  Michael Brownstein – “The Booklets”
  Michael Brownstein – “In and Out of Paris”
  Michael Brownstein – “In Search of the Miraculous, for Dick Gallup”
  Michael Brownstein – “Sonnet”
  Ted Berrigan – “Babe Rainbow”

5. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 5, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, January 1970

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 124 pages. Cover by George Schneeman. Illustrations by Joe Brainard.

Contents:
1. Tony Towle – “The Insects”
  Tony Towle – “Snow”
  Tony Towle – “We Plunged into the Western Hemisphere”
  Tony Towle – “Poem, the Dramatic Monologue”
  Tony Towle – “Ballade”
  Tony Towle – “Barbarossa”
  Tony Towle – [untitled] “A skylight of wire…”
  Tony Towle – [untitled] “Necessities are lacking…”
  Tony Towle – “Sunday”
  Tony Towle – “Ode”
  Tony Towle – “Yeats”
  Tony Towle – “On Water Island”
  Tony Towle – “Lines”
  Tony Towle – “Scenes from the Life of Christ”
  Ron Padgett – “Reading Proust”
  Frank O’HAra – “To the Poem”
  Frank O’HAra – “Lisztiana”
  Frank O’HAra – “To Edwin Denby”
  Frank O’HAra – [untitled] “There’s nothing worse…”
  Frank O’HAra – “The Arboretum”
  Frank O’HAra – “A Homage”
  Frank O’HAra – “Spleen”
  Frank O’HAra – [untitled] “The stars are tighter…”
  Frank O’HAra – “A Quiet Poem”
  Bill Berkson – “From a Childhood, for Joe Brainard”
  Bill Berkson – “Dangerous Enemies”
  Bill Berkson – “Tastes”
  Anne Waldman – “Brinks of Fame”
  Ron Padgett – “Wax Museum”
  Aram Saroyan – “Introduction”
  Aram Saroyan – [untitled] “Everybody loves…”
  Aram Saroyan – “Gailyn”
  Ted Berrigan – “Tough Brown Coat, for Jim Carroll”
  Ted Berrigan – “To Anne”
  Ted Berrigan – “Like Poem, to Joan Fagin”
  Ted Berrigan – “In Bed”
  Ted Berrigan – “Life in the Future, for Donna”
  Ted Berrigan – “Prose & Poetry, to Alice”
  Ted Berrigan – “Hall of Mirrors, for Kristin Lems”
  Ted Berrigan – “To Southhampton”
  Ted Berrigan – “Ann Arbor Song”
  Joe Brainard – “The Banana Book”
  Ron Padgett – “A Whiff of Mint”
  Richard Fields – “The Yellow-Breasted Bird”
  John Godfrey – [untitled] “The gravity of our situation…”
  John Godfrey – “Rolling April”
  John Godfrey – “First Taste”
  John Godfrey – “Year Out”
  John Godfrey – “A Woman More Graced”
  John Godfrey – “Touch”
  John Godfrey – “Rain Waste”
  Anne Waldman – “Under the Influence of”
  Anne Waldman – “Up Here, as in India”
  Aram Saroyan – “Pool of Fluff”
  Aram Saroyan – “A Cartoon of Energy”
  Aram Saroyan – “Aunt & Uncle”
  Aram Saroyan – “My Orchestra is Ready”
  Aram Saroyan – “A Joint open Hearing”
  Harris Schiff – “Cross Country”
  Ron Padgett – “The Story of St-Pol Roux”
  Ted Berrigan – “London Air”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Chinese Creep”
  Clark Coolidge – [untitled] “one bow who…”
  Clark Coolidge – [untitled] “for set via…”
  Charles North – “After Vaughan”
  John Ashbery – “100 Multiple-Choice Questions”
  Jim Brodey – “Graveside”
  Jim Brodey – “God Help Us”
  Jim Brodey – “Red Lilac”
  Jim Brodey – “Heart-Send”
  Jim Brodey – “Heartfield, to Ron Cooper”
  Jim Brodey – “Thought-Cycle”
  Jim Brodey – “Imitation Brodey”
  Ted Greenwald – “Chat”
  Ted Greenwald – “The Such Thing”
  Ted Greenwald – “Tropical Dispatch, for Peter S.”
  Ted Greenwald – “Having a Wonderful Time”
  Ron Padgett – “Obscure Destinies”

6. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 6, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, June 1970

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 64 pages. Cover by Jim Dine.

Contents:
1. Michael Brownstein – “Something for Everybody
  James Schuyler – “Buildings”
  James Schuyler – “Sometimes”
  James Schuyler – “Alice Faye at Ruby Foo’s”
  James Schuyler – “An East Window on Elizabeth Street, for Bob Dash”
  James Schuyler – “Spring”
  James Schuyler – “Scarlet Tanager”
  James Schuyler – [untitled] “Gulls loudly insist…”
  James Schuyler – [untitled] “Swimming in the memorial park pond…”
  James Schuyler – “Closed Gentian Distances”
  James Schuyler – “A Sun Cab”
  Scott Cohen – “Car”
  Scott Cohen – “Jane”
  Scott Cohen – “Bill Monroe’s Instrumentds”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Night Again”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Girl”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Night Letter”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “God”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “M”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “For the Night Riders”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “To Speak is to Lie”
  Tom Clark – “A Sailor’s Life”
  Hiton Obenzinger – “Motto over a Dorr”
  Hiton Obenzinger – “From a Fork”
  Michel Brownstein – “Footprints on the Moon”
  Frank Lima – “Underground with the Oriole, for Joe & Rosemary”
  Frank Lima – “Salad Exit”
  Frank Lima – “February ’68”
  Frank Lima – “Demitasse, for Patsy Southgate”
  Frank Lima – “Prospero”
  Frank Lima – “Harbor”
  Trevor Winkfield – Robinson Crusoe”
  Blaise Cendrars – “Roof Garden” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “On the Hudson” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Amphitryon” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Office” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Girl” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Young Man” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Work” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Trestle Work” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “The Thousand Islands” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Blaise Cendrars – “Laboratory” (trans. Ron Padgett)
  Tom Veitch – “Cooked Zeros”

7. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 7, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, February 1971

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 62 pages. Cover by Aram Saroyan.

Contents:
1. Aram Saroyan – “from The Letter Book”
  John Giorno – “from The American Book of the Dead”
  Clark Coolidge – [untitled] “ace act ado”
  Clark Coolidge – [untitled] “gee get gib”
  Clark Coolidge – [untitled] “pro pea pee”
  Joe Brainard – “Muy Malo”
  Joe Brainard – “At Day’s End”
  Joe Brainard – “Short Story”
  Joe Brainard – “1970”
  Joe Brainard – “Real Life”
  Joe Brainard – “Art”
  Joe Brainard – “Henry”
  Joe Brainard – “Rim of the Desert”
  Joe Brainard – “Life”
  Joe Brainard – “How to Be Alone Again”
  Joe Brainard – “Friday, Nov. 27, 1970”
  Joe Brainard – “Thursday, December 8, 1970”
  Vincent Katz – “Pro Football”
  Bernadette Mayer – “from Moving”
  Byrd Hoffman – [untitled] “And now in saying something…”

8. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 8, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, Summer 1971

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 60 pages. Cover by Rudy Burckhardt.

Contents:
1. Dick Gallup – “Charged Particles”
  Lewis Warsh – “True Colors”
  Ron Padgett and Joe Brainard – “Cherry”
  Steve Malmude – “To Portland”
  Andrei Codrescu – “Unchosen Things”
  Andrei Codrescu – “Thru a Grill”
  Andrei Codrescu – “Comedia dell’Arte”
  Andrei Codrescu – “To your Father”
  Andrei Codrescu – “Cossey at the Bots”
  Andrei Codrescu – “Debts”
  Richard Kolmar – “Voluntary”
  Richard Kolmar – “Part of an Elegy”
  Glen Baxter – “Symbar”
  Glen Baxter – “From the Barge”
  Glen Baxter – “Apponitmantes”
  Glen Baxter – “Ack-acks”
  Glen Baxter – “Utopia Parkway”
  Philip Whalen – “Scenes of Life at the Capital”

9. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 9, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, Spring 1972

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 125 pages. Cover art by John Giorno.

Contents:
1. Jennifer Bartlett – “from Jennifer Losch: A Biography”
  Glen Baxter – “Morbihan”
  Glen Baxter – “Chauderon”
  Joe Brainard – “Poem” (“Kaleidoscopic umbrellas…”)
  Rebecca Brown – “The Day I Crossed Traffic against Traffic”
  Rebecca Brown – “Dissatisfaction”
  Michael Brownstein – “What America’s Thinking”
  William Burroughs – “Distant Heels”
  Clark Coolidge – “Basil Rathbone’s Bathrobe”
  Edwin Denby – “Army Songs”
  Jim Dine – “The Short History of New York”
  Joe Brainard – “A True Story”
  Louis Eilshemius – “An Unusual Inventor”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Eventual Bruises”
  Kenward Elmslie – “Ground Hog Day Pensee”
  Mary Ferrari – “The Blue and Yellow”
  Gilbert and George – “We are only Human Sculptors”
  Allen Ginsberg – “New England in hte Fall: Autumn Gold”
  John Godfrey – “Idiots”
  John Godfrey – “Sympathetic Fallacy”
  Joe Brainard – “No Story”
  Ted Greenwald – [untitled] “shut down…”
  Ted Greenwald – [untitled] “our faces…”
  Ted Greenwald – “Comb”
  Ted Greenwald – [untitled] “poems pile up…”
  Alice Hedges – “The Door”
  John Koethe – “Some”
  Valery Larbaud – “La Neige”
  Glen Baxter – “Glove Soup”
  Steve Malmude – “Companion Poems”
  Steve Malmude – “Stove & Lamp”
  Harry Mathews – “The Dream-Work”
  Bernadette Mayer – “3 X’s”
  Pat Nolan – “Vision”
  Pat Nolan – “A Controlled Habit”
  Joe Brainard – “What’s Cooking”
  Charles North – “To The Book”
  Charles North – “Elizabethan and Nova Scotian Music”
  Charles North – “Naming Colors”
  Hilton Obenzinger – “The Brunt”
  Peter Orlovsky – [untitled] “A Year and 1/2 Ago”
  Maureen Owen – “Digging Sassafras in July”
  Maureen Owen – “O Propitious Constellation!”
  Ron Padgett – “Gentlemen Prefer Carrots”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “Vacuum”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “The Bullring”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “Popcorn”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “Coffee Service”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “Heh-Heh”
  Jonathan Rosenstein – “Charm”
  Harris Schiff – [untitled] “twilight…”
  Harris Schiff – [untitled] “the battery…”
  Harris Schiff – “Memorial for Paul Blackburn Oct 31 1971”
  Harris Schiff – “Too, for Bernadette Mayer”
  Joe Brainard – “Grandmother”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Theater”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Great Poet”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Trepanation”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Russian Escape”
  Peter Schjeldahl – “Dynamite”
  James Schuyler – “A Vermont Diary”
  Richard Snow – “Philo Vance”
  George Stanley – “Pitchfork”
  Tony Towle – “On Spring Street”
  Anne Waldman – “Little Poem in Search of the Past”
  Anne Waldman – [untitled] “if you do this…”
  Lewis Warsh – “Single File”
  Joseph White – [untitled] “turn the day over…”
  Joseph White – [untitled] “while tearing up the platform…”
  Joseph White – [untitled] “out to the corner…”
  Joseph White – [untitled] “the back of a drawing…”
  B. Wilkie – “Notes on My Work, 1971”
  Joe Brainard – “Poem” (“Roses are red…”)

10. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 10, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, 1973

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 94 pages. Cover taken from a “Tijuana Bible”.

Contents:
1. This is the anonymous issue published without author, editor, publication and publisher names.

11. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 11, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, Spring 1974

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 121 pages. Cover art by Rory McEwen.

Contents:
1. Anne Waldman – “Fast Speaking Woman”
  Michael McClure – “from Fleas”
  Fielding Dawson – “from Oz – with an X”
  Clark Coolidge – “Coda to The Maintains”
  Bruce Boyd – “Introduction”
  Ron Padgett – “Wilson ’57”
  John Wieners – “A Superficial Estimation”
  Tony Towle – “Autobiography”
  Joe Ceravolo – “Water Over Stones”
  James Schuyler – “A Treasury of Birthday Thoughts”
  Ebbe Borregaard – “October Seventh Poem”
  Guillaume Apollinaire – “Zone” (trans. Ron Padgett)

12. ADVENTURES IN POETRY, No. 12, edited by Larry Fagin
New York: Adventures in Poetry, Summer 1975

First edition, side-stapled in printed and illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 94 pages. Cover art unattributed.

Contents:
1. Gregory Corso – “Verse”
  Ron Padgett – “Excerpt from a Work in Progress” (“And they’re off…”)
  Alverna Brodecky – “Letter”
  Frank O’Hara – “To Norman, En Voyage”
  Joseph LeSueur – “A Note on the Preceding Poem”
  Jack Spicer – “Babel 3”
  Jack Spicer – “Dardenella”
  Jack Spicer – “Lives of the Philosophers: Diogenes”
  Jack Spicer – [untitled] “Lack of oxygen…”
  Jack Spicer – [untitled] “Invisible zombies…”
  Jack Spicer – “Spider Song”
  John Wieners – “There are Very Important Minutes”
  John Wieners – “I’ve Lived Here Longer than Anybody Else…”
  John Wieners – “Greer”
  John Wieners – “Home Surgery at Merchant Marine”
  Bobbie Louise Hawkins – “Phone Call”
  Bobbie Louise Hawkins – “Conversation between Five Women”
  Charles North – “Two Pathetic Songs”
  Steve Malmude – “Dedication”
  Steve Malmude – “Duchess”
  John Ashbury – “Once Upon a Time”
  Stanley Kunitz – “A Blessing of Women”
  David Meltzer – “from Harps”
  Mary Ferrari – “Fiery Easter, 1972”
  Mary Ferrari – “The Earth Within”
  Mary Ferrari – “The Lamp”
  Kenneth Koch – “The Apes of Banzona”
  Red Grooms – [untitled] “House painted…”
  Red Grooms – [untitled] “Cloud look down…”
  Bill Zavatsky – “Tonight”
  Bill Zavatsky – “Announcement”
  Bill Zavatsky – “The New Capitalism”
  Bill Zavatsky – “The Influence of Flowers”
  Helen Adam – “Cheerless Junkie’s Song”
  Allen Ginsberg – “End Vietnam War”
  Ted Greenwald – “The Coast”
  Tony Towle – “Quotes”
  Alfred Starr Hamilton – “Tenement”
  Alfred Starr Hamilton – “The Flag”
  Alfred Starr Hamilton – “Pink Ants”
  Alfred Starr Hamilton – “Lime Honey”
  Alfred Starr Hamilton – “Night”
  Lewis MacAdams – “Ohio Blue Tip”
  Ed Sanders – “The Critic”
  Ed Sanders – “The 34th Year”
  John Godfrey – “Morning Poem”
  John Godfrey – “Evening Song”
  Valery Larbaud – “Private Devotions” (tans. Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky)
  Ron Padgett and Bill Zavatsky – “Notes”
  Michael Palmer – “Without Music, 2”
  Dale Herd – “My Old Man”
  Dale Herd – “Blood”
  Dale Herd – “Welfare”
  Simon Schuchat – “Poem” (“the leaves are turning…”)
  Carter Ratcliff – “Arrivederci, Modernismo”
  Son House – “Dry Spell Blues”

Online Resources:

From a Secret Location – Adventures in Poetry

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little magazines

Yugen

October 12, 2022 jason

>> 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

September 28, 2022 jason

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

July 29, 2022 jason

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 >>

Pocket Poets Series

>> return to CITY LIGHTS main page >>

This index collects the books published as part of The Pocket Poets Series

1. Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. PICTURES OF THE GONE WORLD
a. First edition, regular copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, November 1955
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 5″ x 6″, 44 pages, 500 copies, letterpress printed by David Ruff. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 1.
(Cook 1)

b. First edition, hardcover copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, 1955
Hardcover in cloth-bound boards with printed label tipped on, 5.25″ x 6.25″, 44 pages, 25 copies, letterpress printed by David Ruff, bound by the Cardoza bindery. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 1.
(Cook 1)

Note: from the rear cover: “Pictures of the Gone World is the first volume in the Pocket Poets Series, in which it is planned to make available, in inexpensive form, work by such well known poets as e.e. cummings, Kenneth Patchen, Kenneth Rexroth, and William Carlos Williams, as well as poetry by younger less known writers who are also doing significant work in the modern idiom, whether it be ‘in the American grain’ or against it.”

2. Rexroth, Kenneth (translator). THIRTY SPANISH POEMS OF LOVE AND EXILE
a. First edition, regular copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, 1956
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 4.75″ x 6″, 40 pages, 950 copies, letterpress printed. Designed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No 2.
(Cook 2)

b. First edition, hardcover copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, 1956
Hardcover in cloth-bound boards with printed label tipped on, 5″ x 6.25″, 40 pages, 50 numbered and signed copies, letterpress printed. Designed by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No 2.
(Cook 2)

3. Patchen, Kenneth. POEMS OF HUMOR & PROTEST
a. First edition, regular copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, July 1956
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 5″ x 6″, 48 pages, 1000 copies, letterpress printed by Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 3
(Cook 3)

b. First edition, hardcover copies:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, 1956
Hardcover in cloth-bound boards with printed label tipped on, 5.25″ x 6.25″, 48 pages, 25 copies, letterpress printed by Villiers Publications in London, bound by the Cardoza Bindery. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 3
(Cook 3)

Note: this collection gathers 32 short poems from seven of Patchen’s earlier books, published during the 1940s and early 1950s.

4. Ginsberg, Allen. HOWL AND OTHER POEMS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, October 1956
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 5″ x 6″, 44 pages, 1000 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 4
(Cook 4)

Note: The first printing lists Lucien Carr’s name on the dedication page. Later printings do not list his name, removed at his request. The hand-pasted wraparound paper label is only present on the first and second printings.

Ginsberg first read part of the poem at the Six Gallery reading on October 7, 1955. The second printing of Howl and Other Poems was seized by the U.S. Customs Office and shortly afterwards Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao, manager of City Lights Bookshop, were arrested for selling and publishing obscene literature. Defended by the ACLU, the case was highly publicized and covered by established publications such as Time and Life, adding to the attention of this small press and Howl. Judge Clayton Horn found the book to be not obscene and this landmark decision helped launch City Lights and Ginsberg’s poems into the public arena.

5. Ponsot, Marie. TRUE MINDS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, January 1957
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 5″ x 6″, 32 pages, 500 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 5
(Cook 5)

Note: the title of this collection of love poems was taken from Shakespeare’s 116th Sonnet. It would be 24 years later when she would publish her second volume of poems and borrow the title from the next line of the sonnet: “Avoid Impediment”.

6. Levertov, Denise. HERE AND NOW
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Pocket Bookshop, January 1957
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers with printed wrap-around label tipped on, 5″ x 6″, 32 pages, 500 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 6
(Cook 6)

7. Williams, William Carlos. KORA IN HELL: IMPROVISATIONS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, August 1957
Sewn and bound in printed wrappers, 5″ x 6.25″, 84 pages, 1500 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 7
(Cook 7)

Note: from the rear cover: “William Carlos Williams, at 74, has some claim to be called Poet Laureate of America, being the author of almost forty books, and having won most of the important poetry awards in this country. He is a man known for his enthusiasms, a constant defender of poets and poetry.”

8. Corso, Gregory. GASOLINE
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, February 1958
Perfect-bound in printed wrappers, 5″ x 6.25″, 48 pages, 1500 copies, letterpress printed by the Pinchpenny Press in Berkeley. Introduction by Allen Ginsberg. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 8
(Cook 8)

9. Prévert, Jacques. SELECTIONS FROM PAROLES
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, July 1958
Sewn and bound in printed wrappers, 5″ x 6.5″, 72 pages, 1500 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 9
(Cook 10)

Note: from the rear cover: “In the years immediately following World War II, Jacques Prévert spoke more directly to and for the French who had come of age under the Occupation than any other contemporary poet, if enormous success of Paroles is any indication. First published in 1946, it was almost immediately reprinted, and by 1952 there were 200,000 copies in print.”

10. Duncan, Robert. SELECTED POEMS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, January 1959
Saddle-stapled in printed wrappers, 5″ x 6.25″, 80 pages, 1500 copies, letterpress printed at Villiers Publications in London. Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 10
(Cook 14)

Note: Selected Poems gathers poems written between 1942 and 1950. From the publisher’s statement: “In making this selection from his first four books, together with certain other poems of the same period, Duncan feels he has given his work as a whole a focus that amounts to a new definition of his poetic intent.”

11. Rothenberg, Jerome (translator). NEW YOUNG GERMAN POETS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1959
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 11
(Cook 16)

Note: This collection, edited and translated by Jerome Rothenberg, introduces ten German poets who were born between the First World War and the first years of the Nazi rise to power. The collection includes the first English appearances of Paul Celan, Ingeborg Bachmann and Gunter Grass.

12. Parra, Nicanor. ANTI-POEMS
First edition:
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1960
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 12

Note: These poems are taken from Parra’s Poemas y Antipoemas originally published in 1954. This is the first appearance in English, translated by painter and critic Jorge Elliott.

13. Patchen, Kenneth. THE LOVE POEMS OF KENNETH PATCHEN
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1961
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 13

14. Ginsberg, Allen. KADDISH AND OTHER POEMS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1961
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 14

Note: This is the long anticipated volume of poems following the highly successful Howl and Other Poems. It presents the long title poem on the death of his mother and fifteen other poems. Kaddish is the name of the Hebrew prayer for the dead.

15. Nichols, Robert. SLOW NEWSREEL OF MAN RIDING TRAIN
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1962
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 15

16. Hollo, Anselm (translator). RED CATS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1962
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 16

Note: In his introduction Hollo writes, “In the middle 50’s a number of Soviet writers started what became known as ‘The Thaw’: a movement towards freedom and personal literary and critical expression…” Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky were in their twenties at the time Red Cats was published.

17. Lowry, Malcolm. SELECTED POEMS OF MALCOLM LOWRY
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1962
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 17

Note: from the back cover: “This is the first comprehensive collection of Lowry’s poetry, including most of those strange Mexican verses closely related to his novel, Under the Volcano.
Edited by Lowry’s good friend, Earle Birney, with the assistance of the author’s widow, this book brings into perspective the many poems from various periods which have appeared in magazines, as well as others never before published.”

18. Ginsberg, Allen. REALITY SANDWICHES, 1953-1960
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1963
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 18

Note: Reality Sandwiches collects poems written by Ginsberg between 1953 and 1960, thus presenting his early work prior to his groundbreaking poem Howl in 1956

19. O’Hara, Frank. LUNCH POEMS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1964
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 19

20. Lamantia, Philip. SELECTED POEMS, 1943-1966
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1967
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 20

Note: this volume collects poems of his youth, travels and time in San Francisco: Revelations of a Surreal Youth (1943-1945), Trance Ports (1948-1961), and Secret Freedom (1963-1966).

21. Kaufman, Bob. GOLDEN SARDINE
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1967
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 21

22. Pommy-Vega, Janine. POEMS TO FERNANDO
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 22

23. Ginsberg, Allen. PLANET NEWS, 1961-1967
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 23

24. Upton, Charles. PANIC GRASS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 24

25. Picasso, Pablo. HUNK OF SKIN
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1968
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 25

26. Bly, Robert. THE TEETH-MOTHER NAKED AT LAST
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1970
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 26

27. di Prima, Diane. REVOLUTIONARY LETTERS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1971
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 27

Note: Revolutionary Letters was published in a number of earlier versions by underground presses. The first City Lights edition collects letters 1-43 and other poems. Later printings include additional letters.

28. Kerouac, Jack. SCATTERED POEMS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1971
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 28

Note: Scattered Poems is a collection of poems published posthumously and compiled by Ann Charters, one of Kerouac’s earliest biographers. The poems included were written as early as 1945. The cover is a reproduction of a photograph of Kerouac
taken by William S. Burroughs in Tangier in 1957.

29. Voznesensky, Andri. DOGALYPSE: SAN FRANCISCO POETRY READING
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1972
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 29

30. Ginsberg, Allen. THE FALL OF AMERICA: POEMS OF THESE STATES, 1965-1971
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1972
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 30

Note: this collection continues Ginsberg’s chronicle of travels across America. He dedicates the volume to Whitman and includes on the dedication page a long quote from Whitman’s Democratic Vistas,
1871. Barry Miles, Ginsberg’s biographer, relates that Ginsberg was living near Kenneth Patchen on Telegraph Hill. Patchen introduced Ginsberg to the Dos Passos translation of Blaise Cendrars’ Trans-Siberian Voyage, which served as a model for Ginsberg’s travelogue-style work, The Fall of America.

31. Winslow, Pete. A DAISY IN THE MEMORY OF A SHARK
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 31

32. Norse, Harold. HOTEL NIRVANA
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1974
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 32

33. Waldman, Anne. FAST SPEAKING WOMAN
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1975
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 33

34. Hirschman, Jack. LYRIPOL
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1976
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 34

35. Ginsberg, Allen. MIND BREATHS: POEMS 1972-1977
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1977
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 35

Note: This collection presents poems written by Ginsberg from 1972 to 1977. Ginsberg dedicated this volume to Chögyum Trungpa, the poet and philosopher who named Ginsberg the “Lion of Dharma” in 1972.

36. Brecht, Stefan. POEMS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1978
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 36

Note: A collection of poems by the son of German playwright and poet Bertolt Brecht . It was privately published two years earlier by the poet. The cover photograph is by Arthur Tress.

37. Orlovsky, Peter. CLEAN ASSHOLE POEMS & SMILING VEGETABLE SONGS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1978
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 37

38. Antler [Brad Burdick]. FACTORY
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1980
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 38

39. Lamantia, Philip. BECOMING VISIBLE
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1981
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 39

40. Ginsberg, Allen. PLUTONIAN ODE: POEMS 1977-1980
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1982
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 40

41. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. ROMAN POEMS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 41

42. NINE DUTCH POETS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1982
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 42

43. Cardenal, Ernesto. FROM NICARAGUA WITH LOVE
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 43

44. Porta, Antonio. KISSES FROM ANOTHER DREAM
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1987
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 44

45. Cornford, Adam. ANIMATIONS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1988
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 45

46. LaLoca [Pamala Karol]. ADVENTURES ON THE ISLE OF ADOLESCENCE
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1989
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 46

47. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. LISTEN
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1991
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 47

48. Kerouac, Jack. POEMS ALL SIZES
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1992
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 48

49. Zamora, Daisy. RIVERBED OF MEMORY
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1992
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 49

50. Murillo, Rosario. ANGEL IN THE DELUGE
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1993
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 50

51. Kerouac, Jack. SCRIPTURES OF THE GOLDEN ETERNITY
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1994
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 51

52. Blanco, Alberto. DAWN OF THE SENSES
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1995
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 52

53. Cortázar, Julio. SAVE TWILIGHT
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1997
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 53

54. Campana, Dino. ORPHIC SONGS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1998
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 54

55. Hirschman, Jack. FRONT LINES
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2002
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 55

56. Mehmedinovic, Semezdin. NINE ALEXANDRIAS
San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2003
Published as The Pocket Poets Series, No. 56

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