Tag Archives: San Francisco

THE SAN FRANCISCO CAPITALIST BLOODSUCKER-N

January 18, 2016 jason

Published during the so-called “magazine wars” of the early 1960s, George Stanley’s THE SAN FRANCISCO CAPITALIST BLOODSUCKER-N lasted just one issue. Stan Persky, Lew Ellingham, and Gail Chugg edited M, gathering contributions from a box at Gino & Carlo’s Bar in San Francisco’s North Beach. Richard Duerden was editing FOOT; with Ron Loewinsohn he was also editing THE RIVOLI REVIEW, produced in Duerden’s apartment on Rivoli Street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Loewinsohn and Richard Brautigan soon produced another magazine, CHANGE.

As Ron Loewinsohn recalled, “Everybody seemed to have access to a mimeograph machine. You could then put out your own magazine. This was marvelous: it meant instant publication, instant reaction from people.”

It wasn’t until 1964, that Stan Persksy’s OPEN SPACE took up the publishing necessary to the Jack Spicer circle and its friends…

further reading…

The San Francisco Capitalist Bloodsucker-N

Published during the so-called “magazine wars” of the early 1960s, George Stanley’s The San Francisco Capitalist Bloodsucker-N lasted just one issue. Stan Persky, Lew Ellingham, and Gail Chugg edited M, gathering contributions from a box at Gino & Carlo’s Bar in San Francisco’s North Beach. Richard Duerden was editing Foot; with Ron Loewinsohn he was also editing The Rivoli Review, produced in Duerden’s apartment on Rivoli Street in the Haight-Ashbury district. Loewinsohn and Richard Brautigan soon produced another magazine, Change.

It wasn’t until 1964, that Stan Persky’s Open Space took up the publishing necessary to the Jack Spicer circle and its friends…

THE SAN FRANCISCO CAPITALIST BLOODSUCKER-N, edited by George Stanley
San Francisco: Capitalist Bloodsucker-N, 1962
First edition, corner stapled printed wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 19 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover art by Fran Herndon.

“The San Francisco Capitalist Blooksucker-N, an amalgam of the San Francisco Capitalist-Bloodsucker, a journal of Marxist opinion, and N — the magazine of the future…”

Contents:
1. Albert J. Rutaro – “Mr. President!”
  Richard Duerden – “Mr. Boswell & Dr. Johnson”
  Robin Blaser – “The Private I”
  Larry Fagin – “New York”
  Larry Fagin – “Rooms”
  Kenneth Rexroth – “The Poetry Festival”
  Ron Loewinsohn – [untitled] “The presses tonight…”
  Tony Sherrod – “nobody there – but the afternoon”
  Maxwell Bodenheim – “End and Beginning”
  John Allen Ryan – “The Time of the Snow Flower”
  James Keilty – “Stürmische Promenade”
  Bob Wrobel – “Puny”
  George Stanley – “Terrorism”
  Robert Reinstein – “Robert Reinstein”
  Fran Herndon – untitled illustration
  Jack Spicer – “Three Marxist Essays”

Jack Spicer Circle

COW (the magazine)

January 16, 2016 jason

Inspired by Stan Persky’s OPEN SPACE, Luther T. Cupp edited COW, which ran for three issues from 1965-1966. Cupp was nicknamed “Link” by Jack Spicer and went by the name Link Martin.

Contributors to this short-lived North Beach magazine include: Lawrence (Larry) Fagin, Stan Persky, Robin Blaser, George Stanley, Harold Dull, Joanne Kyger, Jack Spicer, Ronnie Primack, and others.
(further reading…)

Cow

Inspired by Stan Persky’s OPEN SPACE, Luther T. Cupp edited COW, which ran for three issues from 1965-1966. Cupp was nicknamed “Link” by Jack Spicer and went by the name Link Martin.

1. COW, The San Francisco Magazine of Livestock, No. 1, Cow Soup Issue, edited by Luther T. Cupp
San Francisco: Cow, 1965
First edition, side stapled printed wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 11 pages, mimeograph printed.

Contents:
1. Doug Palmer – “Song To: Mr Tambourine Man”
  Deneen Brown – [untitled] “Perhaps it’s a…”
  Lawrence Fagin – [untitled] “So you want to go to space…”
  Stan Persky – “Detective Poem”
  Robin Blaser – “Here, 7/25/65”
  J. Mac Innis – “If Any”
  George Stanley – “Towns”
  Harold Dull – “for Jack”
  Joanne Kyger – “from The Thoughtful Apparitions”
  Jack Spicer – “Dear Sister Mary”
  Ronnie Primack – “Drowning Pool, for Alice”
  Link – “A False Poem of the Renaissance”

2. COW, The Magazine of Afro-Judeo Culture, No. 2, The Un-escalation Issue, edited by Luther T. Cupp
San Francisco: Cow, 1965
First edition, side stapled printed wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 11 pages, mimeograph printed.

Contents:
1. Jim Thurber – [untitled] “The moon and I…”
  Jim Thurber – [untitled] “The moon is a trick…”
  Robin Blaser – “A Gift (homage to Creeley)”
  Robin Blaser – “Image Nation 1”
  Stan Persky – “Folk Poem”
  Bill Brodecky – “Flower of Evil”
  Mike Hannon – “Thoughts on a Winter Moon”
  Larry Fagin – “Space Poems”
  Geoff Brown – “Poem to Myself”
  Michael Ratcliffe – “for L.F.”
  Joanne Kyger – [untitled] “I didn’t want to think…”
  Jamie MacInnis – “What Cruel Words Do/ a translation”
  Jamie MacInnis – “Lafayette Park”
  Luis Garcia – “The Argument”
  Luis Garcia – “With a Spoon”
  Luis Garcia – “The Couple”
  J.C. Alexander – “Dear Van Gogh”
  Gail Dusenbery – “Girl against Truck”
  Hune Voelcker – [untitled] “Yet when Rim came…”
  George Stanley – [untitled] “The knotted ropes…”
  Gail Dusenbery – “Peanuts? No. Words.”
  Gail Dusenbery – “Cold Lake Snapshot”

3. COW, No. 3, Pregnant Cow Issue, edited by Luter T. Cupp
San Francisco: Cow, 1966
First edition, side stapled printed wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 11 pages, mimeograph printed.

Contents:
1. Bill Deemer and Andrew Hoyem – “The Auto-Biography of L__ A__ L__”
  Stephen Mindel – [untitled] “Lost in the jungle…”
  Stephen Mindel – “Thursday Evening, for Bob White”
  Stephen Mindel – [untitled] “the deer crossed the stream…”
  Marga NewComb – “The Fallen Angel”
  Robin Blaser – “The Black Point”
  Michael Ratcliffe – “Tomorrow’s Another Day”
  H.M. Wickenheiser – [untitled] “Tomb-still repose is split…”
  Jim Semark – “Godzilla”
  Helen Adam – “A Tale of Dew Drops Falling”
  Gordon Gatom – “Trans”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “I feel sympathy…”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “A man will question…”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “Take up your words…”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “Just when I think…”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “A flash of metal…”
  Mike Hannon – [untitled] “adrift awake…”
  SMN – [untitled] “celled you are in postpale…”
  SMN – [untitled] “The poem walks…”
  SMN – “Mordant Manners”
  SMN – [untitled] “Still into us comes…”
  Robin Blaser – “El Desdichado”
  Michael Ratcliffe – “The Happy Ending”

Gryphon

Born on January 2, 1922, Richard Rubenstein began his literary career in a local prep school when he won a poetry contest. Associated with the Beat Poets in the San Francisco Bay Area, Rubenstein worked to found and edit several small press poetry journals – Neurotica, first published in spring of 1948; Inferno, in late 1949; and Gryphon, in spring of 1950. In Gryphon he published early works of Robert Creeley and Denise Levertov, as well as the established authors Henry Treece, D.H. Emblem, e.e. cummings, and Cid Corman. He himself published a small chapbook, Beer and Angels, and produced a long manuscript of collected poems which went unpublished. Rubenstein’s health deteriorated because of his long-standing nervous condition and the alcohol he drank to combat it. He died on Yom Kippur in 1958.

1. GRYPHON, No. 1, edited by Richard Rubinstein
San Francisco: Gryphon, Spring 1950

2. GRYPHON, No. 2, edited by Richard Rubinstein
San Francisco: Gryphon, Fall 1950

3. GRYPHON, No. 3, edited by Richard Rubinstein
San Francisco: Gryphon, Spring 1951

J

Jack Spicer’s J ran for eight issues: Nos. 1–5 were edited by Spicer in North Beach where contributions were left in a box marked “J” in The Place, a bar on Grant Avenue in San Francisco; Nos. 6 and 7 (an Apparition of the late J) were edited by George Stanley in San Francisco and New York City respectively while no. 8 was edited by Harold Dull in Rome. Spicer believed that poetry was for poets and the magazine had a small circulation but cast a long shadow. Contributors included: Robin Blaser, Richard Brautigan, Bruce Boyd, Kay Johnson, Robert Duncan, Joe Dunn, Ron Loewinsohn, Joanne Kyger, Helen Adam, and others. Covers (sometimes hand-embellished) were by Fran Herndon (Nos. 1, 2, 4, 5), Russell FitzGerald (No. 3), and George Stanley (Nos. 6, 7).

1. J, No. 1, edited by Jack Spicer
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 38 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by Fran Herndon.

Contents:
1. James Alexander – “The Jack Rabbit Poem”
  Ebbe Borregaard – “Ballad for S A D”
  Ebbe Borregaard – “Ballad of Billy Swan”
  Robin Blaser – “Two Astronomers with Notebooks”
  Jack Spicer – “Hokkus”
  Joe Dunn – “Love”
  Richard Brautigan – “The Fever Monument”
  Sam the Tenor Man – “The Radio said Giants Cinch Loop Flag”
  Bois Burk – “Ode to Pierre”
  Bruce Boyd – “After Midnight”
  Roland March – [untitled] “Mister Brustein…”
  Damon Beard – [untitled] “Adverse repercussionless…”
  Kay Johnson – [untitled] “My soul is the absurdity…”
  Kay Johnson – [untitled] “The door in the dream…”
  Robert Duncan – “Dream Data”
  Sagen – “Dear Sprach” [pseuds. Borregaard and Spicer]
  Harvey Harmon – “A Soldier and His Shadow”
  Tony Richards – “Summer”

2. J, No. 2, edited by Jack Spicer
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 36 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by Fran Herndon.

Contents:
1. George Stanley – “Tete Rouge”
  Fran Herndon – untitled illustration
  Jess Collins – “I Ups to My Self And”
  Harvey Harmon – [untitled] “More paths…”
  Jack Spicer – [untitled] “Down to new beaches…”
  Robert Duncan – “Dear Carpenter”
  Harvey Harmon – “A New Estate”
  William Morris – “Dear Senior Poet”
  Stan Persky – [untitled] “but it was a moment…”
  Mary Murphy – “In-”
  Will Holther – ” Lament for Otto de Fey”
  Jack Spicer – “Epilog for Jim”
  J.P. Shark – [untitled] “On account of changing tidal conditions…”

3. J, No. 3, edited by Jack Spicer
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed and hand-painted cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 38 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by Russell FitzGerald.

Contents:
1. Bruce Boyd – “Introduction”
  Bruce Boyd – “Toward Morning”
  Bruce Boyd – “War”
  R.H. Blyth – “Letters to the Editor”
  Rueban – “Q”
  Mary Murphy – [untitled] “The skull is not the bones…”
  Leo Krikorian – [untitled] “1. No drinking on duty…”
  Ron Loewinsohn – “Entangling Alliances”
  George Stanley – “Tete Rouge (continued)”
  Jack Spicer – [untitled] “The slobby sea where you float…”
  Damon Beard – [untitled] “Even —…”
  Jack Spicer – “Last Hokku”
  JBH [James Herndon?] – [untitled] “I don’t know how many…”

4. J, No. 4, edited by Jack Spicer
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed and hand-painted cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 36 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by Fran Herndon.

Contents:
1. Robert Duncan – “A Sequence of Poems…”
  Richard Brautigan – “The Pumpkin Tide”
  Richard Brautigan – “The Sidney Greenstreet Blues”
  Richard Brautigan – “Surprise”
  Garln – “Garln to His Friend”
  Joanne Kyger – “Tapestry #3”
  Josef Elias – “Joetry”
  Donald Allen – “for Barbara”
  John Ryan – “Pecadillo”
  Jack Spicer – “Jacob”
  George Stanley – “Tete Rouge (continued)”
  Wallace Allen Healey – “Politics”

5. J, No. 5, edited by Jack Spicer
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed and hand-painted cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 34 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by Fran Herndon.

Contents:
1. L. Frank Baum – “from Sky Island”
  Larry Eigner – “Front”
  Jess Collins – “The Poets Corner” [comic strip]
  Richard Brautigan – “1942”
  Mary Murphy – [untitled] “Lack of oxygen…”
  D.D. – “Fishing on Saturday”
  Kay Johnson – “The Space is Too Wide”
  Ron Loewinsohn – “WIBC Poems”
  George Stanley – “Tete Rouge (continued)”
  Robert Duncan – “The Song of the River to its Shores”
  Richard Duerden – “Right Now”
  Sheila Roche Harmon – [untitled] “A young devil sat…”
  Jack Spicer – “Fifth Elegy”
  William Berryman – “On the Composition of Bones”
  William R. Allen – “Letter”

6. J, No. 6, edited by George Stanley
San Francisco: J, 1959
First edition, corner-stapled sheets in printed cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 38 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by George Stanley.

Contents:
1. Helen Adam – “Scenes from San Francisco’s Burning”
  Paul Goodman – “I Love You, Necessary–”
  Joanne Kyger – “Pan as the Son of Penelope”
  Lucio Manisco – “Un Misto di Boheme Mistica e Letteraria”
  William A. Berryman – [untitled] “in the after hours…”

7. J, No. 7, edited by George Stanley
New York: J, 1960
Corner-stapled sheets in printed cover, 8.5″ x 11″, 32 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover by George Stanley.

All contents are anonymous.

8. J, No. 8, 1961, edited by Harold Dull *
Rome: J, 1961
Contributors: Harold Dull, Stan Persky.

—

[*not in archive]

online excerpt from A Secret Location on the Lower East Side (Granary Books, 1998):

“In many ways the most beautiful of all the mimeo magazines, J had an eight-issue run. The first five issues were edited from North Beach bars by Jack Spicer with Fran Herndon as art editor. Spicer, who embodied the spirit of poetry in the Bay area, collected pieces for his magazine from a box marked “J” in The Place, a bar at 1546 Grant Avenue in San Francisco. A refugee from Los Angeles with two degrees from Berkeley, he had been a student of Josephine Miles there in the mid-1940s. They became close friends, and Spicer participated in the Friday afternoon poetry readings in Wheeler Hall during the late 1940s as well as the readings organized with Rockefeller money by Ruth Witt-Diamant at the new Poetry Center at San Francisco State. Into the cauldron of poetic politics surrounding Miles, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Duncan, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and others, Spicer introduced his freest of spirits, sometimes more Caliban than Ariel. Spicer lived for words (even making his living as a research assistant on a lexicographical project at Berkeley). He could be found most evenings in one of the North Beach bars or coffeehouses leading the discussion on poetry, poetics, myth, linguistics, and other mysteries. Like Blake and Yeats (with the help of Mrs. Yeats), Spicer attempted to clear his mind and open himself to “dictation” from other sources, which he devotedly pursued. Spicer also believed wholeheartedly in the necessity of human beings’ helping each other through communication, which he confronted in the editorship of J, a little newsletter of the poetic spirit. Donald Allen acted as J’s distributor in New York (“New York Contributions are not forbidden. But quotaed”), selling copies for Spicer to the Wilentz brothers of the Eighth Street Book Shop. In an early letter to Spicer, Allen eagerly wondered “what your editorial policy may be. Seduction by print.””

Further Reading:

Mimeo Mimeo on J

Measure

“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”

M

The Spicer Circle magazine M appeared in 1962 in the period after J and before Open Space. Edited by poets Lew Ellingham and Stan Persky, the magazine published John Allen Ryan, George Stanley, Heinrich von Kleist (translated by Jim Herndon), Robin Blaser, William McNeill, Jack Moore, Gail Chugg, Bob Conner, David Melville and the editors. Ellingham spent years researching a biography of Spicer, which was eventually co-authored with poet Kevin Killian as Poet Be Like God (Wesleyan, 1998).

M, No. 1, edited by Lew Ellingham and Stan Persky
San Francisco: M, Spring 1962
First edition, side-stapled illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 64 pages, mimeograph printed.

“Contributions may be sent to 4 Harwood Alley of c/o ‘M’ at Gino & Carlo’s Bar, 548 Green Street, San Francisco 11. There is a box in the bar to receive contributions, and the bartender will hold any too large to be placed in the box.”

Contents:
1. George Stanley – [untitled] “Not speaking in human speech…”
  Lewis Ellingham – “Essays on Six Subjects”
  Gail Chugg – “The Avenging Angel”
  anonymous – “The River Bed”
  Stan Persky – “Orpheus Under the Golden Gate Bridge”
  George Stanley – “The Death of Orpheus”
  Gail Chugg – “A Romantical Poem for Leigh Hunt”
  Stan Persky – “Lake”
  Gail Chugg – “The Spell Binders”
  George Stanley – “The Great Wall of Canada”
  anonymous – “The Eagle & The Sperm Whale”
  anonymous – “Alaska, The Beautiful”
  anonymous – “Change”
  Stan Persky – “Twenty Years After”
  Bob Conner – “To an Archaic Apollo”
  anonymous – “The Commendatory”
  anonymous – “The Guardians”
  anonymous – “The Stone Statue”
  Gail Chugg – “A Poem of Granite for Lew”
  Stan Persky – “The Western Buildings”
  Robin Blaser – “The Faerie Queene”
  George Stanley – “The Crazy Bartender”
  John Allen Ryan – “Fresco IV”
  Jack Moore – [untitled] “I try at times…”
  Wm McNeill – “Unyielding Demands”
  Wm McNeill – “Kyoto: A Dream on the Banks of Two Rivers”
  Bill McNeil – “By Heian’s Gate”
  John Allen Ryan – “Convict Creek”
  John Allen Ryan – “Second Annie Poem”
  Heinrich von Kleist, trans. Jim Herndon – “On The Marionette Theatre”
  David Melville – “Dop Dop Dop”

M, No. 2, edited by Lew Ellingham
San Francisco: M, 1962
First edition, side-stapled illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 48 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover illustration by Paul Alexander.

“This is the second issue, published on a summer holiday.”

Contents:
1. Bill Roberts – “The Dwarf’s Handshake”
  Jim Alexander – [untitled] “Promytheus wd hav askd…”
  Larry Fagin – [untitled] “Though we come back…”
  Helen Adam – “Memory”
  Jack Flynn – “Jed”
  Ruben Dario, trans. John Allen Ryan – “Cleopompa and Heliodemus”
  Stan Persky – “The Astronomer”
  Larry Fagin – “For Bill”
  Ebbe Borregaard – “October Seventh Poem”
  Jim Alexander – “Melody of Triumverates”
  Bill Roberts – “The Tower and the Cross”
  John Allen Ryan – “The Gleaners”
  Tony Sherrod – [untitled] “Beneath one thigh…”
  Parker Hodges – “Irresistably, the Birds”
  Lewis Ellingham – “Poem for S.”
  Larry Fagin – [untitled] “No don’t dead hide my dying giving…”

The Rivoli Review

The Rivoli Review, Vol. Zero, No. One, edited by Richard Duerden
San Francisco: The Rivoli Review 1963

Side-stapled illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 11″, 24 pages, mimeograph printed. Cover illustration by Jess Collins.

Contributors:
Ford Madox Ford – “Meary Walker”
Robert Duncan – “Weaving the Design”
James Koller – [untitled] “mottled brown birds…”
Richard Duerden – “Seven: #2 La Martine Place”
Denise Levertov – “Hypocrite Women”
Lynn Lonidier – “Chagall and Bella”
Ron Loewinsohn – “Art for Art’s Sake”, “The Rain, The Rain”
Gerald Gilbert – [untitled] “Sunshine…”
Lorenzo Thomas – “Grass”, “West”
Robert Peterson – “Critical Times”
Ron Loewinsohn – “Fuck You Roger Maris”
Philip Whalen – “Plums, Metaphysics, An Investigation, A Visit and a Short Funeral Ode”
Ron Loewinsohn – “It is to be Bathed in Light”

The Rivoli Review, Vol. Zero, No. Two, edited by Richard Duerden
San Francisco: The Rivoli Review 1964

Side-stapled illustrated wrappers, 8.5″ x 14″, 30 pages, mimeograph printed.

Contributors:
James Koller – “The People are Coming”
Ron Loewinsohn – “A Place to Go”
Jess Collins – “Song of the Pied Parrot”
Lew Brown – “from Lionel”
Deneen Brown – “Azalea Poem”
George Stanley – “Argus”
Robert Duncan – “Passages III”, “Passages 3-4”
Richard Duerden – “Silence, and Katharsis”
Lew Brown – “The Broadjump”, “from Lionel”
Jack Anderson – “The Scale of It”
Richard Duerden – “The Sonata”
Jack Anderson – “Man in a Doorway”
Gerard Malanga – “Final Sonnet XC”

Jack Spicer

Poet as Crystal Radio Set

December 11, 2014 jason

Although known primarily among a coterie of poets in the San Francisco Bay Area at the time of his death in 1965, Jack Spicer has slowly become a towering figure in American poetry. He was born in Los Angeles in 1925 to midwestern parents and raised in a Calvinist jack-spicer home. While attending college at the University of California-Berkeley, Spicer met fellow poets Robin Blaser and Robert Duncan. The friendship among these three poets would develop into what they referred to as “The Berkeley Renaissance,” which would in turn become the San Francisco Renaissance after Spicer, Blaser and Duncan moved to San Francisco in the 1950s.

In 1954, he co-founded the Six Gallery in San Francisco, which soon became famous as the scene of the October 1955 Six Gallery reading that launched the West Coast Beat movement. In 1955, Spicer moved to New York and then to Boston, where he worked for a time in the Rare Book Room of Boston Public Library. Blaser was also in Boston at this time, and the pair made contact with a number of local poets, including John Wieners, Stephen Jonas, and Joe Dunn.

Spicer returned to San Francisco in 1956 and started working on After Lorca. This book represented a major change in direction for two reasons. Firstly, he came to the conclusion that stand-alone poems (which Spicer referred to as his one-night stands) were unsatisfactory and that henceforth he would compose serial poems. In fact, he wrote to Blaser that ‘all my stuff from the past (except the Elegies and Troilus) looks foul to me.’ Secondly, in writing After Lorca, he began to practice what he called “poetry as dictation”.

In 1957, Spicer ran a workshop called Poetry as Magic at San Francisco State College, which was attended by Duncan, Helen Adam, James Broughton, Joe Dunn, Jack Gilbert, and George Stanley. He also participated in, and sometimes hosted, Blabbermouth Night at a literary bar called The Place. This was a kind of contest of improvised poetry and encouraged Spicer’s view of poetry as being dictated to the poet. (more…)

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