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Floating Bear Archive

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

For more information about Floating Bear, see Jed Birmingham’s articles on Floating Bear and Floating Bear 24. You can also download this spreadsheet mapping the recipients to whom copies of Floating Bear were mailed.

Floating Bear 1

Floating Bear 1
February 1961

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Floating Bear 2

Floating Bear 2
February 1961

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Floating Bear 3

Floating Bear 3
March 1961

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Label to Gil Orlovitz


Floating Bear 4

Floating Bear 4
March 1961

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Floating Bear 5

Floating Bear 5
April 1961

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Floating Bear 6

Floating Bear 6
April 1961

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Floating Bear 7

Floating Bear 7
May 1961

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Floating Bear 8

Floating Bear 8
May 1961

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Floating Bear 9

Floating Bear 9
June 1961

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Floating Bear 10

Floating Bear 10
June 1961

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Floating Bear 11

Floating Bear 11
July 1961

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Floating Bear 12

Floating Bear 12
August 1961

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Floating Bear 13

Floating Bear 13
September 1961

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Floating Bear 14

Floating Bear 14
October 1961

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Floating Bear 15

Floating Bear 15
November 1961

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Floating Bear 16

Floating Bear 16
December 1961

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Label to Frederick Bock

Label to Cid Corman


Floating Bear 17

Floating Bear 17
January 1962

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Label to John Wieners


Floating Bear 18

Floating Bear 18
February 1962

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Label to John Wieners


Floating Bear 19

Floating Bear 19
March 1962

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Label to David Ossman


Floating Bear 20

Floating Bear 20
May 1962

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Label to Ned Polsky


Floating Bear 21

Floating Bear 21
August 1962

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Label to W.S. Merwin


Floating Bear 22

Floating Bear 22
August 1962

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Floating Bear 23

Floating Bear 23
September 1962

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Label to Connie Romano


Floating Bear 24

Floating Bear 24
September-October 1962

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Label to Paul Metcalf


Floating Bear 25

Floating Bear 25
November 1962 – March 1963

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Label to Bill Deemer


Floating Bear 26

Floating Bear 26
October 1963

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Label to Larry Eigner
Label to George Montgomery


Floating Bear 27

Floating Bear 27
November 1963

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Label to Carol Berge


Floating Bear 28

Floating Bear 28
December 1963

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Floating Bear 29

Floating Bear 29
March 1964

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Floating Bear 30

Floating Bear 30
November 1964

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Label to Chic Cicarelli
Label to Larry Schnell


Floating Bear 31

Floating Bear 31
June 1965

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Floating Bear 32

Floating Bear 32
February 1966

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Label to Dave Ossman
Label to Ed Sanders
Label to James Lowell
Label to Linda Francis


Floating Bear 33

Floating Bear 33
February 1967

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Label to Josephine Miles
Label to Ida Hodes


Floating Bear 34

Floating Bear 34
November 1967

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Label to Josephine Miles


Floating Bear 35

Floating Bear 35
April 1968

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Label to B. Dawson
Label to Josephine Miles
Label to Seamus Cooney
Label to Keith Wilson


Floating Bear 36

Floating Bear 36
January – July 1969

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Floating Bear 37

Floating Bear 37
March – July 1969

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Floating Bear 38

Floating Bear 38
Summer 1971


Floating Bear Press Release

Floating Bear Press Release
“Announcement Concerning Arrest of Editors”
Fall 1961

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Created by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 3 October 2006. Updated February 2010, October 2016, June 2017, and June 2018. Thanks to Jeff Ball for additional labels.
Archives Diane Di Prima Floating Bear Le Roi Jones Little Magazines Mimeo New York

10 thoughts on “Floating Bear Archive”

  1. Ellen Pearlman says:
    January 10, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    thank you so much for doing this. Are the covers copyrighted? I would like to use one of them for a book I am writing for Wesleyan University Press on the influence of Buddhism on the NY avant garde.
    Thanks,
    Ellen

  2. jed says:
    June 13, 2009 at 6:48 am

    Here is a brief introduction by Robert Duncan from a reading in New Mexico in 1964. He mentions Floating Bear and particularly its status as a New York magazine and what it meant for a SF poet to appear there. This highlights Di Prima and Jones’ willingness to tear down borders and publish anything that was considered new writing. It also foreshadows the Bear’s shift to SF in the later issues when Di Prima moved there. Also note that the parochialism of the SF writers would be a big source of tension in the SF Renaissance period when the East Coast Beats blew into town and brought loads of media attention.

    http://media.sas.upenn.edu/pennsound/authors/Duncan/Albuquerque-64/Duncan-Robert_04_Introducting-Night-Scene_Albuquerque_02-29-64.mp3

  3. jed says:
    June 13, 2009 at 9:03 am

    Duncan’s Night Scenes appeared in Issue 19 of FB. You can see the first few stanzas in the archive. Duncan also appeared in Fuck You, the 5/7 issue that also included William Burroughs and in Robert Kelly’s Matter so he was in other NY mimeos but you were more likely to see him in West Coast mimeos like J (a classic mimeo that you almost never see copies of), Wild Dog, and Sum. Fred Wah (of Tish) edited Sum when he was a grad student at the University of New Mexico when Robert Creeley was a lecturer there. Given Wah and Creeley’s presence in NM you can see why Duncan read there in 1964.

  4. Jed says:
    June 29, 2009 at 12:46 am

    There is an Ed Sanders exhibit at The Arm in Brooklyn. Details: http://thearmnyc.com/news/2009/06/ed_sanders_show_at_the_arm

    I hear there are paste-ups of the various Fuck You, a magazine of the arts issues as well as rare and virtually unseen ephemerial items. The opening in on July 10th.

  5. Luke says:
    August 19, 2010 at 9:31 pm

    hi there, is there any way to get copies of the floating bear issues? my grandfathers name (bobby driscoll) was mentioned in a few of them and i would love to see them personally

  6. jed says:
    January 6, 2011 at 7:44 am

    Luke,

    I just saw this comment. Go to Abebooks.com and search for Floating Bear and the number of the issues you want.

  7. James Cook says:
    May 31, 2016 at 3:47 pm

    Hi, I love this site, especially the fully downloadable issues of Fuck You and Yugen, etc. I was wondering – is there a chance you could identify the writer of the works on the front cover of the Floating Bear archive? I can recognize a few of them: Olson, Wieners, etc. but many of them I don’t recognize, and the poems are extremely good, so I’d like to check out more of their work, or find the work in its entirety. Thanks. Keep up the great work.

  8. DB Hobbs says:
    January 6, 2021 at 5:24 pm

    hi RS, just a quick note to say: Ezra Pound received most of the issues of Floating Bear in Rapallo (they’re held in his MSS43 and MSS53 collections at Yale’s Beinecke)

  9. Bruce Wilkinson says:
    October 8, 2021 at 5:33 am

    Hi, Lots more brilliant work by Reality Studio. Can I just clarify from where your list of Floating Bear subscribers originates? There are several issues in the Dave Cunliffe Archive at the John Rylands Library so either he or Tina Morris would have subscribed but they don’t appear in the list. Just to be clear, this isn’t a criticism but I’m interested for my own research as to why they don’t appear. Could there have been a separate UK/European subscription list perhaps?

  10. Jed says:
    October 8, 2021 at 4:13 pm

    Bruce,

    Thanks for asking. The excel list was compiled by mapping mailing labels on Floating Bears that I saw for sale on the rare book market and in collections of people I knew. I was into it hot and heavy for a while and kept up on it but I did not give it the full attention and research it deserved. That is my fault and a just criticism. That said it is a good start for a professional academic to work with as a foundation and to use mapping programs to get something out of it. I really hope someone does. That goes for a lot of the stuff on RealityStudio it is a start. Something to get people thinking. The Burroughs Unbound book that is coming out this year has two essays on the C Press Time that take what little I have done to new levels. It is really exciting to see. I hope the same is done with Floating Bear. The mag deserves the full Modernist little mag level treatment. It is as important as transition or any other Modernist mag that has gotten the monograph done on it

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