Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

#18 – Semina 4 . An Installment in Jed Birmingham’s series of the The Top 23 Most Interesting Burroughs Collectibles.

In the Spring of 2003, my wife and I had recently separated and the ink had dried on the sale of our house. Alone, I retreated into a small one-bedroom apartment nestled in the center of a triangle involving all my points of interest: a cigar store, a library and a bar. It was a time to regroup and to collect my thoughts, not to collect Burroughs. Instead, flush with cash, I proceeded to shuttle my way between the aforementioned landmarks and to go on an epic Burroughs buying spree that I have yet to duplicate since. Seemingly every day a package containing some Burroughs rarity arrived in the mailroom. Items I previously never dreamed of being able to add to my library. Items I thought I would only be able to fondle at book fairs and in institutions. Right in the middle of this frenzy, I received a call from a book dealer that only happens to other collectors. Again never somebody like me, especially someone so young and so immature in collecting terms. See, I had only been collecting for about a decade and many of those years were an apprenticeship. At the time of the phone call, I was only thirty-one years old. A mere babe in the woods in the world of rare books. “Hey Jed, you interested in a run of Semina.” I could not believe it, seven of the nine issues of Wallace Berman’s legendary little mag had come to market. This is the type of item that never appears in a catalog, never gets posted online. For a dealer, it is not a question of finding a buyer, but merely of anointing one. I was chosen. I had only to say yes. And, of course, write the check. One proved way easier than the other.  

Semina is a little mag presented as an archive or collection. Berman hand-printed his curated items for each issue, in some cases related by theme, on papers of various sizes, usually the size of a postcard or index card, sometimes recycling scrap, and collated them into a sheet of card stock folded once with a Berman designed cover involving his photographs or collages. Berman then delivered these gifts via the post to a handpicked mailing list of artistic friends and peers. Copies were not for sale. Everything about Berman and Semina was about the handmade, the personal touch, the intimate gesture.  

Now for a Burroughs collector, Issue 4 is the one that matters. Burroughs’ “Excerpt from Pantapon Rose,” a selection from the then gestating Naked Lunch, appears on a single sheet of paper. I desperately wanted that issue, and, more specifically, that fragile piece of tissue paper, but the prospect of having a near complete run of Semina was very enticing. Nothing to sneeze at to be sure. By 2003, I was mutating into an archivist of the Mimeo Revolution as much as a Burroughs collector and a sizable run of Semina would have immediately become the centerpiece of my entire collection. If I was able to actually complete the run — a difficult, maybe impossible task — my collection would have leapt to another level entirely. Only institutions like MOMA and private collectors on the order of Philip Aarons possess a full run of Wallace Berman’s masterpiece.

As I said, it was tempting, but after two days and nights of agonizing about it and running the numbers in my head, I finally chickened out, as I inevitably knew I would the minute the opportunity presented itself. I had to face facts; I was not in that income bracket. Many men facing a mid-life crisis purchase a sports car; at thirty-two I was a bit young to shell out the price of a Hyundai on a magazine. Yet looking back on it now, over ten years later, that failure of nerve was one of the biggest financial mistakes I have made in all my years of collecting. If book collecting can be considered as an investment (I waver on this point myself), Semina has proven to be not just a great stock in recent years, but a highly visible and sexy one. It is one of the FANGs of the Mimeo Revolution. The Semina Culture exhibit in 2007 raised the profile of Berman and not merely raised the ceiling on Berman’s value, but obliterated it. I had the opportunity to get in on something approaching the ground floor. It is easy to forget that once upon a time collectors and dealers passed on issues of Semina thinking they would always be available. Issue 6, which features David Meltzer’s “The Clown,” could be had for $300. And one was always out there. Such are the fairy tales older dealers recount nowadays with faraway eyes to younger dealers and collectors. In days of yore, they fussed and fretted over condition, turning their noses on copies with slight imperfections. Nowadays few will take issue with a copy that is incomplete or damaged. Anything Semina is highly sought after, and given how rare they are, concessions must be made. All because, since the Semina exhibition and books on artist magazines by Phillip Aarons and Gwen Allen, it is now a collecting cliché that Semina stands apart from other little magazines of the Mimeo Revolution; it should be appreciated and thus speculated on as a work of contemporary art. And again it is art, not books and surely not magazines, which is a sound financial investment; it is art that skyrockets to astronomical sums; it is the art market that matters. The exceptions in the rare book market prove the rule.  

Sitting here now and compiling this list, I still need Issue 4 of Semina. Given what my book collection has become — a collection of Burroughs’ participation in the Mimeo Revolution — Semina 4 just might be the biggest hole I have. All when I had within my grasp the opportunity to have not only plugged that hole but filled it to overflowing. One of the cardinal rules of book collecting is that you only regret the books you do not buy. I have no bigger regret than Semina.

William Burroughs is widely acknowledged as the Godfather of Cool. If Burroughs is the Sinatra in the Rat Pack of Cool, then Wallace Berman might be its Dino. In reading, Nick Tosches’ bio, Dean, not Frank, comes across as the real deal. Maybe that is the case with Berman and Burroughs. Berman had Dean’s insouciance. He was careless with his art, its dissemination, and preservation. Of course, he took his creativity seriously, but he distained the art world and its institutional trappings. His audience was friends and family. He shunned the marketplace. Berman turned his back on the public, after the traumatic 1957 Ferus show shut down by the LA police, and walked away from a scene inhabited by degenerate angels. Burroughs, on the other hand, always sought to be popular. He desired desperately to sell out. The charming thing about Burroughs was that he was so wonderfully delusional and out of step with what the public actually wanted. The cut-ups are a case in point. He honestly believed they would be a commercial success. Gloriously wrong, he attempted to make things right once he heard readers complain about their unreadability and obscurity. He addressed such concerns by excising the poetry and incorporating narrative. The cut-up novels demonstrate this process in action. Both men became legendary, as their appearance on the Sgt. Pepper cover proves, but I feel Berman prostituted less of his artistic integrity in doing so.  

So to my mind, there is almost nothing cooler in Burroughs’ entire bibliography than the fact that Wallace Berman initiated Burroughs into his intimate, exclusive circle by including him in Semina. More often than not, the presence of Burroughs makes something cooler or more interesting. For example, Burroughs in Chicago Review suddenly makes that university journal relevant and cutting edge. The same goes for other institutional or mainstream publications, such The Harvard Advocate, The Yale Literary Journal, Harper’s or Esquire. I happen to think Burroughs makes Yugen cooler, more hip. Even Floating Bear. The issues with Burroughs, numbers 9 and 24, are the ones that became historically important or legendary. The influence of Burroughs on Jeff Nuttall took Nuttall and My Own Mag to highs never approached again. (And I happen to think that the collaboration benefitted both men much more equally than most do.) The same holds true for a number of second- and third-tier little magazines and journals. Insect Trust Gazette is cool because the editors appreciated and were influenced by Burroughs. Same holds true with Alex Neish and Sidewalk. 

Dan Lauffer’s Brown Paper is yet another example. Announced as a run of 243 copies, Lauffer guesses that only 100 were actually assembled. It has become desirable as a Burroughs item, and what an appearance it is. Burroughs and Lauffer corresponded through the mail, cutting up each other’s work. Lauffer published one of Burroughs’ responses. Oliver Harris has shown how important the letter was to the creation of Burroughs’ early novels. It should be remembered that the cut-up was a form of communication as much as a literary technique, a means to get in contact with contemporary texts and with a community of fellow writers directly. Therefore the postal system was crucial to Burroughs’ creative practice and it would be instructive to consider him in terms of mail artists, like Berman and Ray Johnson.  

Semina and Berman (as well as Sinking Bear and Johnson) are truly magical, and Burroughs gets a little extra shine by basking in their aura. Berman clearly thought Burroughs was cool and was attracted to his status as an outsider and outlaw. The drug addict as artist was particularly appealing to everybody in the Semina Circle. As the Stones sang, “All my friends are junkies.” And Junkie was a key text for Berman as much as Naked Lunch. It is the cover of the Ace Junkie that appears in Berman’s experimental film The Aleph, which documents Berman’s obsessions. Berman’s totems were society’s taboos.  

In particular, Berman gives added luster to Burroughs and the cut-up. Rubbing shoulders with Berman — right as he was about to “rub out the word” in Minutes to Go, The Exterminator and Soft Machine — put Burroughs in the context of junk art, assemblage and collage. It makes perfect sense and rightly links the cut-up method not just with experimental literature of the past but with contemporary art practice. Again remember it is art that matters. Literature that aspires to art is what is truly interesting to me. Berman was among the first to recognize that Burroughs was a poet. And he published Burroughs as one. Semina 4 is entirely a collection of poems. Like with art, poetry is also what matters. Novels that aspire to poetry are something special. I do not care about story, plot, or character development. It is enough to evoke a color, a moment, a mood, a sensation. Capture an impression and you leave one on me. Naked Lunch does that. Junkie does not. That novel’s strength is that it realistically documents a period in the history of heroin. In terms of art, it is figurative not abstract. It is primary source material not poetry. That is why a selection from Naked Lunch, not Junkie, appears in Semina.

Burroughs’ appearance in Black Mountain Review 7 from roughly the same period as Semina 4 is another example of Burroughs receiving more than he gave. In my mind few things are of more interest and fascination than Black Mountain College. I could have easily included the Beat Issue of Black Mountain Review on my list. Editors Robert Creeley and Allen Ginsberg, both master poets, recognized Burroughs as a peer. The Composite City selection is a prose poem in the spirit of Rimbaud. But that little magazine is only a teaser for what I really hoped would have happened. I often fantasize about Burroughs publications that never were and wonder just what these “what ifs” would have looked like. So indulge me. What if Robert Creeley when he published “In Search of Yage” from the still nebulous Naked Lunch issued the episodes published in the Chicago Review and Big Table as a Divers Press title? With a cover by Franz Kline or Robert Rauschenberg, perhaps. The timing does not quite jive, as Creeley shut down his Press in 1955, but he was still involved with Black Mountain Review in late 1957. As Lloyd Christmas says, “So you’re telling me there is a chance!!” I have almost everything ever published by Divers Press and the thought of printer Mossen Alcover putting the text of Naked Lunch on the stick in sun drenched Mallorca just might be my idea of the perfect Burroughs book that never was. The only thing that could top it would be if Creeley invited Burroughs to teach at Black Mountain College and Burroughs discussed Mayan glyphs with Charles Olson with the resulting conversations being published as a follow-up volume to The Mayan Letters.

Only a pipe dream. On the other hand, for a brief moment Burroughs entered the Semina Circle, and gloriously so. To think, I had the chance to get my hands not just Issue 4 but many more. That chance came at just that perfect moment. Both might never coincide again. I will have to live with that. And, oh, how it kills me. 

Issue 1

• Cover: Cameron by Berman
• E.I Alexander (Robert Alexander) untitled poem (“Twelve times the door rattled and leven”)
• Charles Brittin: Homer (photograph)
• Cameron: Peyote Vision (drawing)
• Jean Cocteau: The Detective (Poem translated by Will Harriss)
• Marion Grogan: Untitled Poem (“When was it warned”)
• Hermann Hesse: To a Toccata by Bach (Poem translated by Ruth Baker Day)
• Walter Hopps: Photographs (Light Drawing and a jazz musician)
• David Meltzer: “An Unpublished Letter to Some Lost Relatives” (poem)

Issue 2

• Cover: Charles Brittin, Photograph of Suzi Hicks (niece of Loree Hicks)
• Back Cover: Wallace Berman: Typed Notice about degenerate angels
• Herman Hesse: The Bead Game (Poem translation Mervyn Savill)
• Paul Eluard: Patience (Poem translation Louis Renoir)
• Jack Anderson: Poem for Alice
• Cameron: Excerpt from a work in progress (poem)
• Jean Cocteau: Untitled drawing (opium smoker)
• Zack Walsh: Untitled Poem (“Like toys of dolls”)
• Eric Cashen: Incompatible (Prose)
• Pantale Xantos: (aka Wallace Berman) Untitled Poem (“A face raped by innumerable messiahs”)
• Wallace Berman: Two photographs of Robert Alexander shooting up
• Lynn Trocchi: Untitled Poem (O God/Release my soul”)
• Idell T. Romero (Aya Tarlow): Incident (Poem)
• J.B. May: It’s Living Now (Poem)
• Charles Baudelaire: Tomb of a Cursed Poet (poem translation by Hyman Lopez)
• Charles Bukowski: Mine (poem)
• Peder Carr: Untitled poem (“I shall grasp the air of the day with my sucking lungs”
• Judson Crews: Does a Ghost Have Thighs (poem)
• John Reed: Untitled Poem (“The Sun will touch you”)
• Lewis Carroll: Manipulated Photographs
• David Meltzer: Untitled Poem (“Upon a time”)
• Marion Grogan: Untitled Poem (When tongue forges wonder”)
• Paul Valery: The Sylph (poem translated by R. Rand)
• Walter Hopps: Photograph (Dead Shark)
• Alexander Trocchi: From Cain’s Book
• John Altoon: Untitled ink drawing (three figures and a priest over dead child)
• Marcia Jacobs (aka Wallace Berman): Circus (poem)
• Mike McClure: Untitled Poem (“I wanted to turn to electricity”)
• Rabindranath Tagore: His Road (poem)
• Wallace Berman: Art is love is God (poem)

Issue 3

• Cover: Wallace Berman photograph of peyote buttons
• Mike McClure: Peyote Poem

Issue 4

• Cover: Wallace Berman photograph of Shirley Berman
• I.E. Alexander (Robert Alexander): The Point Encased (poem)
• Wallace Berman: Film stills
• William Blake: To God (poem)
• Ray Bremser: Cat Digging Walls (poem)
• William Burroughs: Excerpt from Pantapon Rose
• Peder Carr: Two Poems (“They squeezed him into a misty little corner” and I smolder and smell and fume and wish for closeness”)
• John Chance: Talking Buddhism with My Lawyer (poem)
• Beverly Collins: Untitled Poem (“Today’s children”)
• Judson Crews: Right Now I Am Not So Very Big (poem)
• Charles Foster: Poem (“Paleolithic dawns”)
• Allen Ginsberg: To Lindsay (poem)
• Pierre Jean Jouve: Sur un Mystere (poem translated by Howard Shulman)
• Robert Kaufman: Dear People (poem)
• Philip Lamantia: Untitled Poem (“Ah Blessed Virgin Mary”)
• Ron Lowenisohn: Untitled Poem (“The pieces of watermelon”)
• Michael McClure: Untitled Poem (“We’re in the middle of a deep cloud”)
• David Meltzer: Sampson Agonistes (poem)
• Stuart Perkoff: Boplicity (poem)
• John Reed: Untitled Poem (“It was her love for the motormans glove”)
• Charles Stark: Photograph (nude woman)
• Idell T. Romero (Aya Tarlow): A Thimble of Goodbye (poem)
• Su Shi: Untitled Poem (“Once with his young wife”) (translated by Charles Guenther)
• Jules Supervielle: Untitled Poem (“I felt that this ear of the soul opened”) (translated by Charles Guenther)
• John Wieners: Untitled Poem (“And what is nothingness”)
• W.B. Yeats: Oil and Blood (poem)
• Pantale Xantos (aka Wallace Berman): Untitled Poem (“Morphine Mother”)

Issue 5

• Cover: Charles Brittin photograph of Mayan stone phallus
• Back Cover: Reproduction of Postcard image of Miguel Cabrera’s Retrato de la phenix Americana la madre Juana Inez de la Cruz
• Antonin Artaud: Excerpt from Le Mexique et la Civilization (uncredited translation)
• John Chance: Untitled Poem (“How I Died”)
• Kirby Doyle: I Mexico After Artaud (poem)
• Lawrence Jordan: Rockets (poem)
• John Hoffman: Floridas (poem)
• Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz: Sister Juana Ines of the Cross (poem translated by Philip Lamantia)
• Robert Kaufman: Untitled Poem (“O mexico your sadness is nut brown”)
• Philip Lamantia: Memoria (poem)
• Christopher MacLaine: Callejon Garcia Villa Lorca (poem)
• William Margolis: Morning (poem)
• Michael McClure: Untitled Poem (“We are impervious as the skin of our dreams”)
• Anne McKeever: Photographic Collage (musicians)
• David Meltzer: Untitled Poem (“Todos santos”)
• John Reed: Untitled Ink Drawing (monster) and Untitled Poem (“The Vultures ring around the sun”)
• Keith Sanzenbach: Untitled Ink Drawing (Mexican Lady)
• Ruth Weiss: From Compass (poem)
• John Wieners: Peyote Poem
• Pantale Xantos: Photograph of Lamantia injecting heroin

Issue 6

• Cover: Wallace Berman photographic collage
• Wallace Berman: Collage of various ink drawings and texts
• David Meltzer: The Clown (poem)

Issue 7

• Cover: Altered Photograph of Susan Hayward as Barbara Graham in I Want to Live
• Alternate Cover: Cannibis Sativa
• Wallace Berman: Photograph of still life featuring Cocteau, Nijinsky and pre-Raphaelite painting accompanied by an Untitled Poem (“Spurred by what reason”)
• Art is Love is God (poem)
• Boxed City (poem)
• Oops (poem)
• Fairytale for Tosh (poem)
• First & Last Fearpoem (poem)
• Mailer to David Meltzer: Photograph of John Wieners by Berman with The Window of Waltham (poem by Wieners)
• Mailer to George Herms (collage of various drawings and writing)
• Photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and Tosh and toy machine)
• Photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and Patricia Jordan in mask; image of Billie Holiday)
• Photographic Collage (Hebrew Aleph and large pendant hanging over Shirley Berman’s torso)
• Photographic Collage (Hebrew Aleph and marijuana plants)
• Photographic Collage (Hebrew Aleph and altered photograph of two images of Jerry Heiserman)
• Photographic Collage (Hebrew Aleph, Hebrew book, matchbook emblem of eagle and devouring lion and Charlie Parker)
• Photographic Collage (Hebrew Aleph over photograph of Arthur Richer playing tenor sax)
• Rapist and Voicethrower (coded poem with numbers substituted for words)
• Some easy-rider titles by Rohmer (poem)
• P. Xantos: Self-Portrait Photograph
• Wallace Berman: Untitled Manuscript Poem (“If someone will explain)

Issue 8

• Cover: Dean Stockwell: Photograph of William George Heirens (serial killer)
• Antonin Artaud: Untitled Poetic Fragment (“It’s me”)
• Cameron: June 2, 1962 (poem and drawing of sphinx-like woman)
• Robert Duncan: Increasing (poem) with Berman altered photograph of nude Duncan in pool
• Kirby Doyle: Excerpt from Motorcycle Poem with Berman photographic collage of a bicycle rider
• John Reed: Fongmother (poem in Chinese characters)
• William House: Untitled drawing (abstract tree)
• Jess (uncredited): Photographic Collage (image of cat holding a briefcase leaving Turkish prison)
• Jerry Katz: Untitled Poem (“I am that noise which”) with Berman photograph of middle finger
• Michael McClure: Ghost Tantra with found photograph of woman nursing baby and bear cub
• Aya Tarlow: Untitled Poem (“my secret language”) with Patricia Jordan Photographic Collage of female servants dining juxtaposed with large human skeleton
• Elias Romero: Untitled Poem (“towards tall icy buttes) with Lyn Foulkes untitled drawing of hand with cross
• Wallace Berman: Wardell Dead (Photographic Collage with text)
• Collage (Head of Lenny Bruce beaten by policeman with butterflies in his hair)
• Photographic Collage (Boxer Benny Peret on the night he died in the ring)
• John Wieners: Le Chariot (poem) with Berman Photographic Collage of chariot and Ray Charles
• Zack Walsh: Geography (poem) with Berman altered photograph from Hollywood fan magazine

Issue 9

• Cover: Altered Photograph of Oswald shooting by Ruby
• Michael McClure: Untitled Poem (Double Murder)

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

The weekend before St. Pat’s, I rode the Chinatown bus up to New York City and then hopped in a taxi to NYU’s Grey Art Gallery to take in the Semina Culture exhibit. The opportunity to view a complete run of Semina drew me there initially, but the rest of the exhibit (the photographs, the artwork, the scrapbooks, the films, the sculpture) kept me entranced for hours.

Yet I have to begin with Semina. The magazine provides the exhibit’s name as well as the glue that holds it together. Berman’s act of love did not disappoint. Encased under glass, Semina is one of the first things one encounters in the gallery. The lack of a true binding allowed the curators to spread out and arrange the contents of all nine issues a full six feet or so. I was first struck by how small and delicate the magazine is. Issue 9 is barely the size of a postcard. Issue 4, the one Burroughs appears in, is the largest in format but the content is again the essence of ephemera. Burroughs’ “Pantopon Rose” is a fragmentary prose poem printed on tissue-like paper. Most of the contents are on single-sided index-card-sized broadsides. On the one hand, Semina given its size and fragile nature suggests an ethereal, spiritual quality, yet it is also very material. Its physicality is readily apparent. I believe the letterpress (a very physical process) was used for most of the printing, but the presence of the artist’s hand struck me most in the folding, the cutting, the pasting, the collating. These procedures are utilized on a textual and visual level in the cut-up technique as well. Gysin rediscovered the cut-up in the physical process of preparing a painting, and of course Burroughs experimented with fold-ins, grids, cutting, pasting, and collating throughout his literary career.

In a conversation on Sunday, Jan Herman mentioned all the work and care that went into the folding of the Nova Broadcast publications. Semina magazine, and in fact much of the work of the Semina Circle (I think of Jay DeFeo’s “The Rose”), forces the viewer to recognize the element of manual labor necessary for the creation of a work of art. Produced during an age of mass market printing, the mechanical reproduction of offset, and the development of the large publishing conglomerates, Semina wears the mark of the handmade proudly. For example in Issue 2, Alexander Trocchi’s contribution is a delicate reproduction of a holograph manuscript. Trocchi’s original hung above the glass case as did several other manuscript pieces.

Semina casts a huge shadow over the exhibit, but I also found myself thinking about Floating Bear. I tend to place Floating Bear with Yugen and Kulchur. I consider it New York based and a product of Leroi Jones’ editorial hand. Not true. Luckily right before attending the Semina exhibit, I read the complete run of Floating Bear in the Laurence McGilvery reprint of 1973. Like Semina, Floating Bear captures in print (again in a fragile, ephemeral way) the Wallace Berman circle. Berman, Michael McClure, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners, David Meltzer, Robert Duncan, Diane Di Prima, Lew Welch, George Herms, Kirby Doyle, Ray Johnson, Jack Smith, Jess, Sharon Morrill, John Reed, Philip Lamantia, Bobby Driscoll, Stuart Perkoff. Like Semina, Floating Bear cannot be confined to a single geography. Boston, Southern and Northern California, New York all served as centers at various times. Floating Bear extended far beyond Jones’ editorial reach as Diane Di Prima embraced any and all creative impulses that came into her far-ranging path. This is more noticeable after Jones’ resignation from the magazine in Issue 26, but it is present from the beginning to anyone who looks closely.

I have to mention Issue 33 of Floating Bear in more detail. Going through the exhibit, I felt that issue captured the spirit of Berman’s circle as well as Semina did. One of Di Prima’s great innovations in Floating Bear, besides the change in format, was the use of guest editors. John Wieners edited Issue 33. The poem by Stephen Jonas comes into play here. Jonas, like Wieners, was a Boston poet much influenced by Olson, Creeley and Black Mountain as well as immersed in a skid-row environment of drugs, promiscuity and madness. Walking through the exhibit and reading the brief biographies brought home the high price of pursuing and maintaining one’s creative demons and impulses. Many lives endured or ended in the tragedies of suicide, accidental death, madness, drug addiction or homelessness. Robert Alexander (drug addiction), Wallace Berman (killed by drunk driver), Ray Bremser (drug addiction), Joan Brown (accidental death), Kirby Doyle (drug addiction/mental illness), Bobby Driscoll (died homeless/unidentified), Joe Dunn (drug addiction), Loree Foxx (died in police custody), Dennis Hopper (drug addiction), Didi Morrill (drug addiction), Billy Jahrmarkt (accidental shooting), Bob Kaufman (mental illness), Stuart Perkoff (drug addiction), John Reed (homelessness), Arthur Richer (drug overdose), Jack Smith (AIDS), Ben Talbert (drug overdose), Alexander Trocchi (drug addiction), Lew Welch (suicide), John Wieners (mental illness), Zack Walsh (drug addiction).

Jonas’ lines capture one of the essential elements that drove the Semina Circle in their acts of creation. Their art serves as an existential act documenting the lives of men and women that the mainstream would like to ignore, incarcerate, or destroy. The act of writing leaves a record, a trace of these “fragmentary lives” and outlaw lifestyles. Mark-making grounds these writers in the human, the individual, as well as the communal. It asserts their physical presence. In the Silent Decade, the Semina Circle demanded to be heard if only amongst themselves and in their own language. Like Semina, Floating Bear 33 locks in time a largely forgotten band of junkie poets and artists destined in many cases to fall victim to their destructive tendencies. This linkage between intense creativity with self-destruction, particularly persistent in the 20th Century, has always interested me. The Semina Circle could provide an interesting case study in this phenomenon. In the introduction to the Floating Bear collection, Di Prima writes, “Some of the work that [Wieners] used when he edited Number 33 came from as far back as 1951. The issue was predominately a street / junkie issue: beautiful, wasted chicks and hustlers that John had known in Boston, in San Francisco and New York. It’s a very beautiful issue, I think.” I have to agree.

Just as Burroughs lurks throughout Floating Bear including in two of the most legendary issues, Number 9 and 24, the gentleman junky hovers on the fringes of the Semina show. Burroughs appears in Semina 4. Burroughs contributes a text called “Pantopon Rose.” This piece is a slightly edited fragment that eventually appeared as the opening to the “Have you seen Pantopon Rose?” section of Naked Lunch. As I have mentioned before, Semina was a very important early publication for Burroughs giving him confidence that Naked Lunch would find a printer and a larger audience. The presentation in Semina give “Pantopon Rose” the look and feel of a prose poem. Given Burroughs’ interest in Rimbaud and his poetic cut-ups of Minutes to Go and The Exterminator, this aspect of Burroughs’ work deserves closer attention. I view much of Naked Lunch as a prose poem re-writing of Junky. Such an approach to Naked Lunch gains credence in sections like “Have you seen Pantopon Rose?” with the return of characters and locations from Junky. I also see elements of On the Road in Junky and the early sections of Naked Lunch. Junky is something of a road novel told straight and the opening sections of Naked Lunch re-envision the road aspect in a fragmentary and poetic manner. Kerouac’s Visions of Cody performs the same form of rewriting as Kerouac retells On the Road in light of the technique of spontaneous prose and sketching.

The excerpt “Pantopon Rose” in Semina should not be confused with the much later fine-press publication from West Virginia. This broadside reprints a holograph poem written by Burroughs in 1995 called “Pantopon Rose.” In real life Pantopon Rose was a prostitute who sold junk on the side in 1940s New York City. In an act of nostalgia, Burroughs creates less a poem than a little song. Again the poetic aspect of Burroughs’ work comes to the surface in this late work. In a 1966 interview with Paris Review, Allen Ginsberg was one of the first to remark that Burroughs was in essence a poet. More obvious with sections of Naked Lunch as well as Minutes to Go and The Exterminator, this observation could be extended to the cut-up trilogy of Soft Machine, Ticket That Exploded, and Nova Express. Some of the cut-up experiments of the 1960s are examples of visual / concrete / experimental poetry as much as prose.

Semina 4, like much of Semina, was a drug-themed issue. Of course, Burroughs comes to mind given all the images of heroin, including a fetish-like treatment of the act of shooting up. I am thinking of the photograph of Philip Lamantia as well as the footage of Robert Alexander in Wallace Berman’s film The Aleph. In The Aleph, you have to pay close attention but the pulp fiction cover of the Ace Junkie appears in the film in Berman’s trademark transistor radio. Interestingly, the picture of Junkie is the only color image in the entire film.

The Ginsberg section of the exhibit features a photograph of Burroughs from 1953, a monumental year for the friendship of Burroughs, Ginsberg and Kerouac. In addition much of the artwork, particularly the scrapbooks and collages, parallels Burroughs’ work of the 1950s and 1960s. Flipping through the pages of Ports of Entry alongside a copy of Semina Culture bears this out. This was most noticeable to me in the various scrapbooks in the exhibit such as Diane Di Prima’s three books on loan from The University of North Carolina. I also found the collages of Jess very similar to Burroughs’ work as well.

One reason for this similarity could be the fact that Burroughs and the Semina Circle found similar inspiration in the textual and visual experiments of the Dadaists. I was lucky enough to see the Dada exhibit in Washington DC. Again opening the pages of that catalog with the Ports of Entry and Semina books proves instructive. The parallels with German Dada, particularly Hannover and Kurt Schwitters, are very strong. Schwitters’ Merz material as well as his collages join photomontage and juxtapositions of various typographies, much like Burroughs’ work of the fifties and sixties. Unlike Schwitters, Burroughs and the Semina Circle utilize the typewriter and handwriting in their scrapbooks and collage pieces. Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch’s works are also instructive. Ports of Entry makes all these Dada connections readily apparent. No finer discussion of Burroughs as a visual artist exists to my knowledge.

It is interesting to me that Beats Michael McClure and Allen Ginsberg are considered part of the Semina Circle, but Burroughs is not. Both McClure and Ginsberg had considerable contact with Berman through face-to-face meetings or correspondence. A physical encounter with Burroughs was largely impossible due to the fact that Burroughs lived abroad during much of Berman’s creative career and rarely went to California. I have found no evidence that Berman and Burroughs met or corresponded. Berman is not mentioned in the two major Burroughs biographies. In all probability, the closest Berman and Burroughs ever got was rubbing shoulders on the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album.

Age might also be a factor as Burroughs seems more a source of inspiration and a father figure than a peer. The treatment of Junkie in The Aleph suggests that this is the case. Burroughs serves as an iconic figure, an underground legend who trailblazed the road to excess, like Artaud, Charlie Parker, or Rimbaud.

I found myself focusing on the textual material at the show. Obviously, Semina grabbed my attention, but I thought the placement of 20 odd pieces of mail art directly across from the magazine was very thoughtful and thought-provoking. Semina was truly a form of mail art, and some of the mail art was really a magazine of sorts; one with a print run of a single copy. The scrapbooks were wonderful as were the manuscripts both typed and handwritten. I must mention Kirby Doyle’s scroll version of Happiness Bastard as well as the holograph manuscript of Bob Kaufman’s Blues for Hal Winter. According to legend, Kaufman never recorded his poems in written form. His wife documented them from performances given around North Beach, so a written manuscript is amazing as are the inscribed copies of Kaufman’s signature works from City Lights: Abominist Manifesto and Second April.

The little magazine and the small press played an important role in disseminating the work of these artists wary of and shunned by the mainstream publishing industry. I was happy to see copies of work by Dave Haselwood’s Auerhahn Press, Joe Dunn’s White Rabbit Press, and Diane Di Prima’s Poets Press. In many cases, every aspect of the books’ production from text to printing to book design (layout, photography and artwork) was completed by the artists themselves. The results are some wonderful examples of book as art object in the 20th Century.

Eight films were also shown. I mentioned Berman’s The Aleph, but all the films were a pleasure to watch. Given the montage effects, the films served as a cinematic counterpart to the collage works throughout the exhibit. This was most apparent in an untitled animated film by Russel Tamblyn. “The stop action film built around an image of a group of soldiers posed to have a group portrait taken before an open window; the film explodes with a barrage of colorful imagery-much of it hand drawn by Tamblyn-which passes through that open window.” Berman’s treatment of the hand holding a transistor radio functions in much the same way. Inside the radio, Berman places several images of personal importance as well as ones iconic in pop culture.

Toni Basil of “Oh, Mickey” fame edited four of the eight films shown. Much could (and probably has) be made of the intersection of Semina and the notion of celebrity. Many members of the circle had ties to the fringes of the entertainment industry, particularly as child stars. Basil, Dennis Hopper and Russel Tamblyn are still active in Hollywood and the music / dance scene. Berman is an interesting study as he was clearly fascinated by celebrities and the mechanics of fame, but he personally stayed out of the spotlight. Semina was available only by invitation, and Berman never showed his work publicly after a run-in with authorities for obscenity at a 1957 show at the Fergus Gallery. I do not know what to make exactly of this interplay of fear and fascination of the mainstream exhibited by Berman and his Circle. Any comments or thoughts would be appreciated.

The majority of Basil’s films show the Berman Circle at play. For example, Our Trip documents Basil, Teri Garr and Ann Marshall’s adventures in London in 1967. The Ping Pong Match (1967-1968) features Dean Stockwell and Billy Gray battling it out at an outdoor table. “Ping Pong is an impressive, masterfully edited first film that moves at lightning speed, transforming sport into found choreography.” My last experience at the Grey Gallery was Basil’s film Game of the Week. This film captures an afternoon softball game in the summer of 1969 at Topanga Canyon. Knowing all the death and madness surrounding these artists, several of whom wandered alone in the dark deserts of California or other urban wastelands, it was nice to leave the exhibit with a scene of light and happiness. The film suggests that the art exhibited was in many cases made possible by a community of great love, support and togetherness, and not just the expression of a solitary artist’s sense of alienation and mad vision. The film has a surprise ending that I will not spoil, but given the events surrounding the Fergus Gallery show of Berman’s work in 1957, it is nice to see Berman get the last laugh at the Grey.

Beginning of Burroughs’ “Have You Seen Pantopon Rose” from Naked Lunch

A “slightly edited” version of this section of Naked Lunch appears in Semina 4. It is presented as a “prose poem,” which demonstrates the poetic re-rendering Burroughs gave to nearly the same material originally presented more prosaically in Junky.

Stay away from Queens Plaza, son… Evil spot haunted by dicks scream for dope fiend lover… Too many levels… Heat flares out from the broom closest high on ammonia… like burning lions…. fall on poor old lush worker scare her veins right down to the bone… Her skin-pop a week or do that five-twenty-nine kick handed out free and gratis by NYC to jostling junkies….

So Fag, Beagle, Irish, Sailor beware….Look down, look down along that line before you travail there…