usa and canada
An anecdoted topography of chance by daniel spoerri. $2.95. something else press. available from the small publishers co. elm st, millerton, new york 12546. spoerri, master of the snare picture (the taking of an everyday section of earth, floor etc,gluing all moveable items down in the places that they are found, and turning the result through 90 and hanging as a painting) has made here an equivalent literary version. maping out his work/eating table spoerri has gone through each individual item (there are 80 or so) and made full notes on its description, uses and history. the book is an academic's dream - full appendicies, addition notes and cross references by emmett williams, drawings of each object by topor, maps, plans and tables. the result is by no means as tedious as it may sound, quite the opposite. although the book comes to no real end, rather stopping when all the items have been dealt with, i found it fully entertaining.
Ark River Review (2) 75c. jonathan katz. 1410 west murdock, wichita, kansas 67203. a good new one this, solid in format, no razzledazzle names but all good stuff. a strong mixture of poetry and prose with kent dixon's short story "cacoethes coeundi or mrs kacoka and the fuckers" coming off really high up. incl: lunde/ inez/ schaeffer/ bantock/ vogelsang/ &c.
no 3 justice/ odam/ mccullough/ miller/ fox/ cutler/ mechem/ d.s.long/ schneider/ etc.
Back to Godhead 138) $6. for 12. satsvarupa dasa adhikari. iskcon press, 38 n beacon st, boston, mass 02134. "the magazine of the hare krishna movement". if you live in a big town you will no doubt have seen this one being street sold ... the robes, drums, finger cymbals the shaven heads & the mag seller bringing up the rear. its glossy, its deep, & i think more for the convert than for those with a small curiosity.
The Campaign Alice by jim quinn & illustrated perfectly by mike kanarek. mixed media, wilford building, 33rd & arch streets, philadelphia, panna 19104. a small size 120 page political satire on alice in wonderland, breaking often into not too bad poetry. by my own scant knowledge of the us political scene i found it funny, so if you are in deep its bound to roll you over. the drawings fit to a tee, asp alice as some kind of strange young innocent.
A Conscientious Guide To Drug Abuse by vic pawlak. 5.1.00. do it now foundation, po box 3573, hollywood, cal 90028. a second, revised, reset & updated edition of a very valuable book. it seems that legality aside, drug use is a solid strong fact..this book covers the full spectrum of chemicals from titilators to mind benders, showing whats what, whees where & what to do if it goes wrong, not to speak of how to stop it going wrong in the first place. if its you, get it.
Cosmep Newsletter issued by the cttee of small magazine editors and publishers, po box 703, san francisco, California 94101. news & notes plus two very interesting articles, alan brilliants "the decision to publish" which ought to be read by most of our own small press editors & noel peattie & kirby congdon on selling to libraries.
* Country Senses 113) 25c. box 465, woodbury, Connecticut 06798. "life in the woods of a small new england town". a newspaper covering the back to the lands tribes, groups & communes. full of valuable information, reports, drawings, etc etc.
Directory of Small Presses, Little Magazines & Underground Newspapers (7th edition) $2.50. len fulton & james boyer may. dust, 5218 scottwood rd, paradise. ca 95969. this directory started off with a worldwide set of editors & covered literary mags in the main. now its down to its originator len fulton, aided by trace editor j.b.may, and covers everything published in english that isnt on a commercial footing. and that still works out to be mainly literary mags. its very difficult to be up to date and to cover everything and although it has its failures this book is one of the best of its type, in fact the best of its type ... it details name, address etc of each mag & press together with a small blast on what type of stuff the mag publishes. my main complaint would be that its more for america than here ... a great many uk mags dont appear at all. 100 pages, litho print in a very small type.
The Four Suits $5.00. something else press, available again from the small publishers co. quite an old book this, but amazing value still. hardback 200 pages of "intermedia performance art researches" - events, happenings, music. four artists are concerned, alison knowles who's pieces rely on the visual interpretation of graphics, benjamin patterson who uses a clinical & almost psycological approach, tomas schmit, more in the accepted humorous happening situation and philip corner who is mainly a musician, not a book to read as such, more a documentation.
Free Distribution Company "send anything you want to distribute. get: anything you want to receive (send approximate postage). west coast: richard morris, po box 703, san fancisco, cal 94101. east coast: diane kruchkow, english dept, hamilton-smith hall, durham, n.h.03824. i got the ecological suicide a small well printed book of poems by hugh fox original publisher: camels coming. wild u/g fuck & buddha poetry & erebus rising (4) a spirit duplicated mag edited by diane kruchkow & quite good it is too: mostly americans i hadnt heard of but all with something to offer, a thing unusual with this type of small mag. send the free dist co an I RC & see.
Games at the Cedilla, or the Cedilla Takes off by george brecht & robert fill iou. $5.95. something else press. available from the small publishers co. the cedilla is an art shop at the french sea resort of villefranche run by two arch neo-dadaists brecht & filliou. Games is a compendium of poems, events, happenings, ideas, drawings & plans all centered around the shop. an artistic equiv of montypython or the goons. an absolute must for anyone with a sense for the odd.
I've Left by bern porter. $1.95. something else press. "a manifesto and a testament of science and art" - a full book length essay by porter (one of the strangest geniuses to come out of america in recent times) on the ultimate directions he can see art going, blending itself in with the prevalent forces of this age: science, maths, communication. impractical, but as an intellectual exercise its well worth reading.
Image Bank - fluxus west - annual report. 4454 west 2nd st, vancouver 8, b.c., Canada. folder format report and examples of work from the neo-dada fluxus mob. the image bank is just what it says, an attempt to get artists together via their works. a lot of examples here, mainly collage style and always on the far reaches of dada. try it.
Invisible City paul vangelisti & john mcbride. red hill press. 6 san gabriel dr, fairfax, ca 94930. 75c. a poetry newspaper, although its high quality print & paper and well set out. i found a lot i liked inside, people known and unknown to me - the vast whiteness of it all gives an academic overtone but the reading of the poetry soon changes that.
no 1 10 poem by bukowski/ blaze k/ quagliano/ itaIian poetry in translations/ etc.
no 2 fox/ pavese/ laforque/ adonis/ penfold/ daniel biga/ jean follian/ john harris/ etc.
no 3 pasolini/ deutsch/ bukowski/ malanga/ hirschman/ schaeffer/ ryan/ etc.
Lucy Church Amiably by gertrude stein. S2.95. something else press. stein in an ultimate lyrical mood. large & hard to work through. for the dedicated only.
Memoranda by d.e. moriarity. $5.00. red hanrahan press. po box 03527, highland park, michigan 48203. "this book is handmade & should be handled accordingly" - so right, a beauty production wise. the poetry fits. quiet voiced, made with care and much work, not at all typically american. slips to prose now and again but generally gleaming like the gold on a leather bound book.
Mooning by thomas fitzsimmons. $1.25. red hanrahan press. po box 03527, highland park, michigan 48203. "a chapbook of eco-zen poems". not a delux as memoranda but still a fine looking book. fitzsimmons is typically american, he spreads his words all over the page, rages, tries the hip style and (for me) fails. although his sentiments are worthy.
New Majiks by t.l. kryss. $1.00. radical americr. 1878. massachusettes ave, Cambridge, ma 02140. a selection of the best of kryss, drawn from his previous poetry booklets & from his selection of rabbit drawings. kryss is one hell of a poet, one of the best new poets that america has to offer. his strength lies ir: his use of image and choice of subject. his poems can suffer re-reading time and time again, they still offer up the goods. like many of his contemporaries kryss lacks form now and again, its all i can fault him on, a supurb book. its a quiet voice, its also a loud voice when it needs to be. if you are only going to buy one book from this large list of various publications, let it be this one.
The Newsletter editor harry smith. 5 beekman st, nyc 10038, usa. $12.00 a year. 4 page news & notes on the state of the culture. the two new ones here deal with little mags, literary gosip & films. interesting reading.
Nomad (1) $2.00. john wilcock. po box 8, village station, new york 10014, a spin off mag from other scenes & since john wilcock spends most of his time wandering he is just the right guy to edit it. travel tales, warnings & reports: goa - liberated zone for heads/ europes nude beaches drop out books/ moscow/ cheap holidays booked from britain/ etc etc.
Now Save The Dead (2) $2.00. rando bottosto. 2323 fig street, tampa, florida 33609. "nstd is a reaction to the continuing decadence of the american poetic establishment..... focuses on avant-garde talent .... intellectual frontier..." oh jeez not that again. nstd is about as avante-garde as my aunty. sure it publishes a few good poems and a few bad ones but there was nothing new at all in the issue i've got here (apart perhaps from the amazing poetry of duane locke): wolven/ wild/ fox/ britt/ juergensen/ etc.
Other Scenes (vol 5 no 3) $6.00 sub. john wilcock. po box 8, village station, new york 10014. different format each time for this, the worlds best u/g mag. this time i had to fold & pin the pages myself to form a small neat pocket book. the contents includes: the penthouse papers & a mass of short bits of odd news from all over, well illustrated & worth getting.
Panache special issue edited by richard kostelantez future's fictions. $2.95. 221 nassau st, princeton, nj 08540. more an anthology than a magazine - 175 large pages, bound far better than expected in a magazine. concrete poetry as poetry is having a hard time of it as of late. many of the things put out under its title in recent years have been very far away from concrete origins, very far away from those origins nearness to poetry. so a new name springs up. fiction. its often the same people who road under the concrete poetry banner but there are new names as well. its visual language. poetry, prose, these words dont really have any significance. i found the whole thing solid & good, by far the best collection of its type around. there are pointless things inside but thats the risk with this type of art. notable in the pointless catagory is kostelanetz's own lengthy "accounting". he is editor, okay. its his privilege to include himself. but why does he have to take up such a large number of pages with something as bad as accounting? a good editor but no judge of his own work. elsewhere there are goodies: korn's "history of france"/, bory's photograph pieces/ ferdinand kriwet's "wah wah" a dramatic use of typography/ tom phillips with the endless "a humument" but here with some of the best pages i've seen/ edwin morgan with "a childs coat" (again)/gerz's "mobile texts"/ furnivals "flower power"/ bpnichol/ dsh/ higgins/ & many many more. well worth getting hold of.
Red Hanrahan Press run by william & daphne cox at po box 03527, highland park, michigan 48203, in addition to putting out beautiful books put out free broadsides, well printed on heavy paper. the bunch i have here include mccomb's the quest, kicknosway's greaser 1950s, seamus heaney's servant boy, lawrence pike, william cox's concrete poem etc etc. send one I RC and a large envelope and ask for a bunch. red hanrahan also put out postcards..a black one that is said to depict the anarchist flag, screw poets, a concrete poem, translations etc.
A Sailors Calendar - a miscellany by ian hamilton finlay (text) & gordon huntly (drawings). $5.00 something else press. 276 park ave south, new york, 10010. a ring bound set of cards, printed in many colours, in fact a booklovers dream in production. its typical finlay stuff - boat names, fishermen & the like but by no means finlays best, nothing here has the power of finlays earlier stuff & one or two items are even rather childish, eg: a blank white page titled "plate 11: snowflake, drying her sails". for finlay fans only.
Scattered Poems by jack kerouac. city lights pocket poets no 28 @ 52.00. available in the uk through mcbride&broadley, wood cottage, nash rd, gt horwood, nr bletchley, bucks @ 85p. kerouac is my favorite novelist. he is not my favorite poet. this 76 page set, collected from all over - little mags, mss, letters to ginsberg etc - has been put together by ann charters after kerouacs death. often the material is trite, often sloppy, always falling into kerouacs write-it -as-it-co mes with no revision pit. the style might be okay for prose but it aint gonna work for a poem, not for 70 odd anyway. although one must not be too hard, i'm sure that if kerouac was alive today he would never have let it be published. the oddest thing about it is that for king of the beats its strange to find nothing dealing with the life style he came from or at least very little. the book does work when kerouac gets going with his jazz language, a kind of sound poetry, using his words like blowing a horn: "The yentence peak peck slit slippymeek twang...", these poems "old angel midnight" etc stem from his beat days, the time when he was at his height. also good & solid are his haiku, true western haiku with nothing missing. overall the book is bitty, slapdash to the extreme but most probably the last new kerouac book to come out. its sad in that case that i didnt like it much.
Second Assembling compiled by richard kostelantez, henry korn & mike metz. $2.50. box 1967, brooklyn, new york 11202. compared to what nstd was trying to do, this is way ahead of the avant-garde. kostelantez calls it a collection of otherwise unpublishable manuscripts, and that it is. the idea behind it is for the many many avant-garde writers in all meanings of that word to print their own pages, and for the three editors to bind the lot into a large magazine. with no editorial intervention at all. the result of course contains a hell of a lot of absolute rubbish, people churning things out just to get their names in print. it also contains a bunch of gems. kostelantez seems to think that there are no big usa publishers interested in avant-garde material and assembling style mags are the only economic way to get the material around. i'm not so sure, something else press is rather large for a small press and puts out stuff just as wild as this issue of assembling although a lot more readable & worthwhile. nonetheless assembling is an attempt and does work very well in places. included: ahern/ gerz/ padin/ bern porter/ zurbrugg/ krauss/ & much more.
Slingshots Morality Spooks by david condit. $1.25, corduroy press. 406 highland ave, newark, new jersey 07100. what i could only call an american version of adrian henri type liverpool poem. pop poetry, not heavy nor angry. love poems and poems of today today. nothing that will last really but an enjoyable read nonetheless.
Small Press Editors Directory (1971) $2.50. compiled by len fulton & james boyer may. dust, 5218 scottswood road, paradise. the dust directories & reviews are usually invaluable to the up & coming poet but this new on I'm not too sure of. it lists a mass of editors by name, detailing their likes, dislikes etc etc. the only real use i could see would be to discover what kind of stuff to send to the mag without having had to buy a copy.
Star West (vol 1 no 5) leon spiro, po box 731, sausalito, ca 94965. spiro's amazing crazy multilingual newspapers. star west also contains the sb gazette, & larvae du golden gate. including: steve morris/ gary elder/ mack riley/ curzon/ adran/ & hosts of others.
Sweethearts by emmett williams. $2.95. something else press. one of the great concrete classics. williams has taken a grid of the word "s w e e t h e a r t s" and using only the possibility of leaving letters out has made a long, formal, erotic, hilarious book/poem. those that doubt the power of concrete should read this one.
The Tenth Muse - catalogue 35 - free from 983 wisconsin, san francisco, calif 94107. unlike most bookshop small mag listings this one covers only rare items. so if you are searching for an odd, out of print item, the tenth muse may very well have it.
There's a little ambiguity over there among the bluebells by ruth krauss. $3.95. something else press. an ultimate in book design, colour word & graphic printing. poems that are plans for plays, plays in themselves or open ended word blocks that can be used as they may: child: "mother, in autumn do bricks fall the way leaves do? mother: no, dear. (child goes off - theatre falls)"
246 little clouds by diter rot. $5.95. something else press. black hand drawn graphics & lettering on grey grey paper. smells of ink. rot's first book in the english language. small pieces of wonder, phrases that become something else. dada. surreal. here rot takes the extremes of the beautiful expensive cow hide bound art books beyond themselves. as rough as could be, cellotape used in fixing the small drawings ready for camera still very visible, mistakes, blots, crossings out all there. yet the subject it deals with is a fine fine art. reminds me sometimes of cocteau with a concrete hangover.
This Book is a Movie edited by jerry bowles & tony russell. $3.25. dell, 750 third avenue, new york 10017. like kostelantez's future's fictions this anthology (320 pages) drops the pretence to concrete & to poetry as such and calls it all language-art. often its the same old concretists with newer examples of their work, its also a lot of other interesting & uninteresting people. the basis of this book is new things with language, mainly in a kinetic (ie going on over a few pages) rather than individual items sense. about half the book i found new, exciting and amazingly readable. the other half didnt even amuse me in a weak dadaist sort of way. thomas a clark is his old self with a found/ chance poem sequence/ bob cobbings movie poem rolls from page to page in typical cobbing manner, not new but worthy/ Iloyd davis has a series of traditional concrete poems highlighted in one titled "hill climb"/john furnivals' corridors of flower power appear again as do some of edwin morgan's poems/ elsewhere finlay/ jasper johns/ arakawa/r oanald johnson/ tom phillips (a humument of course)/ saroyan/ solt/ emmett williams/ & many more come up with goodies and baddies.to see what new things are happening its worth a try. cheap for its size, and again going against kostelantez's theories about big publishers as put forward in assembling.
Three On Fire by don cauble. hardback $7.50, softback $3.00. dead angel press, 2024 s.e. 39th, portland, oregon, 97214. second aeon prize for book production here, most beautiful hand made small press book of the century. and cheap too. cauble comes out of the us meat poets, i say comes out because hes added much to the meat, layers of mysticism, slides of surrealism resulting in a fine poetry. this new set is based on vision, but not blakean, a different sort of power. power of the skin. caubles breathing is in these poems. the book itself is large 7x10 size, thick thick uncut paper, solid type, full colour glossy illustrations, bound in red silk. its a wow to look at and just as good to read. since its hand made its a limited edition, rush now and get yours.
To Be a Discrepancy in Cleveland by d.a.levy. 50c. radical america. 1878 massachusettes ave. Cambridge, ma 02140. the late d.a.levy, giant of Cleveland. a small book that tries not to be the best of levy but to trace his story instead. to be the best the book would have to be 6 times it size. levy was a radical, a hip genius who took the strains of the beats, twisted them to his own uses, picked up the landscape around him and shoved it down our throats. thats why he was hasseled, thats why he shot himself. perhaps levy was the last of great screaming heavy men. his poetry now looks somewhat uncontrolled but that small fact doesnt really matter, the crazy mind writings could not be controlled if they were they would never zap in the way they do here. forget everything i've written here, save your I RC coupons, buy this book.
Vibrations (vol 2 no 2) "drug survival news" $1.00 sub. do it now foundation, box 3573, hollywood, ca 90028.8 page newspaper, drug notes, cartoons, reports, etc.
What are Legends -a clarification by dick higgins. $1.25. something else press. "this 1960 text speculates on how legendary images work" bern porter illustration & design. hand written, almost a manifesto, but not at all for me.
The Witches Almanac 1972 "complete astrological guide through aries 1972" prepared & edited by john wilcock & elizabeth pepper. $1.00. grosset & dunlap inc. rd 2, box 200, pine bush, new york 12566. a beautiful mine of information this, in addition to the astrological guide there is: holidays of the witches/ scrying/ rune magic/ how to brew tisane/ancient recepies for health/ spells/ how to fly/ salem witchcraft/ wands, winds & the way/ astral projection/ predictions for the future/ image magic/ books for further info/ what is your witch potential?/ etc etc.
Word-Pack & Space-Pack 1 free. ace space co, cal college of arts & crafts, broadway at college avenue, oakland, cal 94618. the space pack details a tour of artists & performers & tells you how & when to join in, rather unclear i found it but that i guess is because the plans themselves depend on participation. the wordpack is a very expensively printed set of word cards in the manner of concrete poems by someone called atchley. he shouldnt have bothered.
Space-Pack 2 shines a clearer light. another envelope full of cuttings of reviews of the tour, examples of contributions: alison knowles house of dust/ collages and various dada activities that i feel much more at home with. also the founding documents of fat city school of finds art, an art college to end all art colleges.
Wormwood Review (42) $1.00. marvin malone. po box 8840, stockton, calif 95204. a good all round usa small mag this one, its been going for a long while & still retains that newness found in all exciting small mags. litho print, neat & tight. including: locklin/ mechem/ deutsch/ jim hall/ walter snow/ sanford dorbin/ bukowski/ Craig ellis/ hugh fox/ reviews &c.
Page(s) 148-152
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The