Back in the day, I was something of a fanboy. For a while there I wrote fan letters to academics and scholars whose work struck a chord with me. I should say fan emails. Even an avid collector of paper like me did not write hard copy letters. So, when I read Kyle Schlesinger’s essay on Robert Creeley as a publisher and editor, I dropped him a line expressing how impressed I was with his essay. It made me see my Black Mountain Reviews and Divers Press items in a whole new light. Same with Oliver Harris. Daniel Kane. Jim Pennington. Roy Pennington. The list goes on.

Most of these initial emails are lost on my end. Part of me believes that hard copy letters are in some ways more likely to survive than emails and texts. But the experts tell me differently; they insist that emails and texts are persistent, even indestructible. Tell that to my initial email to Kyle Schlesinger. I can’t find it. Maybe he has it. That said, I do have my fan email to Reva Wolf. Wolf wrote one of the best books on the Mimeo Revolution of all time: Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s.

Here is what I wrote about her book on the Mimeo Mimeo Blog:

For me, Reva Wolf’s Andy Warhol, Poetry, and Gossip in the 1960s is the mirror by which all books relating to the Mimeo Revolution must stand in front of to judge their appearance. Wolf’s mirror is unforgiving and reveals all blemishes. This was the first book I read that provided a coherent, directed reading of mimeo mags beyond providing a narrative history of a scene and its participants. Wolf does not tell a story, she provides a close, fascinating reading. She has read all the mags; she has dug into the archives, she has watched the films, she has seen the artwork, she has read the interviews and histories, she has talked to the participants, and then wonderfully she weaves it all together in a readable, clear, exciting fashion.

Generally, in the little magazine universe only Modernist magazines get this superstar treatment, such as Mark Morrisson’s The Public Face of Modernism, and to be honest, I do not think anybody has approached what Wolf accomplished. The reason is Warhol no doubt. The success of Wolf’s book stems from art criticism rather than literary criticism. Wolf is an art historian and the better for it. In my opinion, art criticism is far more interesting and exciting in its readings than literary criticism. Wolf’s book is much more innovative and entertaining than Morrisson’s book for example. As we will see further on, the most successful treatments of the Mimeo Revolution have treated the publications in the context of art.

Wolf’s readings of the Warhol covers of C and Fuck You have become the accepted way to approach those magazines. Her treatment of 2/2 Stories for Warhol is fantastic and fun. Her analysis of the Haircut piece in Floating Bear 26 is as close as the shave on Kojak’s head. She ends any doubt over whether Warhol was an intellectual (he was).  Wolf can handle the bread and butter of literary criticism with ease as she shows by documenting how little magazines operate in a creative community and how mags talk to each other and about each other. Any number of literary scholars have dealt with reception theory in terms of little magazines (such as Morrisson). Wolf does it better. In short, her too short book is absolutely brilliant. Yet like a gifted teenager, this book is a bit of a loner. Maybe I’ll think of some company for it in the days to come, but Wolf’s book stands in a class by itself.

One way to see if a work of criticism has made its case, and even to an extent crossed over out of the academy, is whether the book is cited in rare book catalogues. Wolf’s book is a standard reference for bookdealers everywhere and is relied on heavily. It is as essential as Clay and Phillips Secret Location. Only Daniel Kane approaches Wolf’s mastery of New York mimeo.

The minute I finished Wolf’s book I was literally bouncing off the walls with excitement, and I wrote her what amounted to a fan letter. The book was so fun to read, so informative, and so inspiring I had to let her know that she had changed the way I looked at the mimeo mags I had the opportunity to look at every day for years. She revitalized my book collection and infused it with meaning and energy. I would guess that academics do not get fan letters from those outside of the academic establishment very often. Maybe that is for the best, because I think I scared her.

And here is the fan letter:

Professor Wolf

My name is Jed Birmingham. I am a William Burroughs and little magazine collector. This pursuit has lead (sic, Oy!!!) me to studying the material I own and writing about it on a Burroughs site called Reality Studio. As you may know, Burroughs appeared in most of the major magazines of New York in the 1960’s: Floating Bear, Fuck You, C Journal, Yugen, Kulchur, et al.

Your book on Andy Warhol and gossip has been a wonder to me. I cite and link to it often in my articles. Given all the items I have purchased lately dealing with the New York scene, I will be sure to reread your book soon.  It is a wonderful resource. Although I am not an everyday reader, I am not an academic either. In any case, I found your book fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable.

I eagerly await any new work you might have as well as any articles or essays you might suggest. Thank you for your scholarship; it is appreciated.

You might be interested in some of my articles if only for the images that accompany them. Below is a small sampling. I would appreciate any comments, additions or corrections if you so choose.

 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/kiss-and-couch/
 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/couch-the-andy-warhol-cover-of-fuck-you/
 http://realitystudio.org/bibliographic-bunker/burroughs-berrigan-and-the-ticket-that-exploded/

One of the joys of your book was all the great images.

Thanks again

Wolf’s response was not as aloof as I remembered but we did not get in touch ever again as I recall. Going through the Sanders Archive I thought of Wolf and her book once again. Box 349 – `1962-1964, Folder: 1964 Peace Eye Gossip Item Ashbery + Warhol brough her to mind to be exact. Just a scrap of paper really with writing on both sides, and one that was hard to decipher, but I did my best to transcribe it:  

Have quiz on mouth
Ashbery/Drunk took Warhol/hook up/woke up bed full/of big gobs vaseline/+ piss

What would Wolf make of this? She wrote on Sanders and Ashbery extensively in her book but not in this context. Although she does mention Sanders in terms of blow jobs. I can only imagine her take would be brilliant, insightful, and well-researched. Maybe it would only be a lengthy footnote.  

Gossip is a big part of Sanders’ Fuck You publications. The Talk of the Town section of Fuck You, a magazine of the arts is a gossip section for the literary underground of the Lower East Side. A zine like Bugger has tabloid, gossipy elements to it. The Dick is a mimeo gossip tabloid fully realized. I suspect that Sanders got some of the inspiration for these gossipy elements from Warhol as well as Ted Berrigan and C Press. Berrigan is a major figure in Wolf’s book, of course. In 1969, Warhol would publish his own version of The Dick with the publication of Interview, a magazine in part dedicated to gossip. Sinking Bear also plays into this Warhol-Ashbery item in some way. Sanders’ interest in gossip, like the tidbit in the Archive, parallels his foray into investigative journalism in the 1970s, starting with his study of the Manson Family. Investigative journalism is the less tawdry, more serious manifestation of dishing gossip. Keaton has been looking into this angle for quite some time and maybe in the future he will expand on it on Mapping the Secret Location on RealityStudio. Maybe this scrap of gossip involving Warhol and Ashbery will find its way in his account somewhere.

That said, should I email Reva Wolf? Remember me? If she doesn’t respond I can write Chad Bennett a fan email. His book Word of Mouth: Gossip and American Poetry looks promising. There is a chapter on Frank O’Hara, so he must know about the New York mimeo scene. Well, before you write a fan email, you must become a fan. So, I guess reading Word of Mouth is long overdue. It has been sitting on my shelf for ages. On the same shelf as the Wolf book. I wonder if Bennett’s book measures up. Does anyone out there have any word of mouth on it?

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 1 (May 1963)

Cover Page: A title page and table of contents [i]

Endless Resoundings Fill the RCMM — Dick Gallup [1]

Ember Grease — Dick Gallup [2]

It’s Everywhere, Like So Much Glue — Dick Gallup [3]

Out West and Back East — Dick Gallup [4]

Persia is Falling Beneath the Blue Triremes — Dick Gallup [5]

Sonnet I (“Three thoughts about a bad boy. Chapped punk”) — Ron Padgett [6]

Sonnet II (“As the blue cup sits upon the table, postcards”) — Ron Padgett [7]

Sonnett III (“The stone house your father built by hand, thirty”) — Ron Padgett [8]

Untitled (“Most sensual of recluses, faint” — Ron Padgett [9]

A Play — Joe Brainard [10]

A Diary August 4th — 15th — Joe Brainard [11-13]

Poem in the Traditional Manner — Ted Berrigan [14]

Poem in the Modern Manner — Ted Berrigan [15]

Homage to Beaumont Bruestle — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two Scenes (after John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Homage to Mayakofsky — Ted Berrigan [18]

It is a Big Red House — Ted Berrigan [19]

In Place of Sunday Mass — Ted Berrigan [20]

From a Secret Journal — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet I (“His piercing pince-nex. Some dim frieze”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet II (Dear Margie, hello. It is 5:15 a.m.”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

Sonnet III (“Stronger than alcohol, more great than song,”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet IV (Lord, it is time. Summer was very great.”) — Ted Berrigan [25]

Sonnet V (“Squawking a gala occasion, forgetting, and”) — Ted Berrigan [26]

Sonnet VI (The bulbs burn phosphorescent, white”) — Ted Berrigan [27]

Real Life — Ted Berrigan [28]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 2 (June 1963)

Cover Page [i]

Title Page and table of contents [1]

The Birth of Lamantia — J. Richard White [2]

February in San Francisco — J.Richard White [3]

From The Lady — J. Richard White [4]

From a Letter from Joe Brainard to Ted Berrigan/20 May 63 — Joe Brainard [5]

Words for Love — Ted Berrigan [6]

Doubts (to Dave Bearden) — Ted Berrigan [7]

I Am Alone. You Are a Jungle. These Are the Ties That Bind — Ted Berrigan & Dick Gallup [8]

Untitled (“Dear Aunt Rose and Uncle Bert,”) — Sandra Alper [9]

Homage to Max Jacob — Ron Padgett [10]

Gamma Rays — Ron Padgett [11]

X (“I hope somebody else writes your story you zombie!”)– Ron Padgett [12]

Ash Tarzan — Ron Padgett [13]

Tristan Tarzan — Ron Padgett [14]

The Portable Life of Dr. Reverdy — Ron Padgett [15]

Sonnet XVIII (“Dear Marge, hello. It is 5:15 a. m.”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Sonnet XXIII (“On the 15th day of November in the year of the motorcar”) — Ted Berrigan [17]

Sonnet XXXII (“The blue day! In the air winds dance”) — Ted Berrigan [18]

Sonnet XXXVI — Homage to Frank O’Hara (“It’s 8:54 a.m. in Brooklyn it’s the 28th of July [and]”) — Ted Berrigan [19]

Sonnet XXXVIII (“Sleep half sleep half silence and with reasons”) — Ted Berrigan [20]

Sonnet XL — (“Wan as pale thighs making apple belly strides”) — Ted Berrigan [21]

Sonnet XLI (“bangin around in a cigarette she isn’t ‘in love'”) — Ted Berrigan [22]

Sonnet XLII (“She murmurs of signs to her fingers”) — Ted Berrigan [23]

For Richard White Sonnet LII (“It is a human universe: & I”) — Ted Berrigan [24]

Sonnet LIII: “for all the history of grief” (“The poem upon the page is as massive as” — Ted Berrigan [25]

A Mother’s Love is a Blessing — Joe Brainard [26]

Sally — Joe Brainard [27]

Poem (“Last night was blue or maybe arabia”) — Joe Brainard [28]

Penn Station — Ted Berrigan [29]]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 3 (July/August 1963)

Cover: Image by Joe Brainard [i]

The Waking — Theodore Roethke [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

A Sonnet for Dick Gallup / July 1963 (LXXII) (“The logic of grammar is not genuine it shines forth”) — Ted Berrigan [3]

$$$$$ from Re-Establishing Raymond Roussel — John Ashbery [4]

Sonnet (In this house I feel sad”) — John Stanton [5]

Sonnet (“Is the effort of my poem worth Manhattan:”) — John Stanton [5]

Now in Another Way (for Andy Warhol) — Gerard Malanga [6]

Some Feathers — Richard Gallup [7]

Sonnet XXXI (“And then one morning to waken perfect-faced”) — Ted Berrigan [8]

Sonnet XXXIV (“Time flies by like a great whale”) — Ted Berrigan [9]

Sonnet XXXVII (“It is night. You are asleep. And beautiful tears”) — Ted Berrigan [10]

Sonnet XLIV (“The withered leaves fly higher than dolls can see”) — Ted Berrigan [11]

Sonnet XLV (“What thwarts this fear I love”) — Ted Berrigan [12]

Sonnet XLVII (“Frances Marion nudges himself gently in the big blue sky”) — Ted Berrigan [13]

Sonnet LVIII (“A glass of chocolate milk, head of lettuce, dark-“) — Ted Berrigan [14]

Sonnet LXXIV (“The Academy of the future is opening its doors”) — Ted Berrigan [15]

A Final Sonnet for Chris (LXXXVIII) (“How strange to be gone in a minute! A man”) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Two for Barbara Guest — James Brodey

(“Muscular, standing past the station’s rim”) [17]

(“Melancholy changes its constant vigorous heart”) [17]

Three Sonnets After Frank O’Hara — Ron Padgett [18]

Poem Play (A Beautiful Day) — Ruth Krauss [19]

A Play (In a Bull’s Eye) — Ruth Krauss [20]

A Play (untitled) — Ruth Krauss [21]

A Play (There’s a Little Ambiguity Over There Among the Bluebells) — Ruth Krauss [22]

Homage to Pierre Reverdy — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [23]

Egg Plants Are Not Green — Ron Padgett [24]

Lettuce — Unattributed (Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan) [25]

Instead of a Man in Black the Men in Blue — Ron Padgett [26]

Choctaw — Ron Padgett — [27]

Sonnet Written in the Time it Took Lauren Owen to Walk 100 Feet — Ron Padgett [28]

Building a house — Richard Gallup [29-30]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 4 (September 1963)

Cover: Andy Warhol [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

The Poetry of Edwin Denby — Frank O’Hara [2-4]

An Introduction — John Wieners [5]

Grace After a Meal — Ted Berrigan [6]

Edwin’s Hand — Frank O’Hara [7]

Poems from In Public, In Private — Edwin Denby

The Climate [8]

The Shoulder [8]

Standing on a Street Corner [9]

Summer [10]

The Silence at Night [10]

City Without Smoke [11]

Elegy — The Streets [11-12]

From a Sonnet Sequence 

13 (“Suppose there’s a cranky woman inside me who”) [13]

21 (“The street is where people meet according to law”) [13]

Aaron [14]

The Friend [14]

Long Island City [14]

A Domestic Cat [15]

Poems from Mediterranean Cities — Edwin Denby

Ravenna [16]

Florence [16]

Siena [17]

Rome [17]

Via appia [18]

Villa Adriana [18]

Naples [19]

Amalfi [19]

Paestum [20]

Syracuse [20]

Segesta [21]

Taormina [21]

Forza d’agro [22]

Brindisi [22]

Athens [23]

The Parthenon [23]

Attica [24]

Mycenae [24]

Thebes [25]

Delphi [25]

Snoring in New York, an elegy — Edwin Denby [26-27]

Some Notes — Ted Berrigan [28]

Back Cover: Andy Warhol

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 5 (October/November 1963)

Cover: Joe Brainard (i)

Title page and table of contents [1]

The New Realism — John Ashbery [2-3]

A Game of Chess — Ron Padgett [4-7]

Passivation — Joseph Ceravolo [8-9]

Kerygma — Sotero Torregian [10]

Prose Poem (“The soul clings with its tenacity to the broken edge”) — John Wieners [11]

Sickness — John Wieners [11]

Untitled (“Do not let the silent, secret reaches of the night”) — John Wieners [12]

Happiness Is Just a Thing — John Wieners [13]

The Frightened City — Ted Berrigan [14]

Cathedral Towns — Ted Berrigan [15]

New Junket (for Harry Fainlight) — Ted Berrigan [16]

Wind — Ron Padgett [16]

What Price Salvation? — J. Richard White [17]

Spelunca (for A.R.) — J. Richard White [17]

Late December — John Ashbery [18]

Copy of a Copy — John Ashbery [19]

Undated — John Ashbery [20-22]

Political Science — Lorenzo Thomas [22]

The Infant Jesus of Prague — James Schuyler [23-28]

Poem II (“Muezzins, buzzards, newspapers — like”) — Harry Fainlight [28]

Olivetti Ode — Barbara Guest [29]

Hands — Barbara Guest [30-31]

Florida Hillocks — Kenward Elmslie [31]

Piazza of the Bananas — Kenward Elmslie [32]

Another Island Groupage — Kenward Elmslie [33]

The New World — Leroi Jones [34]

*The Success — Leroi Jones [35]

*Predicates/Categories (after M.H.) — Leroi Jones [36]

*Cant — Leroi Jones — [36]

*Poem (“There were more dirty”) — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Grass — Joseph Ceravolo [37]

*Poem (“Come and go see over there”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Poem (“Lapping water”) — Joseph Ceravolo [38]

*Funny Day — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

*Happiness in the Trees — Joseph Ceravolo [39]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 6 (December 1963/January 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Dedication Page: Trista Tzara (4 April 1896 — 24 December 1963) [1]

Title page and table of contents [2]

Canzone — Ted Berrigan [3]

Presence — Ted Berrigan [4]

Destination Moom — Ted Berrigan [5-6]

Prose Keys to American Poetry — Ted Berrigan [6]

Andy Warhol: Andy Do It — Joe Brainard [7]

Nancy — Joe Brainard [8-9]

Inside the Park — Dick Gallup [10]

Stillness — Joe Ceravolo [11]

I Am Lonely in My Crib — Joe Ceravolo [11]

Five Poems — Joe Ceravolo [12-13]

The Night Passes Through April Wind, No One Wants to Sleep — Joe Ceravolo [13]

Non-Sonnet IV — Gerard Malanga [14]

Non-Sonnet XII — Gerard Malanga [14]

Across the Table — Robert Dash [15]

C’est Toi Qui Dors Dans L’Ombre — Harlan Dangerfield [16-17]

Johnny — Joe Brainard [17]

From the Beaumont Series — Dick Gallup [18]

Duet — Ruth Krauss [19]

Poem in Honor of Some Bombs — Ted Berrigan [19]

The Pastor — Harlan Dangerfield [20-21]

Orange Jews — Harlan Dangerfield [21]

Enureseis — Lorenzo Toumes [22]

The Blind Dog of Venice (To Pat) — Ron Padgett [23]

The EMS Dispatch (To Ted)– Ron Padgett [23]

Blimps — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Poem (“the wooden junk flood closed the city”) — Kenward Elmslie [24]

Television Scenario: The Users — Kenward Elmslie [25]

Your Fun is a Snob — Kenneth Koch [26]

Sweethearts From Abroad — kenneth Koch [26]

Rapping Along — Kenneth Koch [27]

The Cat’s Breakfast — Kenneth Koch [27]

Sun Out — Kenneth Koch [28]

The Dead Body — Kenneth Koch [28]

In Every Victim Awaits the Guest of Honor — Ted Berrigan [29]

It Makes You Think, — Ted Berrigan [29]

The Complete Works: A Story-Poem (To Joe) –Ron Padgett [30-32]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 7 (February 1964)

Covers: Joe Brainard [i-vi]

Title page and table of contents [1]

Some Troubles — Ted Berrigan [2]

Cremations — Tom Veitch [3-4]

A Story from the Bushmen — Joe Ceravolo [4]

Warmth — Joe Ceravolo [5]

Ending — Joe Ceravolo [5]

The More You Take It — Joe Ceravolo [5]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Ted Berrigan

Sonnet LXXIII [6]

Sonnet LXXVI [6]

Sonnet LXXVIII [6]

Sonnet LXXX [7]

Sonnet LXXXI [7]

Sonnet LXXXII [7]

Sonnet LXXXIV [8]

Sonnet LXXXVII [8]

After the Broken Arm — Ron Padgett [9]

I’d Give You My Seat If I Were Here — Ron Padgett [9]

Sonnet / To Andy Warhol — Ron Padgett [10]

Rome — Ron Padgett [10]

Nothing in That Drawer — Ron Padgett [10]

The Windows — John Wieners [11]

Les fenetres – Guillaume Apollinaire [11]

Prologue — Tony Towle [12]

Apology — Tony Towle [12]

Thoughts Near the George Washington Bridge — Tony Towle [13]

Somebody Else, Black Poems, Brown Poems — Tony Towle [13]

Gilbert and Sullivan — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Another Abstract etc — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

The Conscience of Cole Porter — Lorenzo Thomas [14]

Abuela’s Wake — Frank Lima [15]

In Memory of Eugene Perez (drowned may 25, ’62) — Frank Lima [16]

John Perreault — John Perreault [16]

Yesterday Down at the Canal — Frank O’Hara [17]

Poeme en Forme de Saw — Frank O’Hara [17]

To jane: And in Imitation of Coleridge — Frank O’Hara [18]

Unpacking the Black Trunk — James Schuyler & Kenward Elmslie [19-26]

*Poem (“I do not always understand what you say”) — James Schuyler [26]

Two poems — James Schuyler

(“In the café I sat and watched the rain”) [27]

(August, smelling of ripe grapes and afternoon sleep”) [27]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him) — Edwin Denby [28]

Political Poem on a Last Line of Pasternak’s — Frank O’Hara [28]

The Lay of the Romance of the Associations (to Kenneth Koch) — Frank O’Hara [29]

Commercial Variations — Frank O’Hara [30-31]

34 mile wind — Frank O’Hara [31]

Rhapsody — Frank O’Hara [32]

Those Who Are Dreaming, A Play about St. Paul — Frank O’Hara [32-33]

Ah, London — Harry Fainlight [34]

Meeting – Harry Fainlight [35]

Lyric — Harry Fainlight [35]

Echo & co — Harry Fainlight [36]

28 — Harry Fainlight [36]

You Have Wasted Your Life — Harry Fainlight [36]

The Home Book — James Schuyler [37-44]

Recoting — Dick Gallup [44]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 NR 8 (April 1964)

Cover: Love Pictures by Ted Berrigan and Joe Brainard [i]

Title Page and Table of Contents [1]

From a Sonnet Sequence: Sonnet 20 (“the grand republic’s Poet is”) — Edwin Denby [2]

In His Distant Camp, Ted Awaits the Priests — Ron Padgett [2]

Mess Occupations (after Henri Michaux) — Ted Berrigan [3]

The voyage of the Argonauts (for Lionel Trilling) — Harlan Dangerfield [3]

From We Are Gentle Part I — David Shapiro [4]

Invention (to John Ashbery) — Ted Berrigan [4]

Literary Days — Tom Veitch [5-7]

Boils — Ted Berrigan, Gerard Malanga, Peter Orlovsky & Ron Padgett [8-11]

Theme and Variation — Harry Fainlight [12]

(“The chant, le chant, the song”) — Harry Fainlight [12]

Childhood — Harry Fainlight [13]

Poem (“what matter of luxury is this?”) — Al Fowler [13]

A letter from Tom Veitch/ April 5, 1962 — Tom Veitch [13]

Book III: The Concluding Book — Joseph Ceravolo [14-19 

Eskimos again — Dick Gallup [19]

From The Gobble Gang Poems — Ed Sanders [20-21]

Some Bombs (Mistranslations) (after Reverdy) — Ron Padgett [22-25]

Prick Song — J Richard White [25]

February in San Francisco] — J Richard White [26]

Poem for Things — J Richard White [26

San Francisco Ephemeris — J Richard White [26]

Early Sunday Afternoon — J Richard White [27]

Conversation — J Richard White [27]

Il penseroso — Ted Berrigan [27]

The Secret Life of Ford Maddox Ford (for carol clifford) — Ted Berrigan

Stop stop six [28]

Then I’d cry [28]

Fauna time [28-29]

The upper arm (for Andy Warhol) — Ted Berrigan [29] 

Sonnet XXVI (One sonnet for dick) — Ted Berrigan [29]

A Poem of the Forty-Eight States — Kenneth Koch [30-32]

Rain dunce (after Ted) — Ron Padgett [32]

Hygiene Sonnet — Dick Gallup [32]

Hatred — Frank O’Hara [33-35]

Reeling Midnight (to Pierre Reverdy) — Ted Berrigan [35]

The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [36-40]

(“Spooky-wooky-wooky”) — Joe Brainard [40]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 Number 9 (Summer etc. 1964)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title page and table of contents [1]

Y..R D..K — Ron Padgett [2]

Begun — Ron Padgett [3]

The Rodent — Ron Padgett [3]

Jimmy — Ron Padgett [4]

To Henry James — Ron Padgett [4]

Some Plays — Ted Berrigan & Ron Padgett

Looking For Chris [5]

Teresa (A Play) [5]

Seventeen (A Play for Kay Boyle) [5]

Seventeen (A Play)

Teresa [6]

Seventeen (A Play for Signor Melone of Venice) [6]

The Rest of the Secret Life of Ford Madox Ford — Ted Berrigan

On His Own [7]

The Dance of the Broken Bomb [7]

Putting Away [8]

Owe [8-9]

We Are Jungles [9]

What Is That Flying Away? — Joe Ceravolo [10-16]

Life in Darkness — Dick Gallup [17-21]

From Newstand Report — John Stanton [22-23]

Sally — Joe Brainard [24-26]

Intersection Shifts and Scanning from Literary Days by Tom Veitch — William Burroughs [27]

From The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [28-31]

Two Poems — David Shapiro

(“Light became audible, that is, a child, and took the empty place”) [32]

(“The most terrible spasms”) [33]

Three Poems — Tony Towle

Attached Poem [34]

Poems (to Joe LeSueur) [34]

Skylarks [34]

Juvenglandia — Harry Fainlight [35-37]

To the Autumn Sunbeam God — Harry Fainlight [37]

White — John Ashbery [38]

Vocalise — John Ashbery [38-39]

Evening Quatrains — John Ashbery [39]

At the Railway Station — Kenneth Koch [40]

Dostoevski’s The Gambler — Kenneth Koch [40]

Triste E Una Donna — Kenneth Koch [41]

Morro Rock — Kenneth Koch [41]

Schweitzerreich — Kenneth Koch [41]

Mateeyanah — Kenneth Koch [41]

Wahego — Kenneth Koch [42]

In Harmonium — Kenneth Koch [42]

Chiaroscuro — Kenneth Koch [42]

Heanorupeatomos – — Kenneth Koch [43]

An X-Ray of Utah — Kenneth Koch [43] 

Religiously — Kenneth Koch [43]

Givers of Winds Is My Name — William Burroughs [44-48]

Strum Night — Barbara Guest [49]

Looking at Flowers Through Tears — Barbara Guest [49-50]

Dada Proverb — Tristan Tzara [50]

The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express July 18, 1963 — Allen Ginsberg [51-54]

The Return of Yellow May — Kenneth Koch [55-57]

The Revolt of the Giant Animals — Kenneth Koch [58]

The Building of Florence — Kenneth Koch [59-60]

The Beverly Boys Summer Vacation — Kenneth Koch [61-64]

For the Chinese New Year & For Bill Berkson — Frank O’Hara [65-67]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 1 No. 10 (February 14, 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard

Title Page and table of contents [1]

Poop — Francis Picabia [2]

Fits of Candor (A Manifesto) — Dick Gallup [2]

The Return of Philista — Dick Gallup [3]

Washington, July 5 — John Giorno [3] 

Inside Speech — Harlan Dangerfield [4]

December — Giuseppe Ungaretti [4]

Brett — Ted Berrigan [5]

Brett (A Play) — Ron Padgett [5]

After Breakfast — Giuseppe Ungaretti [5]

Richard Cory — Ron Padgett [6]

Revised Poem — John Stanton [6]

Montana — Giuseppe Ungaretti [6]

Poem (“I stand last night near a lonely son-of-a-bitch.”) — Aram Saroyan [7]

From the Poetry Machine — Al Katzman [7]

Blandford, England, Sept. 23 — John Giorno [7]

December — Ron Padgett [7]

“Yes, I Am William Burroughs. . . .” — Tom Veitch [8-9]

To the Imperial Wizard — Jeff Giles [9]

A Grave — James Schuyler [10]

Moving — Aram Saroyan [10]

Georgia — Philippe Soupalt (trans. By Peter Schjeldahl) [10]

Dirge (South Africa) — David Shapiro [11]

From Five Songs — David Shapiro [11]

*From The Mutation of the Spirit — Gregory Corso [12-14]

*Precipice: A Story — Tom Veitch [15-17]

*The Day Before the Windowshade Fell — Les Gottesman [18]

*Apologies for the Angry Postcard — Les Gottesman [18]

*Principia Mathematica — Ron Padgett [18]

*Anecdote of Mumbly at Home — Louis Nasper [19]

*Homage to _______________ – John Perreault [19]

*Ragtime Cowboy Joe — Louis Nasper [19-20]

*From the Paris Sonnets — Peter Schjeldahl

Sonnet 16 (“Darkness rises from the sewers of Paris which I hear”) [20]

Sonnet 20 (“I cannot go on like this a mother hen”) [20]

*We Hardly — Richard Huelsenbeck [21]

*”My arms are warm” — Aram Saroyan [22]

*Falling in Love in Spain or Mexico — Ron Padgett [22]

*Prison of Souls — Jeff Giles [22]

*Pomp Ilk — Dick Gallup [23]

*Mother Cabrini (a play) — Ted Berrigan [23]

*Poem (“In the corner of my room an American!”) — Aram Saroyan [24]

*My First Story — Szabo [24]

*Poem (I don’t belong to you”) — Harlan Dangerfield [24]

*Preface to “The Champ” — Kenward Elmslie [25-27]

*The Champ — Kenward Elmslie [27-34]

*Craze Man Wiliiker — Pierre Reiter [35]

*Memoirs — Douglas MacArthur [35]

*Secret Wallpaper — Ted Greenwald [36]

*The Pirates — David Shapiro [36]

*A Memory Filled with White — Giuseppe Ungaretti [36]

*(“There was an old prude from St. Paul”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*(“A young maid awalking alone”) — Harlan Dangerfield [37]

*The Groundhog — Ted Berrigan [37]

*Song — Richard Kolmar [38]

*To Modigliani, to Prove to Him That I’m a Poet — Max Jacob [38]

*The Fernandez — Ron Padgett [39]

*Miss America — Kenneth Koch [39]

*Did Daniel Webster and Rufus Choate Plan to Enter Medicine — Joe Brainard [40-41]

*The Custard Sellers — James Schuyler [42-43]

*Ghost Tantra #9 — Michael McClure [43]

*Excerpt from The Jolly Abyss — Tom Veitch [44-46]

*Recipe Department — Hasheesh Fudge — Brion Gysin [46]

*(When the mercenaries ran away . . . “) with image [47]

Ten When My Eyes Were Hurting — Larry Swingle [48-50]

A Man Saw a Ball of Gold — Ron Padgett [50]

John Button Birthday — Frank O’Hara [51]

Can’t Keep — Joseph Ceravolo [51-52]

Sestina with a Lost Line — Bruce Kawin [52]

Poem (“A new telephone on the table”) — Aram Saroyan [53]

The Bermudas — Richard Kolmar & Aram Saroyan [53]

Balance of Payments — John Ashbery [54]

Supplements — Tony Towle [55-57]

Ave Maria — Frank O’Hara [57]

Fits of Affection — John Dent [57]

The Ecclesiast — John Ashbery [58]

The Woman — Frank Lima [59]

In Three Parts — Ted Berrigan [59]

Fortune — John Ashbery [60-61]

Revolting (A one act play) — Dick Gallup [62]

The Courtier — Kenneth Koch [63]

En L’an Trentisme de Mon Eage — Kenneth Koch [63-65]

Leapfrog (for Jim Sears) — The Poem Machine [65]

Hoboken — John Ashbery [66-68]

(“From Aphrodite”) — Ed Sanders [68]

The Ode to Music (for Morton Subotnick) — Philip Whalen [69-72]

Fits of Nerves with a Fix — William Burroughs [72-73]

Street — Joe Ceravolo [74] 

Ed Sanders’ Language — Charles Olson [74]

Music — Joe Ceravolo [74]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 11 (Summer 1965)

Cover: Joe Brainard [i]

Title page and table of contents [1]

On Frank O’Hara’s Birthday — Ron Padgett & Ted Berrigan [2]

Adios Lecture — Ken Weaver [3]

Police Lock — Aram Saroyan [4-5]

The Luis Armed Story — Tom Veitch [6-15]

From Looking For Chris — Ted Berrigan [16-23]

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup [24-26]

From Motor Maids Cross the Continent — Ron Padgett [27-32]

Two Stories — Barbara Guest

Another Daddy [32]

The “Adventures of Tin-Tin” Story [32]

Selections from a Novel — John Stanton [33-34]

Barbie and Ken — Kenward Elmslie [35-39]

From A Sonnet Sequence — Edwin Denby

(“New York, smog dim under August”) [40]

(Neighbor sneaks refuse to my roof”) [40]

(In tooth and claw red, not nature”) [40]

(“Disorder, mental, strikes me; I”) [41]

(“In a hotelroom a madman”) [41]

(“Nocturnal void lower Fifth, I”) [42]

“Drenched saw Doris home, midnight gale” [42]

Sonnet 18 (“Sunday on the Senator’s estate”) [42]

Sonnet 19 (“The size balls are sudden Lamarch”) [42]

Sonnet 20 (“The grand republic’s Poet is”) [43]

Sonnet 21 (“Blue grey ridge, green grey leafage”) [43]

Sonnet 23 (“Heavy bus slows, New York my ride”) [44]

Sonnet 24 (“New year’s near, glass autumn long gone”) [44]

Sonnet 30 (“Roar drowns the reproach, facing him”) [44]

Advertisement for an Ed Sanders Catalog [45]

From The Red Robins — Kenneth Koch [46-55]

Frost – Harlan Dangerfield [56]

Saturday Night at the Movies — Harlan Dangerfield [56]

A Fine Thing — Tom Veitch [56]

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 12 (NEVER ISSUED)

C: A Journal of Poetry Vol. 2 No. 13 (May 1966)

This issue has printed page numbers in the upper right corner beginning with page 2 after the cover and title page. As a result , the page numbers are not placed in brackets.

Cover page: Image of a stencil cutter by Joe Brainard

Table of contents and title page [1]

In Praise of the Postal System — Stéphane Mallarmé p. 2

From The Bingo — Dick Gallup pp. 3-7

Mortality — Théophile Gautier p. 8 

The Suitor – Théophile Gautier pp. 8-9

From Julius Caesar — tran. John J. Murphy p. 10

The Heavenly Skater — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

At Dawn — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

The Traveller and His Shadow — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Fetish — Pierre Reverdy p. 11

Natural Greatness — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

The Hard Heart — Pierre Reverdy p. 12

From Clear the Range — Ted Berrigan pp. 13-15

The Great Melancholy of an Avenue — Phillipe Soupault p. 15

Fragment — William Saroyan p. 16

Saving Japan — Theresa Mitchell p. 17-18

Two Sad Birds — Harry Mathews pp. 19-20

Brunswick Stew — Joe Brainard p. 21

Alas! — Max Jacob p. 21

History of France — Kenward Elmslie pp. 22-23

Valiant Warrior on Foreign Soil — Max Jacob p. 23

Juile ou la rose — Guillaume Apollinaire pp. 24-29

Julie ou j’ai prete ma rose pp. 24-25

Corona di Cazzi p. 25

Epithalame p. 25

In Vase Proepostero p. 26

Petit Balai p. 26

Le teint p. 26

VIII (“Linda la noire aux paumes roses”) p. 26

CartesPostales pp. 27-28

Le Chat p. 28

Le Negre p. 28

Quelques Distiques Pour Plaire a Dupuy pp. 28-29

Bibilographie p. 29

Justification p. 29

Notes on this C Edition p. 29

The Julie or the Rose Newsletter — Ron Padgett ed. pp. 30-31

Introduction p. 30

Commentaries, blurbs p. 30

Two letters from Pascal Pia pp. 30-31

Letter from Leroy Breunig p. 31

Notes p. 31

Notices p. 31

Blank back cover [32]

C: A Journal of Poetry No. 14 (1967)

Behind the Wheel — Michael Brownstein

No Empty Hands [2]

Nations [3]]

Sunny Barn, Special Guests [4]

Behind the Wheel [5]

The Plains of Abraham [6]

Large Blue [7]

Fingertips [8]

Janice [9]

*Lily Flower [10] — Missing from Harter Index

*Waitress [11] — Missing from Harter Index

*News [12]

*Florence Was Fine in the Summertime [13]

*Clean & Clear [14]

*Poem (“Yours the taught climb borne security”) [15]

*Navel [16]

*Pond [17]

*A Final Storm [18]

*Coincidences [19]

*Moving You Along [20]

*Massachusetts [21]

*Against the Grain [22]

*Typhoon [23]

*A Modern Instance [24]

*Pounds and Ounces [25]

Colophon [26]

Author Bio [27]

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

On Monday, November 5th, I attended the John Ashbery reading at the Folger Library in Washington DC. I found out about it at the last minute and assumed that it would be sold out (like a Ferlinghetti reading years before) but tickets were still available on Friday afternoon. I was surprised, but apparently a lot of people have never heard of the man considered by many to be “the greatest living American poet.” And of those who have, quite a few have not read his work. Ashbery is like Pynchon, a name to be thrown around and discussed at a certain kind of dinner party to demonstrate your wide reading even if you have not done the heavy lifting of actually turning the pages. In the case of Pynchon’s Against the Day that is a lot of pages.

As I have written in the Bunker, Ashbery’s and Burroughs’ literary concerns and personal lives seem to circle around each other without actually meeting. Paris in the 1950s, New York in the mid-1960s, the use of the cut-up technique at roughly the same time (Tennis Court Oath in 1962 overlaps chronologically with Burroughs’ cut-up trilogy). In addition, both writers made a much anticipated return to the United States after long exile. Their arrival in New York City occurred at roughly the same time. On their returns, both writers exerted a tremendous influence on the New York scene, particularly the Lower East Side, right before the Summer of Love. Ted Berrigan, for example, courted both Ashbery and Burroughs in 1964-1965. Burroughs and Ashbery appeared in some of the same little mags and, more interesting to me, Ashbery included Burroughs in the mags he had a hand in creating: Locus Solus and Art and Literature. Clearly, Ashbery recognized that Burroughs, unlike most of the Beats, had a tie to the European avant garde back to Dada and Surrealism. These ties went forward as well to the post-abstract expressionist concerns that circulated on the Continent in the early 1960s.

Anyway I see a lot of connections between the two, but when I ask around about this most people want to maintain the personal and creative distance between them. I think it has to do with the level of respectability and acceptance that Ashbery has achieved despite his radical beginnings. By those beginnings, I am thinking of the general reception for Tennis Court Oath. It was a stink bomb in the ivory tower, like the cut-up novels. Nobody knew what to do with Burroughs and Ashbery at the time, but with the success of Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, Ashbery’s radical past has been covered up.

Burroughs’ reputation has come a long way, but as much as it pains me to say it, he is still a cult figure in the mind of the mainstream (read: New York-based publishing houses that control the more established awards and fill the bulk of what passes for literary reviews with content and advertising). At present, Ashbery has left the literary scene represented by Locus Solus and Art and Literature behind. Ashbery described those publications to me as “fringe.” In a way, Ashbery is still fringe as is all poetry in this day and age, but he is one of the big fish in the small pond. A peculiarly and particularly exotic one that in the past three decades has been reclassified and reexamined into something more mundane and common. A rare koi in a ornate Japanese rock pool dressed down into a goldfish in a Ziploc bag.

Marjorie Perloff wrote about this transformation in an article entitled “Normalizing John Ashbery” in 1998. Ron Silliman has been talking about it in his blog since 2002. Poetically, conservative critics ignore the fact that Ashbery came out of the New American Poetry Anthology of 1960 and that he was and is a participant and influence on all the more radical aspects of New American poetry since that point. Instead, Ashbery is placed more comfortably in the tradition of T.S. Eliot and Wallace Stevens. He becomes a lyric poet. The interest in this co-opting and transformation go back to 1976 when Ashbery won the poetic equivalent of the Triple Crown for Self Portrait (the Pulitzer, the Book Circle Award and the National Book Award). He became simply too important a poet to ignore.

So the Folger Reading is part and parcel of a process that has been going on for years. The reading was co-sponsored by The Poetry Society of America. Moderators included Michael Collier, the director at Breadloaf, and Alice Quinn, the director of the Society and editor at the New Yorker. You had some idea of the type of Ashbery that was going to be presented at the Folger when he was introduced as one of the finest practitioners of the lyric. I think Ashbery sized up his audience during the various introductions and did an about face as a result. He seemed a little flustered at the beginning of his reading searching for what to read. He stated he was going to scrap his planned reading and choose some poems on the spot. He basically called an audible. So what did he choose? He read four poems but two of them stand out. He read the double sestina derived from Swinburne from Flow Chart and the title poem of Hotel Lautréamont, another complex poetic form in this case a pantoum. Interesting choices. The more poetically conservative elements in the literary world, called the School of Quietude by Ron Silliman, have been grasping onto poems like these from Ashbery’s career to place him within their ranks. Surely the presence of closed forms (and obscure ones at that) make Ashbery a poet of a traditional nature and not one of Whitman’s Wild Children, like the Black Mountaineers or the Beats. Clearly, these forms translate into a stable, recognizable meaning. But not so fast. Ashbery stressed at the reading that he found incredible freedom in such restrictive forms. In addition, Ashbery’s comments and answers at the reading highlighted his continued support for innovation, fluidity of meaning, difficulty, complexity, obscurity, and freedom in poetry.

The questions and answers regarding W.H. Auden show Ashbery staining against the normalizing process. The moderator opened his questions by asking about the influence of Auden on Ashbery. This is a fairly standard question given the fact that Auden was responsible for the publication of Ashbery’s first book, Some Trees, in the Yale Younger Poets Series in 1956. O’Hara came in second. Commonly the link to Auden highlights a view of Ashbery as part of the tradition of Eliot and Stevens. Again the key is what Auden you are linking to. Ashbery took great pains to associate himself with the early Auden whom Ashbery described as a “gnarly” and difficult poet. Ashbery stated that when he first approached Auden’s work it confused and startled him unlike other work (like Robinson or Frost) in the Louis Untermeyer Anthology that indoctrinated many a poet of Ashbery’s generation. Ashbery stressed complexity, difficulty, obscurity. Ashbery also expressed his regret that Auden edited and distanced himself from his early work in his later life. As Auden got older, he attempted to tailor his work to fit his more conservative and mainstream poetic position. Ashbery saw this as unfortunate just as the same process was for T.S. Eliot and Wordsworth. Ashbery linked himself with early Auden, early Eliot, and early Wordsworth. Likewise, critic Marjorie Perloff sees early Auden and the more radical early Eliot as key influences on Ashbery.

For me an entirely different Auden came to mind when his name was brought up at the Folger. I immediate thought of his underground poem “The Platonic Blow” published by Ed Sanders’ Fuck You Press in 1965. Rumors of the poem had been in circulation for years, and Sanders basically stole the poem from a library and pirated it on his mimeo. It throws into the forefront the gay Auden. Similarly, critics have attempted to out Ashbery. I am thinking of the study On the Outside Looking Out by John Shoptaw that reads a gay subtext into Ashbery’s work. I think Auden was also an influence on Ashbery because he provided a model of how to be a gay poet in his art and in public. Like Auden, Ashbery played his sexuality close to the vest and never became a public figure as a sexual being like Ginsberg or O’Hara. Possibly, Auden chose Ashbery over O’Hara for the Yale Younger Poets Series because he saw more of himself in Ashbery on a literary and personal level. As person and as poet, Ashbery was more reserved and private, while O’Hara was more flamboyant and public.

I also thought that Robert Frost hovered over the reading, but I did not know why. Ever since I read The Tennis Court Oath I have felt that the title poem and the book was a response to Frost’s statement that “writing free verse is like playing tennis with the nets down.” I cannot get other people to see a connection, but Frost was much on the New York School’s mind in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Frost was the granddaddy of American poets, the definition of the establishment. Not surprisingly, the younger New York Schoolers were interested in Frost as poet and public figure. Kenneth Koch wrote Mending Sump as a parody on Mending Wall. In The Last Avant Garde, David Lehman suggests that one of the reasons O’Hara does not like Lionel Trilling in Personal Poem (written in 1959) was because of a talk Trilling gave on Frost at the time. At the Folger, Ashbery mentioned that Frost was one of the poets he encountered and confronted while reading the Untermeyer Anthology.

Yet that did not explain why I was thinking of Frost. After a little research, I discovered why. In 1995, Ashbery won the Robert Frost Poetry Award, a lifetime achievement award given by the Poetry Society. His acceptance speech, published in Ashbery’s Selected Prose, touches on many of the archetypal moments and anecdotes that came up at the Folger. Ashbery’s reaction to the 1936 issue of Time featuring the Surrealists or Ashbery’s decision to become a poet and not a painter because, like William Carlos Williams, he felt poems were easier to carry are two examples. The Frost Award, like the Folger reading, is an example of the conservative elements in poetry trying to claim Ashbery for their camp. Not surprisingly, Ashbery presented himself in a similar manner in these two instances. But as I have suggested, Ashbery not only played to his audience, but also subverted these attempts by remaining true to his avant nature.

I think the figure of Frost, like Auden, is interesting in light of Ashbery for another reason on view at the Folger. At 80 years old, Ashbery is the celebrated poet in old age — a role both Frost and Auden played as Ashbery became established as a poet. Unlike Auden, Ashbery has refused to edit out his early poetry from the canon even if conservative critics are trying to do it for him. Yet he seems like Auden and Frost in his aloofness to the poetry scene around him. At the Folger, Ashbery was asked about his role as poet laureate of MTV. He was quite funny on this topic. He thought it was great as long as he and MTV did not have to do anything. Ashbery wondered when he was getting paid. During the audience Q & A, the question arose on Ashbery’s impressions of slam and performance poetry. Ashbery admitted he knew little about it stating that he preferred poetry on the page and in solitude. This ties Ashbery back to the more conservative elements in poetry. When asked about readings, Ashbery said they were nice as they got him out of his apartment. This is speculation but I got the sense that he has little contact with the larger poetry community and liked it that way. I got the sense that Ashbery’s apartment was not a Mecca for young poets. In these ways, Ashbery differs from William Carlos Williams and Pound in their old age. Despite their isolation, Williams and Pound remained in close contact with the poetry scene of the times. Williams mentored a young Allen Ginsberg from Rutherford as well as Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Lew Welch in his late readings. Pound provided advice from afar to writers like Creeley and Ginsberg. Despite his silence late in life, poets sought to sit at the feet of Pound at various poetry festivals in Italy deep into the 1960s. Poets fed off Pound’s mere presence. Does Ashbery serve a similar function or is he impersonal and unapproachable like late Auden and Frost? I do not know. It would be interesting to know the makeup of the audience of the Folger. Who comprised the majority of the audience? Young poets, grad students, professors, or wealthy patrons of the Folger and the DC Arts scene?

As I drove home to Baltimore after the reading, my mind went back to another Ashbery reading almost 45 years earlier. I do not know if this is fair but it provides some interesting contrasts. In September of 1963, Ashbery read at the Living Theatre. The contrast of the Living Theatre with the Elizabethan Theatre of the Folger is very interesting to me. The home of The Connection or The Brig versus As You Like It. In 1963, Ashbery read in the physical and geographical center of the New York avant garde. In exile in Paris for close to a decade, Ashbery came home to a particular New York: the city at the dawn of the creative boom of the Sixties. By 2007, Ashbery was celebrated in a shrine to Shakespeare and not be treated as an invader or an outsider. Emily Dickinson is receiving similar treatment this year. Interestingly, there are competing views of Dickinson’s legacy with various poetic camps claiming her legacy. In addition, the reading in Washington DC highlights how Ashbery has been used to further a political and cultural program in the Arts. The more conservative elements in poetry are tied to the mainstream publishing industry and the government. Take the Poetry Society with their big push in support of the conservative tradition. This year their Robert Frost Award went to John Hollander. This has caused some degree of controversy and highlights the Society’s poetic and political conservatism. It should be remembered that Hollander slammed Howl in Partisan Review which resulted in an important response by Ginsberg in 1958 that crystallized Ginsberg’s firm grasp of an alternative poetic tradition and politics. Hollander later published a retraction.

I am unaware of who attended the Folger reading, but Ted Berrigan, Frank O’Hara, Andy Warhol, Gerard Malanga, and Ron Padgett attended the Living Theatre reading. Ashbery’s presence energized the poetry and art community. It was an event. As Reva Wolf has shown in her book on Warhol, the Living Theatre reading forged relationships between Ashbery and Warhol as well as second generation New Yorkers like Berrigan. I felt the Folger reading lacked that energy. I could be wrong, but it is not a mere question of Ashbery’s age. Williams’ reading at Reed in 1950 at Reed College launched the careers of Whalen, Snyder, and Welch. Williams was close to 70 and in failing health since 1948. Does a reading at the Folger have such creative potential? Possibly, as there were a number of young people at the reading. But I think the answer lies in whether the audience viewed Ashbery as a tool to build something new or a tool to protect something established.

I found it interesting that Ashbery established a relationship with Warhol and the Factory. Given such experiences, I expected Ashbery to be more receptive the question about performative and slam poetry. These “new” poetic styles come out of the happenings of the 1960s, like Warhol’s, and as Ashbery would be particularly aware, out of the performances of Dada and the Surrealists. One could go even further back to Alfred Jarry. Such recognition by Ashbery would suggest to me that he was still actively searching the creative landscape for new inspiration and material. Instead I think Ashbery has finished innovating and settled into a routine. As Ron Silliman has shown with the trajectory of Robert Creeley, this is not a negative but a fact of just what Creeley wanted to accomplish as a poet late in life. Such endeavors worked for and pleased him at that stage. Ashbery is in a similar place. As a result Ashbery at 80 is more at home at the Folger than the Living Theatre. Isn’t that true of all older artists? Was it true of Burroughs with his final trilogy and pronouncements that Love was the best painkiller? I would like to hear from readers on that. But as Ashbery insists he has not forgotten the relevance of his early work and he is not ashamed of it. In fact such work continues to express Ashbery’s concerns as a poet. He embraces complexity and difficulty. Like Auden’s early work, Ashbery’s poetry remains tough to unlock and may definitely be called “gnarly.”

At the end of the reading at the Folger, there was a reception where Ashbery was available for signing. Although I am a collector, I always dread approaching an author for a signature. Too many times I have seen somebody confront an author with a shopping bag full of a single title. I am reminded of the middle aged guy at a baseball game clamoring for a foul ball or an autograph among a crowd of kids. At the same time, such encounters can be very rewarding. Meeting with Carl Weissner in a New York bakery and having him sign my copies of My Own Mag was a great experience. He had some remarkable stories and his inscriptions are priceless to me.

I had been warned that Ashbery gets cranky at signings especially when confronted with a sack of books. As a result I decided to bring two books. But what to bring? I do not own any Ashbery hardcovers but I have several little mags with Ashbery appearances such as C Journal or Big Table. I was tempted to bring a couple issues of C Journals as I thought this rare mimeo would interest Ashbery and maybe engage him in conversation. But unlike most readers of Ashbery, I am drawn to Ashbery as an editor. I view Locus Solus and Art and Literature as major little mags of the mimeo revolution. Those mags are great insights into the influences and obsessions that resulted in Ashbery’s greatest poems, particularly of the 1960s.

So Locus Solus III-IV and the first issue of Art and Literature it was. As I suspected, there was a limit of two books for signing and the line for signatures was quite long. When I approached, Ashbery looked worriedly behind me and commented on the length of the line. I placed the two magazines before him. He picked up and spent some time leafing through the Locus Solus. He read the table of contents and signed the book. I mentioned that I was surprised that he included Burroughs in Art and Literature given the European and avant-garde nature of the magazine. He stated it was not surprising at all as both mags were fringe publications thus suggesting that Burroughs was suitably fringe as well. And then he gestured for the next in line.

Thinking back on the experience, I wonder what I would have asked Burroughs to sign if I had met him in person. On a financial level, the Digit Junkie would be the choice. Signed copies must be almost unheard of. It would also be interesting to present any of the early material like the British Journal of Addiction Letter offprint, Semina IV, or Man’s Wildcat Adventures. These are all neglected but important pieces in the Burroughs bibliography. That said I would have to choose my copies of My Own Mag. Even though collector Nelson Lyon got there first with his complete set, getting Burroughs to sign my copies would be a very personal experience. It is while reading My Own Mag that I feel that I get closest to Burroughs as an author. In addition, the contacts I have made while collecting and researching My Own Mag have been truly special. Given that Burroughs signed rather willingly, a trip to Lawrence would not have been out of the question when I was in college. I can only wonder about the conversation that might have ensued with Burroughs about the magazines. In any case, Burroughs has been speaking to me through My Own Mag for quite awhile now and he has had quite a few remarkable things to say.

Ashbery as Editor: Art and Literature

Art and Literature 1

Art and Literature 2

Art and Literature 3

Art and Literature 4

Art and Literature 5

Art and Literature 6

Art and Literature 7

Art and Literature 8

Art and Literature 9

Art and Literature 10

Art and Literature 11

Art and Literature 12

For more on Ashbery as editor, see the Locus Solus archive.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

While attending a cigar event, a map collector friend informed me that the Walters Museum houses quite an extensive collection of manuscript material. One of the most publicized of their holdings is the Archimedes Palimpsest containing seven separate treatises by Archimedes. Despite all his achievements, Archimedes is probably best known for exclaiming “Eureka!” after realizing a key concept in hydrostatics while sitting in a bathtub. True or not, this scene ranks up there with the assassination of the French Revolutionary Marat as one of the most famous events to occur in the bath. See Wallechinsky and Wallace’s Book of Lists for 13 others. The manuscripts of Archimedes’ work were copied in the 10th Century in Constantinople. They were discovered when the prayer book was laser-imaged to see what was underneath. The treatises were written over by the work of later scribes, as is not uncommon with old parchment. The book contains the only surviving copy of Archimedes’ On Floating Bodies. Eureka, for sure.

Although I was not in the bathtub, I had a “Eureka!” moment about a week ago. After a search of over three years, I finally tracked down a copy of the elusive Locus Solus V to complete my set. (So long as we are speaking of French Revolutionaries, Georges Danton’s severed head features in Raymond Roussel’s proto-surrealist classic that was the source for the name of the little mag.) In fact, during those three years, only one copy presented itself. It was on eBay, and I lost out in the bidding even after making what I thought was a very aggressive bid. Of course, copies are available as parts of a complete set, but stand alone copies of Locus Solus V, like Insect Trust Gazette 2 or Floating Bear 24, are just hard to come by.

The other three volumes of Locus Solus (note: Issue III-IV was a double issue) are just not that difficult to get a hold of. For Burroughs collectors, the key issue is Locus Solus II: The Collaboration Issue and for reasons I discussed elsewhere it is a very interesting, if brief, appearance for Burroughs. As Daniel Kane points out in All Poets Welcome, Locus Solus is interesting for the inclusion of Ted Berrigan. In his diary for December 4, 1962, Berrigan writes, “Locus Solus V came out yesterday, and to my complete surprise and delight it had a poem by me in it. How good that my first major publication was in the magazine edited by Koch + Ashberry (sic), with poems by them + O’Hara.” For a magazine that was edited in France, published in Switzerland, and infused with European sensibility, the mag’s influence on the Lower East Side was far-reaching. The five issues of Locus Solus were revered by the Second Generation New York School, and the content and appearance of mimeo productions of Berrigan, Bill Berkson, and others could be viewed as a response to the “squat and plain” issues of Locus Solus. In Secret Location on the Lower East Side, Clay and Phillips describe Locus Solus as “definitely ‘no-nonsense’ from the beginning, presenting no manifestos or editorial statements, just high-quality literature — simply and elegantly presented with care and respect.” C Press would definitely add an element of nonsense as well as a more comic and grungy look to the publications of the Second Generation.

In many cases, the early issues of a little magazine are the toughest to find due to the fact of small, less ambitious print runs and a smaller reading audience for a new publication. Interested readers, if they could get a copy, probably read them and disposed of them thinking the magazine was just another one-shot destined for the dustbin of history. In some cases, it takes a few issues for a little mag to gather together its stable of authors and establish its personality and reputation. This is certainly true for magazines like Yugen, My Own Mag and Floating Bear. Finding copies of the early issues of these magazines, particularly My Own Mag, are extremely difficult.

This is not true of Locus Solus (or Kulchur for that matter). Locus Solus, like Athena from Zeus, emerged from the heads of the first generation New York Poets (John Ashbery, James Schuyler, Kenneth Koch as well as Oulipo member, Harry Mathews) fully formed in format and content. In The Last Avant Garde, David Lehman’s account of the genesis of the New York School Poets, Lehman writes, “Perhaps no better introduction to the poetry of the New York School Poets exists than [the first two] issues of Locus Solus.” The early issues are the most commonly collectible, particularly issue 2, but it is the last issue that is the toughest to find. The reason for this is the simple result of a small print run. For most issues of Locus Solus, the print run of the magazine was rather large: 1000-2000 copies, but Harry Mathews and James Schulyer, the publisher / patron and editor, respectively, of the final issue, only contracted for a print run of 500. I would suspect that libraries got a hold of a fair number of these issues given the academic cachet of the New York School poets (Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, and Harry Mathews) who edited it. Of all the New America Poets in the Allen Anthology, the New York School received the most attention from the establishment.

Take John Ashbery’s other magazine effort: Art and Literature (1964-1967). Like Locus Solus, Art and Literature was deemed important by establishment institutions and academies who would gather them for collections. The mag was described as “very high style, intense and European.” The establishment more quickly acknowledges what is perceived as serious and intellectual art. It also attempts to incorporate it much more readily than seemingly low-brow art (read as the Beats). For example, Art and Literature received a standalone review in the New York Times. Very unusual treatment for a little magazine, a format generally outside of the mainstream media and created in reaction to mainstream publishing. Beat dominated mags escaped notice or received passing (and largely negative) treatment. Art and Literature ran for twelve issues. Again very usual given the short life of many little mags. Interestingly, a complete run of Art and Literature just sold on eBay. Despite the condition problems (age toning, a detached cover, none of the extremely fragile tissue paper jackets present), I thought the run was a deal at $152. It is a fantastic magazine and Burroughs appears in Issue 2. Further proof of Burroughs’ place in the 1960s avant garde both New York and European in origin. The transformation of Burroughs from a “Know Nothing Bohemian” to an international intellectual was in motion.

Despite all my pieces about the personal touch and the joys of the book fair and catalog, I found Locus Solus V through the internet search engines. Generally, I search every day on eBay, Addall, and Abebooks for new Burroughs titles, and I perform more detailed searches for must-have items like Locus Solus V at least once a week. A good number of the books and magazines in my collection were located on the internet. This is especially true of the less interesting but essential parts of my collection. Almost all the Grove and Calder titles in my collection were acquired through internet searching. While these titles, particularly signed, are becoming harder to come by, they are almost always available online.

Not much of my collection has been acquired through want lists, but the most special pieces of my collection have been acquired through the type of personal relationships that I have been describing for the past year. Catalogs, book fairs, brick-and-mortar stores, auctions and the building of personal relationships. In some cases, like the complete run of Fuck You Magazine or the Digit Junkie, building a line of communication over time proved absolutely essential. The real interesting stuff rarely gets on Abebooks or eBay at all. Collections are built much the same way they have been for decades if not centuries: through the means I listed above.

In fact, what makes a special book collection is a lot like what makes Burroughs’ most successful cut-ups so fascinating. Building a collection solely through the internet reminds me of some of the less noteworthy passages in the cut-up trilogy. In both there is a lack of a personal touch and personality. The enterprise has a sense of monotony and repetition, a lack of passionate involvement. No spark. Yet the finest cut-ups are full of personal touches despite critics’ attempts to state that the technique is a weapon in the assault on personality and on the control of the author. Burroughs always stressed that not everyone could create a successful cut-up, and he expressed the importance of editorial selection and control. Take a Berrigan cut-up from The Sonnets, an Ashbery from The Tennis Court Oath, Gysin’s work from The Exterminator or Minutes to Go or Corso or Sinclair Beiles work for that matter. Throw in Carl Weissner’s cut-ups as well as Claude Pelieu’s work with the technique. They are all vastly different, and the personality and passions of the respective authors show through. Time, APO-33, The Dead Star or the newspaper cut-ups are hardly one-trick ponies of cut and paste. In these works, Burroughs experiments with different sources (medical journals, newspapers, magazines, book reviews, a gangster’s dying words), different formats (three column both newspaper and magazine, grids, broadside, free verse poetry) different media (photographs, typewritten text, handwriting, tape recording, film, the novel, the magazine, comic strip), different subject matters, different literary styles and techniques (composition by field, enjambment, concrete poetry, academic article, letter to the editor, advice column). In addition, Burroughs personal obsessions and quirks show through. The number 23, gangsters, apomorphine, William Randolph Hearst and his word / image empire. The cut-up was never intended to be a stagnant, impersonal or one-dimensional process. They threaten to become just that in the low points of the cut-up trilogy.

Similarly, gathering books from the internet threatens to become a stagnant, impersonal, or one-dimensional process. Catalogs, book fairs, brick and mortar stores, want lists, and auctions make a collection multi-faceted. The establishment of friendships and the joining of communities are an important aspect of book collecting that point and click sales do not fully recreate, although as I have written that is in the process of changing. Like Burroughs with the cut-up, there should be a kitchen-sink mentality in building a book collection. The internet is only one option among many. In my opinion a collector should be focused in his choice of subject matter or author, but diversified in obtaining material in that area. Don’t dabble in everything. Do collect obsessively in your microcosm and, as Sartre and Malcolm X advised, by any means necessary. The guidelines for determining the source of a book for your collection, be it Abebooks, auction, catalog et al, should be in what some take to be the the immortal words of Hassan i Sabbah despite Burroughs’ spin on the maxim: Nothing is forbidden. Everything is permitted.

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Several years ago, I wrote on the potential joys of collecting Charles Olson. Olson loomed as a literal giant over the small press and little magazine scene from 1950 until his death in 1970. As a result, his work appeared in some of the most interesting chapbooks and magazines of the period. His books are beautiful and expansive (I am thinking of the Jargon Press Maximus Poems) as objects above and beyond the epic scope of their contents.

Leroi Jones (later Amiri Baraka, but Jones for the purposes of this column) appeals to me in a way similar to Olson and, of course, William Burroughs. My interest in Jones centers on his Beat phase lasting until the mid 1960s. This work would make an outstanding collection. In 2000, Brown University showcased its Jones holdings and the Beat pieces really spoke to me. I was especially struck by Jones’ work as an editor. It seems like he had his hands in every major magazine coming out of New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Yugen, Floating Bear, Kulchur. This does not include his founding of Totem Press and that press’s publications with Cornith Books. Jones published Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Frank O’Hara, Charles Olson, Gary Snyder, Philip Whalen, Ed Dorn, Diane Di Prima, and Paul Blackburn.

I am going to focus here on Yugen. Yugen ran for eight issues from 1958-1962. The magazine filled a void for newly emerging schools of poets that were denied publication in the academic and mainstream venues, like Poetry or The Kenyon Review. Jones stated, “It was started because I didn’t see publications coming out that carried poetry or writing that I was interested in. Therefore, I thought I should start one to try to gather that poetry that I thought was interesting… I just thought nothing was happening on the poetry scene as it should be so I started publishing.”

Yugen is often described as a Beat outlet. Work by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen definitely appears frequently, but I think the content is much broader than that. Yugen billed itself as a “new consciousness in arts and letters.” The poetry dovetailed with the groundbreaking and monumental New American Poetry anthology of Don Allen published in 1959/1960. Jones included the New York School (Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch), Black Mountain (Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Joel Oppenheimer, Fielding Dawson), and San Francisco Renaissance (Robin Blaser) poets alongside a healthy helping of the Beats. The Black Mountain poets made a very strong showing. In the last issue, the table of contents reads like a who’s who of New American Poets. By 1962, Yugen‘s work was done. On ending the magazine, Jones stated, “Well, I think it just outlived its usefulness as far as I was concerned. By the time Yugen stopped publishing there were innumerable magazines that were publishing poets and writers that I had some respect for.”

Much of the work of constructing Yugen was done by Jones’ wife, Hettie Cohen. Cohen worked as an editor as Partisan Review which gave her invaluable experience in putting together a magazine. She performed many editorial tasks as well as designing the layout. Like with many magazines of the period, the construction process, such as collating, folding, mailing, and stapling, provided a center for the literary community. Collating parties became literary events. Hettie Cohen’s How I Became Hettie Jones is mandatory reading on the literary community in New York City in the late 1950s, early 1960s, as is Diane Di Prima’s Recollections of My Life as a Woman. Both books provide detailed accounts of the day-to-day process of running a literary magazine. I highly recommend them.

Yugen was printed by Troubador Press in New York City. All eight issues have a similar design and feel. They are simple yet handsome chapbooks, much like the small books published by Jones’ Totem Press, like O’Hara’s Second Avenue and Kerouac’s The Scripture of the Golden Eternity. The defining characteristic of a Jones chapbook was arresting cover art drawn by an artist closely affiliated with the literary scene. The artwork for Yugen possessed a strong Black Mountain feel with illustrations by Basil King and Norman Bluhm. The covers contained elements of Eastern calligraphy and the brushwork of the abstract expressionists like Franz Kline. Yugen shows how printing cheaply does not have to detract from richness of design. All Jones productions of this period appeal to me as objects saying nothing of the appeal of the writing within. Highpoints include Kerouac’s “Rimbaud” in Issue 6 as well as defining work by Charles Olson. While all the work is not of a high quality (it is uneven like most little magazines), the sense of a newly emerging literary community shines through. Yugen captures a snapshot of alternative poetics as the New American Poetry anthology broke things open.

William Burroughs appeared in two issues of Yugen: Issue 3 and Issue 8. These appearances highlight a change that occurred in Burroughs as a writer between the late 1950s and early 1960s. In issue three, Burroughs submitted “Have You Seen Pantapon Rose?,” an early piece of the still gestating Naked Lunch. Issue eight features an essay: “The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin.” In 1958, Burroughs was still searching for himself as a writer and unsure of both his work and his method. As I have mentioned before, Yugen proved instrumental in giving Burroughs confidence as a writer, providing publication at a crucial time in Burroughs’ development. Burroughs’ collaborator at the time was Allen Ginsberg. Burroughs’ letters containing routines were addressed to him. Oliver Harris details letter writing as a key to Burroughs’ method in William Burroughs and the Secret of Fascination.

By 1962, Burroughs was a completely different man and writer. Burroughs discovered the cut-up which replaced the routine as his major literary technique. Similarly, Gysin replaced Ginsberg as the major collaborator and confidante. The effects of the change can be seen in Burroughs’ essay on Gysin and the cut-up. Burroughs writes an authoritative essay featuring a cut up, not a routine. He has become a spokesman on writing technique and history. His belief in his style is absolute. Everything is a cut-up and all literature can be subjected to the cut-up. “ALL WRITING IS IN FACT CUT-UPS OF GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR OVERHEARD?” Burroughs’ voice is more confident and strident. Burroughs speaks from the mountain top; he has seen the light. You get the sense of a power shift between issues three and eight. In issue three, Burroughs benefits tremendously by appearing in Yugen. In issue eight, Yugen benefits tremendously by featuring Burroughs. Between the two issues, Burroughs went from literary unknown to an international cult figure.

To this day, Yugen remains fresh and vibrant, like the New American Poetry it featured. Putting together a complete run of Yugen is tough but not impossible. Issue four marks a turning point in the magazine’s availability on the collector’s market. Issues 1-4 are tough to find and are expensive, roughly $100-150 per issue. Issues 5-8 are much more common and cheaper. The later issues provide a good bang for the buck. Issue 6 includes Kerouac’s “Rimbaud” before it was published as a broadside by City Lights. Of course, issue 8 has the early Burroughs appearance. Visually and textually they are worth the $35-50 price tag. For anyone interested in the Beats and modern poetry in general, Yugen is a fun purchase. Truly, Yugen was a laboratory in which poets of the post-WWII era experimented before their work became accepted as mainstream.

Yugen Archive

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The history and contents of the magazine Locus Solus provide insight into the type of progressive poetry circles and ideas Burroughs started tapping into with his small scale, textual cut-up works of the early 1960s. A testament to refined taste, Locus Solus was impeccably edited by John Ashbery (Issue 3/4), Kenneth Koch (Issue 2), and James Schuyler (Issue 1 and 5). Harry Matthews published the magazine in France. One issue was done in Switzerland. Matthews was the only American member of an intriguing group of writers: OULIPO. OULIPO was a largely French writing society that specialized in complex word games and the surreal. Ashbery, Koch and Schuyler, along with the charismatic and talented Frank O’Hara, formed the core of the First Generation New York School. The New York School, like the Beat Generation (the Beats also had a four-person core — Burroughs, Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Corso), went through two or three generations beyond the initial core group.

Locus Solus took its name from Raymond Roussel’s classic, which betrays the editors’ affinity for the avant garde, the European, and the highly intellectual. The Collaboration issue (Locus Solus II) opens with a quote by Roussel and is then followed by a quote from Lautréamont (both untranslated). The table of contents to the magazine features classic Chinese and Japanese poets, Shakespeare, Aeschylus, John Donne, André Breton, Dwight Eisenhower, Sir John Suckling: in short a wide selection of the history of Western and Eastern culture. The poets were intensely interested in modern art and music. Influenced and inspired by Abstract Expressionists like Willem De Kooning, Jackson Pollock, and Franz Kline, the New York School poets lived and worked with Second Generation New York painters, like Grace Hartigan, Mike Goldberg, and Jane Franchlier. The magazine’s squat, plain appearance mimics the style of French publications from Gallimard. The Special Collaboration issue features a few Burroughs cut-ups of Rimbaud with Gregory Corso from Minutes to Go. The Exterminator also published in 1960 offered further examples of the textual cut-up. The New York poets all experimented with cut-up techniques (as well as other surrealist techniques of automatic writing and composition) in the early 1960s. Many of these creations are in the pages of Locus Solus. First and foremost, the magazine served as a vehicle for the New York School poets to express and to spread their artistic aesthetic.

In 1962 around the time of Locus Solus II, John Asbery published his breakthrough collection, The Tennis Court Oath. Still a highspot of contemporary avant garde poetry, the collection explores the same ground that Burroughs covered in his early cut-up experiments. Ashbery mixes surrealism, concrete poetry, the yet-to-be established Language poetry, and cut-up techniques to form a radically new art. Ashbery’s comments on these poems are similar to Burroughs’ own ideas and practice. Ashbery states, “And I was also rather interested in trying something new, [and] having difficulty in doing this, living in a country where the language spoken was not my own. And I began a lot of experiments, using collage techniques, especially from American and/or English books and magazines, perhaps to feel that I had a toehold in the English language.” He continues, “My intention was to be after… kind of… taking language apart so I could look at the pieces that made it up. I would eventually get around to putting them back together again, and would then have more of a knowledge of how they worked, together.”

Although I am shaky at best regarding their literary theories, it seems clear to me that Ashbery and Burroughs are using similar techniques and have a similar preoccupation with language and the nature of written communication. Ashbery believed language should ultimately depend on references to meanings generated outside language. Burroughs has no interest in putting words back together in order to learn more about how words worked, like Ashbery. Instead, he seeks to blow apart language in order to reach a higher, more advanced knowledge. Burroughs yearns for silence or a pictorial system of communication like hieroglyphics that merge word and image. I have always been somewhat baffled by discussions of this type and a more informed opinions would be appreciated. What is interesting to me is how Burroughs fits into a larger, international discussion of the time. I think this is symbolized by Burroughs’ move from the isolation of Tangier or Mexico City to the central location of Paris. Although Burroughs still works at the artistic margins in comparison to mainstream literature, his work of this period situates itself squarely in the tradition of the literary and artistic avant garde which often found a home base in Paris.

In poems like “The Skaters,” readers of Ashbery encounter “an intractable flux of verbal ‘found objects,’ shifting styles and registers, teasing literary allusions and echoes, fragmentary narrative episodes and descriptive scenes.” Such a statement could be describing Naked Lunch or the true cut-up novels. I am not suggesting that Burroughs influenced Ashbery or vice versa, but I am stating that Burroughs with the cut-up moved from largely a drug novelist who dabbled in more literary aspects, as witnessed in Junkie, the then unpublished Yage Letters and “Letter from a Master Addict,” to an avant garde writer fully experimenting with literary theory. Not surprisingly, Ashbery supported Burroughs’ inclusion in the Academy of Arts and Letters in 1983. In literary magazines like Locus Solus, Burroughs appeared prominently in an international avant garde circle. Clearly, the poets of the New York School saw at an early date that Burroughs was a fellow traveler along newly laid paths in the postmodern literary landscape.

Locus Solus Cover Archive

Locus Solus I

Locus Solus II

Locus Solus III-IV

Locus Solus V