Wallace Berman – RealityStudio

Auerhahn Press Archive

RealityStudio — Sun, 29 Jan 2017 01:55:02 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Reps at Batman

Paul Reps
Picture-Poems
Batman Gallery announcement

Here is another Batman Gallery announcement; this time for Paul Reps. Reps is who initially got Haselwood and Hoyem together, as Hoyem wanted to publish a book by Reps. Reps is a haiku pioneer in the United States. The resulting book was Gold/Fish Signatures: Poems. It is with this book of Zen poetry that Eastern influences come into the Auerhahn aesthetic.

The Ostentation of Peacocks

John Wieners
The Hotel Wentley Poems
1965
Dave Haselwood edition

John Wieners
The Hotel Wentley Poems
1965
Auerhahn Press edition

I call on Kane’s Book, which is a Book of Daniel, not Trocchi, as a reference to the self-consciousness and sense of display that enters into Dave Haselwood Books as opposed to the early Auerhahn titles. The two editions of The Hotel Wentley Poems capture this shift. In the 1965 Haselwood edition, the mysterious Jerry Burchard cover photograph has been framed by what can be interpreted as feathers. It looks like an opening credit to a James Bond film.

Personally I prefer the gritty, early covers. Maybe that is the Berman influence. I do not know but the later Dave Haselwood titles run the danger of turning the Auerhahn look into a preening peacock.

Chinoiserie

John Wieners
Chinoiserie
Dave Haselwood Books

One of 100 copies, Chinoiserie by John Wieners was an early offering by Dave Haselwood Books. I see quite a bit of what has been presented as the Hoyem look carrying over into the post-Auerhahn publications of Dave Haselwood Books, particularly the affinity for Asian artistic styles and papers. Chinoiserie indeed.

The Book Art of Dave Haselwood

Bruce Conner and Michael McClure
Mandalas
1966

Here is our first publication by Dave Haselwood Books, an announcement for a collaboration by Bruce Conner and Michael McClure. Published in 1966, “1200 copies on 65 pound beige cover stock, saddle-stitched into 130 lb cover; text in 12pt Clarendon, versos printed with Ben Day dot screen (Johnston).” Give an assist to Haselwood as book designer, as this is an artists’ book with text by McClure and mandalas by Conner.

Not to be confused with Lobe Key Stilled Lionman Laced Winged April Raphael Dance Wiry, which was also a collaboration by Conner and McClure, “11.1 X 14.2 Ultima laid envelope; Bruce Conner 1966 Michael McClure (on gummed flap); contains 24 cards 5 X 5 with 12 pt Joanna capitals; four words per card, bled mandalas on verso (the announcement for the next book) (Johnston).”

Seemingly similar publications but if you try to purchase them at a bookshop or online you will not confuse them due to a major difference: Mandalas is around $75; Lobe Key $1500.

A Writer Scorned

William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin
The Exterminator
Announcement

Alastair Johnston’s bibliography is the best place to go to get information on William Burroughs’ interaction with Auerhahn Press. The second volume of Burroughs’s letters has just come out and it includes a handful of correspondence between Burroughs and Haselwood.

The relationship of the two men deteriorated when Haselwood balked at publishing The Exterminator II. One dose of the cut-ups was enough for Haselwood. The cut-ups were tough medicine. At one point Burroughs wrote five increasingly irate letters to Haselwood to get information on future publication and royalities. Here is the fifth letter which was mentioned but not included in Johnston. It is a rare instance of a pissed off Burroughs.

Feb 24, 1961
9 Rue Git Le Coeur
Paris 6, France

Dear Dave Haselwood:

You seem to be running a mighty loose ship. This is the fifth letter I have sent you to inquire about a manuscript sent six months ago. Now I hear through J. Montgomery that you do not intend to publish Exterminator II. I consider your behavior discourteous. sloppy business practice, dishonest, and down right stupid. Is that clear enough or shall I make it even clearer? Will you please return my manuscript right now like today.

Best
William Burroughs

Haselwood responded to this letter and sent Burroughs a royalty check. The beast was calmed to a certain extent, even admiting to Haselwood “[j]ust as well I think the other material was not published in that form.”

The Book to Come

Robert Duncan
A Book of Resemblances
Announcement

Auerhahn Press
Books in Print

This list of publications is interesting in the fact that it includes A Book of Resemblances by Robert Duncan as “In Preparation.” The project (spectacularly) fell through and was never done by Haselwood.

The Batman Gallery

Robert La Vigne
Announcement for exhibit at the Batman Gallery
1964

This is more job work by Auerhahn: an announcement for an exhibition of Robert La Vigne at The Batman Gallery. I have read quite a bit and there is quite a bit written on the Ferus Gallery but I find myself drawn to The Batman Gallery. I really do not know much about it; Jason Davis recommends Jack Foley’s O Her Blackness Sparkles as a place to start. Mental note made and soon to be acted upon.

Billy Jahrmarkt started the Gallery on November 3, 1960 with his father’s money. It was in large part a measure to keep Billy occupied and out of trouble. The gallery was sold in 1962 to Michael Argon, who ran it until 1965. This above announcement is late in the game for Batman: 1964.

The Gallery was located at 2222 Fillmore, next door to the International Music Hall and down the street from the McClure’s residence from 1958 to 1961. Michael McClure figures in huge in the Gallery; he suggested the name (after Billy’s obsession with Batman); he persuaded Billy’s father to release the money; and he provided content by putting on The Feast there soon after the opening. The space was a defunct dress shop located by Bruce Conner, and he designed the Gallery. Conner was the subject of the Gallery’s first show.

Jahrmarkt is one of the doomed figures of the Berman Circle, who played careless with his talents and interests. Given Jahrmarkt’s addictions and wandering interest, the Gallery opened when it happened to open; mounted shows on an irregular schedule; and in some cases even sold some art. I would suspect the sale to Agron marked a shift in operating procedure and standardized things a bit. In a characteristic gesture, Jahrmarkt gave Berman his Verifax machine after Billy had grown bored with it. Berman put it to good use.

On Jahrmarkt, McClure states, “Nobody expected Billy to live very long.” He did not. Jahrmarkt moved to Afghanistan because heroin and guns were legal and freely obtainable there. In 1973, he dropped a gun and accidentally shot himself in the stomach. Not realizing the direness of the situation, he did nothing to address the wound and bled to death by the morning.

I have to admit that figures like Jahrmarkt fascinate me. And there are several like him in the Berman Circle. The carelessness, the wastefulness, the insouciance. The disrespect shown to one’s own abilities and one’s artistic output. The opportunity, the possibility, the inheritance, the promise squandered. It is the same reason I am drawn to the philosophies of Bataille. All this was reflected in the creation and day-to-day operations of the Batman Gallery. With Jahrmarkt it is a miracle that anything was accomplished, that any of it survived, and that any of it mattered. In my eyes they definitely did.

A Night at the Theatre

Program for a performance at the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop
King Lear
1961

I hope all you lovebirds are enjoying your Ghirardelli chocolates and sparkling wines from Napa and Sonoma. Remember the words of France: Love is not love / When it is mingled with regards that stand / Aloof from the entire point. Will you have her? / She is herself a dowry.

The program for a performance of King Lear by the San Francisco Actor’s Workshop from 1961. Here we have an example of Auerhahn working hard for the money. So you better treat her right. Robert La Vigne did the costume and set design. There is a very nice write up on Big Bridge with images of the performance.

It is the advertisements that make this program: for Auerhahn, the Batman Gallery, and, yes, The Curtain Call (“where the fourth act begins”). I hope everybody had a drink at The Curtain Call tonight, and I leave you to your fifth and final acts??

But before I do, let’s remember to tip our servers and that means a shout out to Jason Davis, who has been serving up some remarkable Auerhahn material. Thanks so much.

From Auerhahn with Love

Auerhahn Valentine

Valentine’s Day the Auerhahn way.

Hugs and Kisses,

A Pre-Valentine’s Day Present

Micheal McClure
Dark Brown
Announcement

What you need on Valentine’s Day is “A Long Poem of Spiritual Revolution and Sexuality.” But I have a lot of shit to do tonight so all you get is a little bit of Dark Brown, i.e., the announcement of publication. As I mentioned before this is the first title with Andrew Hoyem’s name on it. Haselwood on Dark Brown: “That is one where [Hoyem] really hit it.” At $3.00 it is one of the more expensive offerings of the early partnership, but on Valentine’s Day money is no object for that which you love.

A Man’s Gotta Eat

Auerhahn Press Call for Work

And feed the press. The press is hungry. Haselwood and Hoyem churned out a bunch of job work on top all the books, broadsides, and ephemera under their own imprint. The piece above is pure Auerhahn and a beautiful piece of work. Call for work/exemplar of that work. Auerhahn: Killing two birds with one stone.

The Show Must Go On

Auerhahn Press
Books in Print
1966

After Auerhahn Press fell apart, Haselwood began printing under his own imprint, Dave Haselwood books. This broadside / catalogue features all three imprints: Auerhahn Press, Auerhahn Society and Dave Haselwood. Haselwood’s HQ moved to 1403 Gough Street, which is a legendary address in San Francisco counterculture. Robert La Vigne lived here in the mid-1950s and it was here that Ginsberg saw a La Vigne painting of Peter Orlovsky and fell in love. Ginsberg soon moved in. From that point on, one writer / artist after another rested their weary little heads at 1403 Gough Street. Haselwood was there by at least 1963, along with Charles Plymell, who like Haselwood was from Kansas. Michael McClure (Kansas again) was there; Neal Cassady lived there with Anne Murphy. Ginsberg made this his crash pad once again upon his return from Japan and India in 1963. Beat Scene Press published Plymell’s account of Neal and Anne’s time there in Number 14 Kevin Ring’s Pocket Book Series. Not sure if copies are still available.

A Summing Up

Auerhahn Press
Books in Print
August 1964

Not quite the production of the 1962 Catalogue, but this list of books in print from August 1964 is a very nice piece of ephemera in its own right. This is near the end of the first run of Auerhahn Press, when Hoyem and Haselwood would part company and go their separate ways.

The Exterminator and The Invisible Man

William S. Burroughs
The Exterminator
Announcement by the Auerhahn Press

That’s all that’s left behind . . . the skies
And a sweet caress
The skies, the sights
And a sweet caress
He’s the Invisible Man
Catch him if you can

As this announcement card shows, Brion Gysin was the real “el hombre invisible.” As often happened with Gysin and his work, erased from memory by Haselwood, which is really strange given that Haselwood felt the Gysin drawings were the strongest element of the entire publication.

“The center of the tornado”

Jack Spicer
The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether
Announcement

“This is an ode to John Wieners and Auerhahn Press
Who have driven me away from poetry like a fast car”

The Auerhahn bibliography states that The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether is arguably “Auerhahn’s main contribution to literature.” But as Johnston details, the publication of the book blew up a shit storm throughout the Spicer Circle proving once again that all poets are a pain in the ass. Robert Duncan blasted Auerhahn Press in the Valentine Issue of Open Space (not a love letter to be sure): “With the exception that the typography is abominable (titles crammed into the text; explanatory notes for ‘homage to creeley’ shoved to the bottom of the page, etc) and that the lithographs [by Fran Herndon] lose in reproduction, from these poems and these illustrations I draw increasing sense of what poetry can mean.”

When The Heads of the Town Up to the Aether failed to deliver commercially, Jack Spicer accused Hoyem and Haselwood of not promoting the book properly. Citing “[e]vidence of Auerhahn’s attempts to promote Heads’ sale” in the press files, Ellingham and Killian clear Auerhahn Press of all charges. This publication announcement could be considered Exhibit A.

Putting Spicer on the stand and having him explain why he prevented City Lights from distributing the book and why the Discovery Bookstore was similarly attacked by the Spicer Circle would provide valuable testimony for why the book failed as well. Or you could have Spicer give a reading of the book to a jury, not of his Circle, but of Joe and Jan Public of San Francisco. The blank stares would further acquit Auerhahn. Spicer is an acquired taste. The general reader is busy reading Playboy and the Sunday New York Times, not Spicer. Actually, he was little read outside of a small circle of friends.

Off the Grid

Paul Magistretti
Notes of What I Can’t Be; Of What I Am
announcement

This is a commissoned publication by Auerhahn Press. I’ll be damned if I can find any information the book at all. Nothingon New Gnu Press. Nothing on Abebooks. Nothing on Paul Magistretti. I am going to guess that Tram Combs ran New Gnu Press, but that is pure speculation. This broadside is listed in Johnston but details of the actual publication seem to be undocumented.

Auerhahn Journals

Auerhahn Journals
Announcement

This is the flipside of the Wieners Journal written at 707 Scott. Auerhahn designed blank journals for sale in a limited edition of 40 copies. I wonder who bought them and what use was made of them. It would make an interesting exhibition of gathering a collection of these journals.

The Death Warrant

Auerhahn Press business card

In an earlier post, I suggested the presence of a shift in aesthetic at Auerhahn Press once Jay McIlroy sold his part of the business to Andrew Hoyem. Here is Haselwood from the Johnston interview on this shift: “But suddenly it was all done in a very different way. The Reps book was printed in Japan by collotype and it is beautiful. You can’t tell that these are not original sumi ink drawings because the collotype will do that. It’s the only way you can do it. But it was done in Japan and it’s this elegant book. Has anyone ever seen one? It’s fairly rare. It was boxed and very fancy. Now I had done limited hardcover editions of some of these books I had done so far to help pay for the rest of the edition. You did a few hard-cover editions signed by the author, so these paid for the rest of the books, so you could sell them for $1 and everyone could have one. That was the idea. But suddenly we began getting into these ‘exquiste’ productions. I think Andy is a great printer. I dont really want to get nasty about this, because it was just that he really wanted to go in a different direction than I did and he’s done an incredible body of work, but that;s not what I wanted to do, so from the very beginning, it was the beginning of the end. When we formed this partnership, it became this tug immediately.”

The above business card epitomizes the “beginning of the end” of Auerhahn Press. The “Made in Italy” in the lower left corner. The card as “very fancy,” “exquiste” and “elegant.”

Also of interest is the role of the collector in the Auerhahn business plan. Haselwood states in the Johnston interview that he did not want the collectible book at all and it is implied that Hoyem brought that business model into Auerhahn. That is not really the case. As the above quote shows, the collector always had a role in the Press, but it was a question of degree. For Haselwood, collectors subsidized “the rest of the books,” which were designed for “everyone.” Under the Hoyem model, all the books were “exquiste productions” specifically designed with the collector or connoisseur in mind.

According to Secret Location, “[s]ome of Haselwood’s later titles were considered outrageously overpriced when they were first offered for sale at $10 each.” Note this is the later titles; the one’s after Hoyem’s arrival and influence. Yet what is remarkable about Auerhahn Press titles on today’s market is how affordable they are. The most expensive Auerhahn title on Abebooks is the signed limited of McClure’s Dark Brown, printed on Alexandra Japan paper, handbound in full leather at the Schuberth Bindery, for $1450. This is the first book printed under the new partnership but largely of Haselwood’s vision and design. Almost half the Auerhahn titles currently available are $40 or under. The Arion Press Ulysses with etchings by Robert Motherwell is almost $50,000.

It Speaks for Itself

Mad Monster Mammoth Poetry Reading
1959

A shout-out to Jason Davis for providing the Mad Monster Mammoth Poetry Reading press release. He has also provided me with a ton of announcements and other goodies that I will be posting until I run out of material. Possibly a couple weeks.

Where the Magick Happens

John Wieners
The Hotel Wentley Poems
announcement

Foster’s Cafeteria

Dave Haselwood designed The Hotel Wentley Poems but he did not print it. East Wind Printers did the honors and according to Haselwood they botched it. Haselwood’s “vision of what the book should look like was not completely carried through. That made me decide that in the future I would not only design but personally print any book the Press decided to do.” The above announcement card definitely does not have that Auerhahn feel to it and handling this announcement vs. the Auerhahn business cards reveals a clear difference in print quality.

From what I can tell, Auerhahn called 1605 Laguna home and then moved to 1334 Franklin. By the time of Andrew Hoyem’s arrival in 1961, the print shop was at 1334 Franklin. Glenn Todd remembers the two men printing in a small room there. The Hotel Wentley was on 1214 Polk and Haselwood had a small room on rent that he loaned to John Wieners for a week, during which Wieners banged out his slim first collection of poems. Foster’s Cafeteria was on the first floor of the Wentley Building. Foster’s is long gone, but, in February of 2009, the Bed Bug Registry reported a complaint for an apartment at this address. Good to see things have not totally changed.

A Walk in the Neighborhood

Wallace Berman
The Way-Out Walk of Poets
Photograph

John Wieners
707 Scott Street

The Ampersand’s Beat: A Dead Horse

Wallace Berman
Jay Defeo before The Eyes

Philip Lamantia
Narcotica
Announcement

Alastair Johnston sent me “The Way-Out Walk of Poets” photograph above to go with the post on the Mad Mammoth Monster Poetry Reading. Wallace Berman took the shot of Bruce Conner and Beth Branaman (behind mask) who both designed the costumes for the Walk. Alastair used the photograph on the cover of The Ampersand’s Beat: A Dead Horse issue. Alastair edited the Quarterly Journal of the Pacific Center for the Book Arts and it is worth hunting down old copies if you can find them. I have a few and there are great interviews and images relating to the alternative press in California. Unfortunately, I can find only one issue of The Ampersand on Abebooks.

The reference to 707 Scott Street on the upper left hand corner of the photograph caught my eye. The address is on Alamo Square, “one of the most photographed places in San Francisco” (see Morgan). Wallace Berman lived there in the late 1950s and took a famous shot of Jay DeFeo at her studio standing in front of her painting The Eyes. The photograph was exhibited in 1959 at 707 Scott Street. I assume that the Way-Out Walk photo was exhibited at the same time. Berman would provide Auerhahn Press with cover images at this time, including the iconic ones of Philip Lamantia injecting himself for Narcotica.

Joanna and Michael McClure lived at 707 Scott Street as well. As did Larry Jordan. Ark II, Moby I, a key little magazine of the San Francisco Renaissance, was printed in the basement. John Wieners lived at 707 Scott and kept a journal throughout 1959, before he suffered a nervous breakdown in the months after the Mad Mammoth Reading and retreated to Boston to recuperate. The journal (pictured above) was published in 1996 by Sun & Moon Press.

Stop the Presses!!!

Robert Duncan
A Book of Resemblances
Cancellation Notice

According to Johnston, the production cost for the 1500 copies was $1476. Nothing cheerful about that.

Poetry Reading as Fund Raiser

Mad Monster Mammoth Poetry Reading
announcement card

I have two friends of mine who are currently running for political office. At the top of their “To Do” list is not stop crime or create jobs, but to raise money for their campaigns. Seemingly every other day the streets of Washington DC are shutdown while the President walks down the street to the ATM that is the Jefferson Hotel for a fund raising event.

I find all this distasteful of course and then I get the announcement card for Auerhahn Press’s Mad Monster Mammoth Poetry Reading and I realize that running a press is no different than running for office. Priority number one is securing funding.

Alastair Johnston covers the Mad Monster Mammoth reading in detail and provides images of the Auerhahn press release for the reading and an article on the reading by Lewis Lapham. For God’s sakes please order a copy of all three of Johnston’s bibliographies. They are ESSENTIAL. That said he does not provide an image of the annoucement card (horrors!!!!). You have to come to the Mimeo Mimeo blog for that. The blog is ESSENTIAL. (I don’t know what it is with the CAPS and the !!! this morning. Must be the Super Bowl atmosphere: Hype is in the air. All these “FANTASTIC EVENT[S]”. “North Beach Spectacle!!!”).

The BBC televised parts of the reading, and years later the reading was made available on the Howls, Raps and Roars CD, which you can order from your local bookseller or from Amazon if you are a soulless consumer who corporate farms (and destroys) the fragile garden of literary delights. Auerhahn books were on display at the reading and I hope the beatniks bought their copies of The Hotel Wentley Poems at the reading and did not walk up Broadway to 261 Columbus Avenue to purchase them. Jack Spicer would not approve.

Twelve poets read that night in 1959: Bruce Boyd, Ray Bremser, Kirby Doyle, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Bob Kaufman, Philip Lamantia, Ron Lowensohn, Christopher MacLaine, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, John Wieners, and Philip Whalen. From the press release: “Two young San Francisco painters, Bruce Conner and Robert LaVine, are staging a spectacle of the Objects, made for the Event, that shall accompany a WayOut WALK OF POETS starting about 8PM.” “Go! Poetry! Go!”

Earlier that same summer Allen Ginsberg (along with Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan and James Broughton) read at Garibaldi Hall for another fund raising event: a monster reading in support of John Wieners’ Measure. One of the highlights was Ginsberg reading a draft of Kaddish.

Both of these reading were great successes. Auerhahn, coffers replenished, reinvested that capital back into the business with new books by Whalen and Lamantia. By the way, Lamantia organized the Auerhahn reading, so maybe we should get the Federal Election Committee to look into some type of conflict of interest here.

To me, the Auerhahn and Measure fund raisers (at a $1 per head) are simply time and money better spent than $45,000 per plate for a “roundtable discussion” and some chicken breast at the Jefferson. Although Sara Bareilles did perform. Charming I’m sure.

Judge for yourself: “Love Song” vs. “A Poem for Cocksuckers”

In nearby Virginia Beach in 2011, Pat Robertson appeared at a Mitt Romney fundraiser. Now that is what I call entertainment.

Lost in the Shuffle

James McIlroy
Business Card

Before there was Andrew Hoyem at Auerhahn Press, there was Jay McIlroy. Hoyem bought out McIlroy in 1961 to become a partner in the press. McIlroy was a printer who helped Dave Haselwood out in the print room and became a partner. It should be remembered that at the start of Auerhahn Haselwood had only a “high school knowledge of printing” (from Printing from the Edge). McIlroy showed Haselwood the ropes and got those early books, like Self Portrait, From Another Direction (handset and printed on a Hartford letterpress in 1959), out into the world.

Haselwood makes this clear in his interview with Alastair Johnston (available from Cuneiform Press in Hanging Quotes): “[McIlroy] really knew how to print and taught me how to print . . . He was an extremely fine person and really was heavily responsible for the good things that happened at Auerhahn and he’s never given any credit . . . He was a typical South Side of Philadelphia, not educated beyond high school, talked with a wonderful working-class Philadelphia accent, no pretensions, but just loved this poetry, and wanted to work on it. Quite a strange thing actually. He really was the one who got it off the ground. I don’t think I could have ever printed this. For instance in Ekstasis there are all these shaped poems.”

“[N]o pretensions, but just loved this poetry, and wanted to work with it.” Compare this with Andrew Hoyem, which was about “exquisite productions.” How much was the early aesthetic of Auerhahn influenced by Jay McIlroy and his simple sense of style?

In the interview, Haselwood acknowledges that he lost track of McIlroy and I can find little on him at all. The above business card locks him into place in the day-to-day activities of Auerhahn as a business partner and into its history.

Before McIlroy, Haselwood states that there was “[a] man who’s name I don’t even remember, who worked as a ship’s printer on Lurline, obtained some type for me that they were selling off the ship and then showed me how to set type and operate the Hartford letterpress. He just volunteered and came in and helped.” There is no business card for this Man from Portlock who altered the course of Auerhahn. He is lost to history. For example in the introduction to Printing from the Edge Exhibit on California broadsides, this unknown man is merged into the person of McIlroy.

Ephemera matters.

“An interior/personal piece”

Michael McClure
Dark Brown
1961

This is from an unsewn sheet of Michael McClure’s Dark Brown, published by Auerhahn in 1961. McClure submitted the poems to Olympia Press for consideration but Dave Haselwood got there first. “A Long Poem of Spiritual Revolution and Sexuality” of which Ginsberg wrote in Big Table, “I don’t know anyone else who has gone so far & I think the McClure poem is a landmark . . . It is the moment of breakthru for him and anyone after him.” Kerouac writes gushingly of “Pat McLear” in Big Sur and has similar praise for Dark Brown.

Diva

Robert Duncan
A Book of Resemblances
cancellation notice

This project with Robert Duncan was on again and off again. This publication is from when it was a go. There could be a documentary about the trials and tribulations about publishing Duncan.

Auerhahn X 4

Auerhahn Auerhahn Auerhahn Auerhahn

It’s round midnight and I have had a few Pabst Blue Ribbons but I do not see Auerhahn Auerhahn Auerhahn Auerhahn in the Johnston bibliography. It is probably in there. Sue me. I still have my wits about me enough to realize that this is quite the item. A piece like this is why ephemera is where it is at. And flipping through the bibliography there is a ton of ephemera in the Auerhahn catalog. It is with these small details that the history of Auerhahn was written.

The Business of the Alternative Press

Dave Haselwood
Business Card

Auerhahn Invoice

Auerhahn Letterhead

When it comes to the Mimeo Revolution, I am naive and romantic. This is art for art’s sake, creation of a community, life as art, and all that crap, but alternative publishing was also a commercial enterprise. The intertwining of capitalism, entrepeneurial spirit, and the counterculture is so in-your-face in something like the Ed Sanders/Peace Eye catalogs that it cannot be ignored.

That is why it is important to study the alternative press as a business model. How does the alternative press market itself, how does it distribute its product, how does it advertise, how does it interact with customers? I have become interested in this in part because of my experiences with putting out and distributing Mimeo Mimeo and because of my relationships with small presses as a collector. Publishing Mimeo Mimeo, I have been forced to realize what I always knew but suppressed. The design and contents of the little magazines that I see as pure in some artistic or creative way are often dictated by a brutally mundane monetary bottom lines. Let’s face it people used the mimeograph because it was cheap not out of some higher calling.

For whatever reason, Auerhahn Press provides an opportunity to collect great examples of the everyday activities of a working press. Business cards, invoices, letterhead, prospectuses, annoucements, catalogs. Sooner or later all this material will come under scholarly attention in order to get a fuller picture of how the alternative press worked on a day by day basis and how the works they produced came to the light of day.

That said, take a look at the Dave Haselwood business card. It is all business, but that essence of Auerhahn design shows through. This business card symbolizes the interplay of creativity and economic bottom line that dictated not only the output and aesthetic of Auerhahn Press, but all the presses of the Mimeo Revolution.

The Auerhahn Menu

Auerhahn Press
Catalogue
1962

The Auerhahn when cooked tastes like turpentine. Dave Haselwood never published the cooked, only the raw. Here is the menu to the Auerhahn Press buffet from 1962. These selections are three-star Michelin (“exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey”) all the way.

“A yellow book by a diabolical devout”

Edward Marshall
Hellan, Hellan
Announcement

It has become a commonplace that Edward Marshall is a forgotten poet. Canonized in Don Allen’s New American Poetry anthology with the printing of the single longest poem included, “Leave the Word Alone,” which was earlier published in Black Mountain Review, Marshall was then cast out in The Postmoderns: The New American Poetry Revised). Marshall has generally been left alone, fading out of view since the heady days of the 1960 anthology, and now remembered primarily because the poet and his work have slipped out of memory.

His Nowhere Man status may be because he was seemingly everywhere. At the time of his inclusion in the Allen anthology, Marshall had ties with the Boston Renaissance, the San Francisco Renaissance, the Beats (Ginsberg stated he relied on “Leave the Word Alone” as a source for the structure of “Kaddish”) the New York scene, and Black Mountain. He is included in the catch-all fifth category in the anthology with those poets of “no geographical defintion.” One of the easiest ways to get yourself lost in the shuffle is to be tough to label and pin down. Marshall is a mercurial poet in that sense.

Hellan Hellan, Marshall’s first slim book of nine poems, links Marshall with yet another geographical hotspot: Kansas. Robert Ronnie Branaman did the cover art. The poem on the Auerhahn flyer does not appear in the collection, so the flyer is a separate publication as well as an announcement.

A must for Edward Marshall collectors. There is not much to collect. Marshall appeared sporadically in periodicals: Black Mountain Review, Measure, Yugen, and The Great Society. Seven poems appeared in Mulch in 1971, which was his last appearence in print according to George Butterick’s biography of Marshall in 1983. Marshall read with Michael Rumaker at the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in 1975. Jargon 31 includes Marshall in a collection of 14 poets and 1 artist from 1958.

A second book of poems, Transit Glory, appeared in 1967 from Carp & Whitefish. This was a short-lived printing venture by Irving Rosenthal, who edited Buroughs in Chicago Review and wrote Sheeper. The only other book of the Press is Philip Whalen’s Invention of the Letter. Here is Rosenthal: “The Marshall book was a fancy little contraption with a drawstring that pulled the pages up from a pocket. It was to sell for a dollar, and I was hoping to distribute fifty or a hundred copies to each of the half-dozen or so bookstores in New York City that specialized in modern poetry. As I was planning to move to San Francisco, either temporarily or permanently, I was eager to unload as many books as possible in the East before I left. But the first (supposedly hip) bookstore I approached placed so miniscule an order, that I resolved to sell the book on the streets myself, and bought a two-dollar City of New York Peddler’s License. But I was too busy collating and binding the Whalen book to sell the Marshall book.” Marshall’s second book has completed disappeared. No copies on Abebooks. The usual suspects like Buffalo, of course have a copy. Charles Olson possessed a copy in his library (Maud calls it Transit Gloria). Olson greatly admired “Leave the Word Alone,” particularly its form. The Pequod Press reissued “Leave the Word Alone” in 1979, with an introduction by Ginsberg.

Hellan, Hellan is a good starter for an Auerhahn collection. Mainly because it is one of the cheapest of the entire Press, but again, like Marshall, Hellan Hellan is a bit out of place. The book has that early Auerhahn feel, but Branaman’s comix cover art is a bit ahead of its time. To my mind, that alone makes the book visually interesting but it is not a defining or classic Auerhahn design, maybe in part because Branaman’s infernos were printed in the purgatory marking the transition from the McIlroy to the Hoyem period of the Press.

Marshall is a religious poet, a man of “psychoreligious fervor,” as described by Butterick. Butterick continues on “Leave the Word Alone, “In structure and style, the poem itself is like preaching on Boston Commons.” Marshall from that poem: “Leave the Bible alone it is dangerous.”

An Ending and a Beginning

Bill Deemer
Poems
Announcement

This first book of poems by Bill Deemer happens to be the last book of the Haselwood/Hoyem partnership. I must admit that I am fascinated by this book if for no other reason than Deemer was only 19 years old when the book came out. I can not get over teenagers making accomplished literary statements. Rimbaud is the Dark Prince in this regard. Absolutely amazing, his sophistication at such an early age. At that age, I was briefly and tangentially involved with a college literary magazine entitled Queen’s Head and Artichoke, named after two pubs in London. To be honest, I was spending more time drinking the sweet nectar that was Kappy’s beer than the crisp waters from the Hippocrene Spring. Visionary that he was, Rimbaud, perhaps taking a page from Baudelaire (Get drunk! Stay drunk! On wine, virtue, poetry, whatever!), merged these two activities: poetic inspiration as a prolonged derangement of the senses. Strangely when I am confronted with the work of young poets like Deemer and Rimbaud, I am always sobered and left wondering what I did with my misspent youth. Certainly not profitably wasting all my free time on literary pursuits.

Taking Care of Business

Nexus Catalog
1964-1965

In “this economy” sometimes you just have to pay the bills and leave out the frills. Here is another Auerhahn commission. In this case a bookseller’s catalog for a dealer out of La Jolla.

Fly By Night to Flying High

Philip Whalen
T/O
1967

Here is another Dave Haselwood production from 1967: Philip Whalen’s T/O. Paper cut outs on the cover; only 80 copies sewn into wrappers. Like Wieners’ Chinoiserie (100 copies), T/O has a straight to the archive feel to it. This book was designed for book collectors and bibliophiles, not your everyday readers of poetry.

Haselwood talks about wanting to go in a different direction than Hoyem. For Auerhahn Press, it was about selling books for a $1 so “everyone could have one.” Beautifully produced and designed books but at low cost and at 750 to 1000 copies, truly available to everyone. Titles like T/O reveal that when Haselwood parted with Hoyem and started the Haselwood imprint he did not leave Hoyem and his business model behind.

For collectors, publications like T/O are irresistable. Flies drawn to the spider’s web. Today, copies are rather high end at around $500.

Media Blitz

Andrew Hoyem
The Wake
Announcement

The Auerhahn equivalent of carpet bombing the reading and collecting public with advertising. Hoyem’s The Wake highlights Auerhahn Press’s split personality. The 750 trade copies were designed for the “everyone” that Haselwood sees as the Auerhahn audience. You can get a copy of one of these for around $15 right now. Not bad at all. Very democratic. The limited edition on Hammer & Anvil, handbound at the Schuberth bindery with quarter Oasis leather and Japanese Cloud paper over boards is another story. Ars Hoyem, this edition was immediately snatched up by collectors as evidenced by the increased limited run. This is fine press nonsense at its best.

It is Suede not Coarse

Lew Welch
Courses

Haselwood Books doing Lew Welch. Now there is a back story to this that I am only dimly aware of involving a suppressed edition, a Clifford Burke reprint, and a secret stash of goodies. I just got off the phone with Jason Davis and he could no doubt fill me in, but it is dinner time. I’ll check in with him tomorrow. In the meantime enjoy the brown suede covers because it is quite simply suede and who the fuck by Dave Haselwood Books does that.

Mark My Words

Auerhahn Press Bookmark

For my money, this could be one of the cooler pieces of Auerhahn ephemera: a simple bookmark. Maybe it is just that bookmarks are on my mind give that in each issue of Mimeo Mimeo #6 there is a Cracker Jack prize or two to be found including Manufact Hologram: A Notesbook by Robert Strong, printed letterpress by Ugly Duckling Presse. My Mom plans on heading out to the University of South Florida to engage in the process and read the work in progress.

The Ugly Spirit

Charles Olson
Human Universe
Announcement

In the interim between Auerhahn Press and Dave Haselwood Books, there was Auerhahn Society. Hoyem went all out with Olson’s Human Universe, “parchment spine and elaborate colored linoleum prints for the front and back papers.” I think the above is the announcement for the book. Apparently there was a dispute between Hoyem and Oyez Press about issuing this publication. The Johnston interview discusses this as the end of Auerhahn as a viable commercial press and Haselwood disses the Grove reprint as “pretty much a rip-off of it, done ugly style.”

I have to agree with that. I have never been that impressed with the look of the Grove Press books. For example, the run of Burroughs titles from Naked Lunch through the cut-up trilogy are definitely ugly style. The Olympia Press titles are much better and paperback to boot, which is nice. Both Minutes to Go and The Exterminator are great. The Yage Letters not so much. Personally I love Calder’s Dead Fingers Talk. But enough of that, we can talk Burroughs all day and this is Olson’s Universe.

Wait There’s More

Ronald Johnson
Assorted Jungles
1966

This is from Dave Haselwood Books circa 1966, limited for sure at around 100 copies. I am going to go out on a limb and say this is a tough one. No copies on Abebooks right now. From what I can gather this is a companion piece to Jonathan Williams’ Paean To Dvorak, Deemer & McClure, which again is another toughie to get.

This isn’t really to my taste but I have to admit that I like the colors. I might have to qualify my initial take that collecting Auerhahn press is a bargain. That may be true for early Auerhahn titles but the later Haselwood stuff shades into book art and it just plain rare to boot. In my opinion the expense is worth it and the challenge of finding the material makes it worthwhile.

And This Is How You Repay Me?

Diane Di Prima
The New Handbook of Heaven
1963

In 1963, Auerhahn printed Diane Di Prima’s The New Handbook of Heaven. Haselwood got burned on the printing costs, and then further burned when Di Prima bootlegged the book on her own Poets Press imprint. Nice.

There were a 1000 copies of the Auerhahn soft cover and those are floating about online, but Haselwood also had Schuberth bookbindery do a hardcover edition of 30 copies on Arches (see above) and these copies are tough as hell to get a hold of.

Requiem for a Dream

Six Auerhahn Poets Reading
November 26, 1963

The Auerhahn Six Poets Reading occurred just days after the Kennedy assassination. As such the reading eulogizes the death of a young Sixties in the process of being born. To be sure one of the great myths of the Kennedy Era was that it was a peaceful, hopeful time. The Cuban Missile Crisis, the bombing of Birmingham Church, the Feminine Mystique, to list three events symptomatic of the simmering violence and despair associated with the Cold War, Civil Rights and the Women’s Movement, suggest the opposite. Yet for many, the events in Dallas signaled a decisive shift.

Allen Ginsberg’s poem Nov. 23, 1963: Alone, written at 1403 Gough Street in San Francisco, highlights this belief. Again a naive view. On October 28, 1963, Madame Nhu arrived in San Francisco and faced a protest demonstration, the first Ginsberg ever attended. Camelot was doomed before Kennedy died. Despite this fact, looking at Alone as marking yet another traumatic shift for Ginsberg, The Change: Kyoto-Tokyo Express was written just four months earlier, and for the nation in general has become a standard reading. For me this reading rings true but for different reasons. The poem is one of the best documents of the pre-hype (read pre-hippie) San Francisco scene that I know of. A series of Robert Frank-style snapshots. As such it marks a dramatic shift. Likewise the Six Poets Reading was the highwater mark of Auerhahn Press; it would be on the path to destruction soon after, with the Press dissolving roughly a year later with the publication of Bill Deemer’s Poems.

The Reading took place at the International Music Hall at 2226A Fillmore. On November 26, 1963, for a buck you could hear six poets read from the backlist of the Auerhahn Press. The location, like Ginsberg’s poem, captured the spirit of the Auerhahn Press and head San Francisco. The Batman Gallery was next door. 1403 Gough Street was in the neighborhood, as was the Hotel Wentley (1214 Polk), Foster’s Cafeteria (1200 Polk), one time apartments of Robert Duncan and Jess (1350 Franklin) and the McClures (2324 Fillmore). The East-West House (2273 California) offered a space for quiet contemplation. A few years later, if you wanted a little more action, sister venues to the International Music Hall, the Avalon Ballroom (1268 Sutter), the Fillmore (1805-1807 Geary), and the Winterland (1725 Steiner), sprung up nearby.

For more on this moment in time.

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 29 January 2017. First published on Jed’s Mimeo Mimeo blog.

The Library and Deaccession

RealityStudio — Sun, 01 Dec 2013 14:34:43 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

Walter Benjamin’s “Unpacking My Library” focuses on acquisition; it dares not speak of the dispersal of books, which must have accompanied Benjamin’s initial packing. Benjamin, an exile and a suicide, knew intimately of things left behind. For a book collector, such decisions, such discussions are much too painful to contemplate. Yet in the world of books, these decisions are made every day. “Deaccessioning, the deliberate culling, disposing, or selling of book from a collection is one of the most controversial aspects of the collection development function of the library.” This statement comes from Gary P. Radford’s article, “Alternative Libraries As Discursive Formations: Reclaiming the Voice of the Deaccessioned Book,” which got me thinking about how deaccessioning played a pivotal role in one of the great Burroughs collections of the last 25 years.

As the Radford article demonstrates with its account of The Reanimation Library and The Public Library of American Public Library Deaccession, one institution’s trash can get recycled into another’s treasure trove. This was precisely the case in the most important Burroughs auction I ever personally experienced: The Nelson Lyon Collection of William Burroughs auction at PBA Galleries on November 18, 1999. Library trash became cold hard cash in Lyon’s (and PBA’s) pocket in a historically significant fashion. Sprinkled throughout the 168 lots of the Lyon Sale were a few deaccessioned books from the University of New Mexico Library: eight issues of Mayfair that accompanied a copy of the Mayfair Acadamy More or Less ($450), Between Worlds #1 ($75), Rhinozeros #7 ($50), Film #37 ($25), Insect Trust Gazette #2 ($50), Grist #10 ($35), and Glebe #2 ($25). The Lyon Collection also offered The Spero #1, formerly of the University of California, Berkeley ($140) and the Calder Ah Pook Is Here formerly of the Intercontinental Literary Agency in London ($75). The prices realized, which looking back were modest, was not the big story. The finances that matter here are the libraries’ bottom line that forced such deaccessions to be made in the first place.

Given a library’s responsibility to preserve, such decisions cannot be made lightly. According to Radford, to deaccession is a “profound decision.” I am sure once placed in these “to be or not to be” situations, librarians waver and waffle in their institutional Denmarks. UNM, Berkeley and the ILA, all thought deeply about whether these books and magazines deserved a place in their collections. Yet these publications did not make the cut, or should I say, they were cut. There must be a reason for such decisions, a rational explanation, because deaccession calls into question a library’s entire reason for being. In most cases, the motive for this crime is pragmatic. The libraries needed money. Maybe they needed space. Perhaps these publications were duplicates or had condition issues. Yet such decisions can also be more theoretical and conceptual. Deaccession implies that the books and magazines were no longer important or worthy of discussion. They served no use for society. They no longer had a place in our cultural memory. And here we get into Foucault’s wheelhouse of discourse analysis and formation. Radford: “The institution of the library has a key role to play in the maintenance and legitimation of particular discourses at the expense of others . . . and deaccession is one particular material process which enables the library to do this.”

To be more precise about it, the deaccession of Rhinozeros, Grist, or Insect Trust Gazette by UNM library highlights not so much that they had no place in our cultural discourse, but the fact that such a discourse had not yet fully developed beyond a small group of visionary obsessives. Given the current robust market in the Mimeo Revolution as a material object and as a conceptual framework, the fact that libraries in the 1980s could consider such publications disposable may seem hard to believe. Yet it must be remembered that Lyon acquired almost all of these publications in the pre-Secret Location era. The New York Public Library exhibition on the Mimeo Revolution happened in 1998, which remains the Big Bang that generated the present explosion of discussion around all things mimeo. Although the publications of the Mimeo Revolution had been collectible for decades — hell, as the Ed Sanders Catalogues prove, they were instantaneously collectible — it can be argued that Clay and Phillips’ Secret Location initiated the discourse on the Mimeo Revolution. This one book correctly or incorrectly defined the field, created a language and grammar for discussion, and provided the historical and cultural context. Before Secret Location, the Mimeo Revolution was not considered worthy of discussion or exhibition in the academic and art market. Secret Location taught these markets how to talk the talk.

It is no mistake that the Nelson Lyon Sale occurred shortly after the NYPL exhibition. The Lyon Collection aptly demonstrated that a comprehensive Burroughs collection was also inherently quite a remarkable little magazine collection. If Burroughs’ output from the 1950s can only be understood by analyzing his letters of the period, Burroughs of the 1960s must be approached in light of his little magazine appearances. Like Bukowski, Burroughs was a major figure of the Mimeo Revolution and even more so than Buk, Burroughs used the little magazine not merely as an outlet, but as a laboratory to experiment with writing technique, i.e. the cut-up method. The Lyon collection made this clear and suggested that a little magazine archive could be built using Burroughs as a foundation, which would have import for the study of Burroughs. Secret Location further suggested that this collection would also prove useful for studying alternative publishing. The Lyon Sale solidified little mags as a focus in Burroughs collecting, placing them on par with the A-titles. Secret Location and the accompanying exhibition placed these forgotten — and in some cases deaccessioned — magazines back into public consciousness and conversation. Secret Location and the Lyon Sale justified the Mimeo Revolution’s existence and made its publications collectible to a larger public.

If UNM, Berkeley and ILA no longer had a use for Burroughs’ Mimeo Revolution publications, Lyon should deserve credit not only for seeing their value but also adding to it. Lyon’s collection created an alternative library as described by Radford. As a collector, Lyon must have been less than thrilled about acquiring library stamped copies of these items, but this compromise is a testament to just how rare these items were before the Internet made everything instantly available. Finding a copy of Insect Trust Gazette #2 in the pre-Internet market was a considerable effort in terms of time. One had to actually dig through bookstores, contact book dealers directly through the postal system, subscribe for book catalogs, attend book fairs, issue want lists and ads in trade periodicals. One had to be dedicated and driven. Obsessed. Lyon found a shortcut through deaccession, but then he went the extra mile by getting all these tainted publications signed. Signed little mags are much rarer than signed books. For example, most fans and collectors approached Burroughs with a copy of Naked Lunch or Junkie, not Fuck You or Insect Trust Gazette. So a Burroughs signature washed away some of the stain and shame of the library stamp. Burroughs’ hand blessed and redeemed them, just as Secret Location was making these magazines legitimate.

I purchased Rhinozeros #7 from the Lyon Sale. At the time, the signature overshadowed the library stamp. I am sure that the UNM library would love to have this title back. With the publication of In Numbers and Gwen Allen’s book on artist magazines, publications like Rhinozeros are the center of conversation and have never been more collectible. Historically, one of the biggest reasons for deaccessioning little magazines and newspapers was their availability on microfiche. Nicholson Baker exposes the errors of this approach in his typically obsessive and fascinating detail in The Double Fold. Of all the publications the UNM library chose to discard, Rhinozeros stands out from the rest. It seems to me to highlight the limitations of microfiche and, today’s version of microfiche, digital reproduction. Make no mistake, the first thing I did when I gathered a complete run of Rhinozeros was to scan it and post the results on RealityStudio. But if anything that process convinced me of the importance and pleasure of Rhinozeros as a material object. Rhinozeros is not a crystal goblet. It is ornate and noisy. Although less than ideal from a condition standpoint, the wrinkled paper on my slightly damp stained Issue 5 possesses a distinct feel that is part of Rhinozeros‘ seduction. The signatures of Burroughs and Gregory Corso provide the caress of the author’s hand. Rhinozeros‘ genii, which is related to Benjamin’s aura and makes an appearance in “Unpacking My Library,” is only released as the magazines pass through my fingers in the scanning process. It was my wish to share Rhinozeros with others. Digital does makes that possible. Sharing is the seductive spell of the digital. Reading as group sex. The material object provides more solitary, tactile pleasures.

The Library and Access

On the opposite end of the spectrum from the University of New Mexico library is the Poetry Collection at SUNY Buffalo. Operating in the Rust Belt and constrained by that region’s economic realities, UB invested in its future by aggressively mining the Mimeo Revolution as it was happening. While others considered deaccessioning their little magazine holdings, UB aggressively subscribed to any and every mag available. UB proudly and persistently maintained an open-door policy in this regard. If a little magazine publisher sent his/her publication to UB, it was automatically accepted. No matter how small, fringe or DIY, magazines were considered a crucial component of literary discourse. Given their massive holdings, over 9000 magazines alone, it is clear they struck gold. Scholars from around the globe come to UB’s Poetry Collection to conduct their research. The Poetry Collection has become one of UB’s most important and valuable assets.

On November 12-13, 2013, I was lucky enough to be able to do some prospecting of my own in the Poetry Collection’s stacks in connection with a presentation I gave on the Mimeo Revolution. I requested over 30 titles as visual aids for my discussion, and UB came through on all but one request. UB’s Modernist holdings, particularly for James Joyce, have been attracting scholarly attention for decades. I would expect the requests for their post-Modernist holdings to explode in the near future. These holdings include not just runs of magazines but full archives, such as for Jonathan Williams and Jargon Society, as well as author libraries, such as Robert Duncan’s. The Poetry Collection firmly believes a library’s archiving function is not restricted to printed matter and paper. Paintings, typewriters, desks, and even a piano are all collected, curated, and cared for. Anything connected or related to 20th-century poetry has a place in UB’s Poetry Collection.

Here are a few items related to William Burroughs that I happened to come across in preparing for my presentation. Incredible to think what I would have found if I was actually looking.

A nearly full run of Wallace Berman’s Semina

I have seen Semina behind glass at the Grey Gallery for the Semina Culture exhibition; I have seen Semina in books and rare book catalogs, I have seen scores of digital reproductions but nothing prepares you for the pure pleasure of actually handling and reading it. Semina, like Berman’s iconic transistor radio, feels great in the hand. It is incredibly tactile. Reading Semina is a sensual experience. It is something you feel deeply. Not just in the hand, but in the head, in the heart. Not just a magazine but an archive or an exhibition, Semina has become the very definition of the magazine as art. Burroughs’ “Pantapon Rose” appears in Issue 4 on a single sheet of white paper, printed letterpress. Berman realized before Oliver Harris, maybe even before Ginsberg, that Burroughs was a poet. “Pantapon Rose” is pure nostalgia, and Berman’s delicate and ephemeral rendering of Burroughs’ prose poem suggests the whiff of opium smoke, the blush of blood in the dropper, the faint sound of train whistles in the distance that symbolize a fetishized past for Burroughs. Yet “Pantapon Rose” does not vanish before your eyes or slip through your fingers; it is decidedly there and remains so after you put it down. Like a ghost, it sticks in your memory, crawls under your skin. Semina is truly haunting.

Klactoveedsedsteen No. 0 and 1

I can honestly say that before encountering one at UB, I did not know Klactoveedsedsteen No. 0 existed. Yet beginning his magazine at ground zero is pure Weissner. Klactoveedsedsteen is hyper-aware of its own materiality and bibliography. The magazine shifts format and means of production throughout its run. Issue 2, which UB did not own, was a scroll. I believe Issue 3 was printed on a spirit duplicator not a mimeograph. The issue has the distinctive blue ink and a multicolored cover that suggest the rexograph, not to mention that Weissner makes reference on the title page to the magazine’s smell, a feature of spirit duplication not mimeo. I remember mentioning to Carl that I owned Issue 3, and he jokingly called it a failure, because he fully intended the magazine to fade away over time to a blank page due to the type of ink he used. Klactoveedsedsteen approaches art. Digital reproduction does not do these magazines justice. How can pixels capture the spirit of Klactoveedsedsteen #3, a magazine that was designed to smell and disappear? Like Rrose Sélavy’s perfume. Or her farts.

Issue 1 reveals the influence of Jeff Nuttall, who was co-editor, and reminds one that Klactoveedsedsteen developed in response to My Own Mag. I would argue that My Own Mag and Klactoveedsedsteen are two of the most important and innovative magazines of the entire Mimeo Revolution. Yet they are not part of the discourse in Secret Location, In Numbers or Allen’s Artists Magazines. Burroughs is the major influence and inspiration for both mags. There are few writers of the 1960s who had more of an impact on the little magazine than Burroughs. For example, the little magazine exploded into public awareness not only because of the hype surrounding the San Francisco Scene issue of Evergreen Review but also because of the controversy that erupted around Burroughs in Chicago Review and Big Table. Is it my personal bias or did Burroughs help inspire the creation of more magazines than any other writer? Sidewalk, Cleft, Big Table, and New Departures are a few that come to mind. Delusion or not, Burroughs was consistently a headliner in any magazine he appeared in. For example, Floating Bear did not exist to publish Burroughs but its two most infamous issues, Nos. 9 and 24, feature him. Kulchur Nos. 1 and 3 differ from all other the issues of that mag’s run. Similarly, My Own Mag and Klactoveedsedsteen are merely little mags without Burroughs; with him they loom large and pack a punch.

Klactoveedsedsteen 0

Klactoveedsedsteen 1

Klactoveedsedsteen 2

Subscription Cards to Chicago Review and Big Table

Flipping through the Autumn 1958 issue of Chicago Review and Big Table No. 1, I came across some subscription cards for these magazines. It is a well-known story how the University of Chicago censored the editorial board of the Review for its decision to publish Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. The suppressed Winter issue became Big Table #1, which had its own problems with censorship at the hands of the United States Post Office.

For most people, these subscription cards are a nuisance and quickly tossed in the garbage. In this case, the cards ask some interesting questions and tell an equally interesting story. The question revolves around subscription rates for Chicago Review and Big Table. It is easy to assume, given the controversy swirling around Burroughs in Chicago Review, that many people cancelled their subscriptions, but it would be interesting to find out how many people actually bought a subscription in support of the editorial board’s daring new direction. Subscription cards become a means to assess public opinion. Jack Mabley in his article “Filthy Writing on the Midway,” seems to feel he has his finger on the pulse of Chicagoans, but is that really the case? Did readers subscribe to Mabley’s opinion by canceling the Review? Similarly, it would be interesting to see subscription numbers for Big Table. There were 10,000 copies in the initial print run of Issue #1, which is massive. How many of those copies were for pre-subscribers? Did Big Table sell over the counter to the merely curious or was its readership comprised of more serious and invested readers who bought into the Big Table revolution?

The presence of subscription cards also separate Chicago Review and Big Table from consideration as Mimeo Revolution publications. First of all, subscription cards suggest a level of financial backing that mimeo magazines just did not have. Mimeographers struggled to afford postage for mailing the magazines themselves, let alone hundreds or thousands of subscription cards. In addition, many mimeos, like Floating Bear, could not be subscribed to at all. They were not for sale, but provided on a need-to-know basis. Per post office rules and regulations, mimeo publications did not get the types of mailing privileges necessary for subscription cards. Mimeos were not considered magazines by the Post Office bureaucracy due the simple fact they were mimeographed. They were not legitimate enterprises or forms of discourse in the eyes of postal authorities. The larger question becomes did Chicago Review and Big Table more profoundly alter poetic discourse by working within the confines of the system (postal, academic or literary)? Or did a mimeo, like Floating Bear or Fuck You, have a more powerful effect working outside the system? Tallying subscription cards, if possible, would be one way to approach this question.

Chicago Review Subscription Card Front

Chicago Review Subscription Card Back

Big Table Subscription Card Front

Big Table Subscription Card Back

My Own Mag #5, inscribed to Jonathan Williams of Jargon Society

Sometimes a library leads you to something completely new; sometimes it supports what you already suspected. As I mentioned before, UB has an impressive archive of material relating to Jonathan Williams and Jargon Society. For the most part, this resource remains unexplored by researchers, with the exception of Rich Owens, who edited a Jonathan Williams issue of the online magazine Jacket. I contributed a piece on William Burroughs and Jonathan Williams for that issue, which detailed a dinner between Williams and Burroughs. UB happens to have an issue of My Own Mag #5, inscribed from Burroughs to Williams:

Tangier Morocco
c/o American Consulate 1964 April 20

Dear Jonathan

This issue showing the newspaper format in operation. Will you be visiting England this summer?

Best,

William Burroughs

Williams and Burroughs would not meet until the summer of 1965 in London. This issue of My Own Mag would have been a nice detail to throw into my Jacket piece.

It also would have bolstered a piece I wrote on My Own Mag #5, for Rote Fabrik, a free newspaper in Zurich. Just a couple of weeks ago, they published a Tangier Issue. My Own Mag #5, itself a Special Tangier Issue, fit right in. In that article, I suggested that My Own Mag #5 was pivotal in Burroughs’ development of the newspaper format, which the inscription to Williams supports. I also argued that the magazine was instrumental in introducing this work to interested parties in Europe and the United States and, in essence, served as Burroughs’ green card for establishing himself as a writer-in-residence in New York City in 1965. It was gratifying to see Burroughs using the Tangier Issue in just this manner, yet not only as a green card, but also as a business card and a dinner invitation. I would have loved to include an image of this inscription in my article.

The UB Poetry Collection is in a sense an alternative library as described by Radford. UB took in the authors deaccessioned by more conservative academies: the outlaws, the outsiders, and the obscene. From Joyce to Jess. As time passes and academic discourse catches up with these writers, who were not so much outside but ahead of the game, the UB Poetry Collection shifts from an alternative library to a definitive one. Can it be that in a time of extreme hardship for institutional libraries, the UB Poetry Collection’s most productive years are yet to come? Possibly. Its holdings are indeed rich. Go North, young scholar, and stake your claim.

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 1 Dec 2013.

Semina Culture

RealityStudio — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 15:02:26 +0000

Reports from the Bibliographic Bunker

Jed Birmingham on William S. Burroughs Collecting

You know how today we store up,
shoring up, fragments of better days,
against these our so
fragmentary lives.

Stephen Jonas, “A Poem for Tony Sherrod”
Floating Bear 35

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…

Written by Jed Birmingham and published by RealityStudio on 26 March 2007. Also see the listing of the complete contents of Semina 1-9.