The poet (and one time actor) Charles Bernstein posted that Pierre Joris died. I don't usually announce the passing of any poet, publisher, artist, etc. because after a while those posting would outnumber those of the living. But as I have already mentioned him twice in this blog, I can mention him again here.
While he will be missed, his writing will live on.
Ferrum College
Copenhaver Publishers, Inc
(1984)
A student run collection of poems, short fiction and drawings - Ferrum, Virginia. A timepiece. Not familiar with anyone in the book but glad to have seen it.
Spring 1977
Fort Hunt High School
Alexandria, VA
There was something about the creative process at High Schools in the 1970s. This staple bound book was created in the High School by one of the classes offered at the time, a printing class. They had on-site printing equipment in the school. I recognize that some of the pages were typed using different fonts, suggesting more than one typewriter was used and considering the number of students involved (26), this was quite an undertaking. Likely completed before Seniors graduated and fluttered off to college, or the military, or elsewhere.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that I live in the area where this High School once was. It's no longer called Fort Hunt, but West Potomac High after two separate schools merged in the 1980s. So, it's quite the collectors item to be sure and if anyone knows anyone who was in this edition, I would love to hear from them.
The Live Poets Society
Alexandria Public Library,
James J Duncan Jr. Branch
Alexandria, VA
Summer 1994
Truly it is important to find the first of any publication, any attempt of putting together a smattering of poems by a small group of poets who gather at a local branch of a library and this was their initial attempt. Their declaration of existence. According to the introduction, they first met in April 1993 at this branch and met once a month there to share and sharpen to reveal and express.
The names of those poets are listed but I won't mention them. Sometimes mystery is a good thing. The FACT of their existence is what is important.
F. Allen Brewer & Richard E. Ufford
Assumed self published
(c)1987
Now this here is a quandary to be sure. I found this little sliver of nothing (okay, not so "little" since its 96 pages, but it's staple bound and I feel bound to write about it) {I need a high hat}
These gents seem to have originated in Utah, from other sources I have found, but there is not telling where this book was printed because there is NO publisher information anywhere in the book. The back cover is blank. There are photos of the cowboy poets and some B&W illustrations throughout the book and in all likelihood it was created for one of those Cowboy Poetry gathering. Just my guess.
I am not predisposed to rhyming poetry and haven't since leaving Dr. Seuss behind a long time ago, but I am willing to acknowledge the craft of writing in this style. If I do have an issue with Cowboy Poetry it is that it is the white man's telling of the West (and how they took it). Subtle hints and phrases and nudges and winks but they aren't any Natives in these camps nor do I imagine there would be. Victors and vanquished. A subtext of this entire genre.
Patty Oldenburg
Poets Mimeo Cooperative
Burlington, VT
(c) 1979
Patty Mucha, who trained as an artist and poet, was married to Claes Oldenburg from 1960 to 1970, first met him after moving to New York City in 1957. When Oldenburg was painting portraits, Mucha became one of his nude models before becoming his first wife. An Oldenburg drawing of Mucha titled Pat Reading in Bed, Lenox, 1959 is in the collection of the Whitney Museum of American Art. She was a collaborator in Oldenburg's happenings by coming up with ideas together, making the costumes together, and was also a performer in the piece, along with collaborating on happenings, she also as well, sewed his famous floor hamburger, ice cream, and cake. Mucha was lead singer in the band The Druds. Pop artist Andy Warhol occasionally sang backup he also wrote the songs “The Alphabet Song, Movie Stars, Hollywood and Cocal-Cola”, .minimalist Walter De Maria played drums, painter Larry Poons guitar and composer LaMonte Young saxophone (briefly) along with neodadist lyrics provided by Jasper Johns and vocal contributions by “Happening Artist” Gloria Graves and Greek-American artist Lucas Samaras.
She appeared in art and films by Warhol. After, still in her mid-30s, became involved with the young poet and (pre Voidoids) musician Richard Hell.
The Druds was a short-lived 1963 avant-garde noise music band founded by Andy Warhol that featured prominent members of the New York proto- conceptual art and minimal art community. The band's noise rock sound has been compared to that of Henry Flynt and/or The Primitives, the band that featured the first collaboration of Lou Reed and John Cale, who would soon form The Velvet Underground.
That's a lot of preface for a collection of poetry by a relatively unknown poet but this particular copy is unique in ways the seller of it was seemingly unaware. (Yeah, I bought it online). This is a staple bound book. 64 pages. This was on of 100 copies to be signed by the poet, however, I noticed that the signature that I was told was in the book was actually crossed out by Ms. Mucha. I thought that odd until I read the snippets of her life in various places (apparently she did not rate to have a fully contained bio of her own) but she and Claus divorced in 1970 (because he was a cad, it seems) and this book came out nearly ten years later.
The publishers must have reasoned that she would be more easily recognized in print as Patty Oldenburg because that's the name they assigned her on the title of the book and throughout but she had been divorced from him for a decade so, likely in a moment of clarity, she signed and then crossed out THAT name and signed her own last name above.
The was her second collection of poetry. Her first, Poems Traveling, came out in 1973.
The Papers of Patty Mucha more detail.
she was born(Patricia Muschinski) was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on June 26, 1935. She attended Wisconsin State Teachers College in Milwaukee (now the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee), where she majored in art. Patty first saw Claes Oldenburg while she was at the Oxbow Summer School of Painting and later went to visit him in his Chicago studio. In 1957, she moved to New York to become an artist and met Oldenburg by accident after being there for two months.
Patty Mucha was not only Oldenburg's muse for his main performance ensemble but collaborator for all of his early sewn sculptures. Her contribution to the invention of soft sculpture was the result of the immediate demand for Oldenburg's first exhibition at the Green Gallery in 1962. She appeared in his Ray Gun Theater, which they produced in 1962, and collaborated in sewing costumes and constructing objects and sets for his Happenings and installations. She appeared in Oldenburg films made by Rudy Wurlitzer and Robert Breer as well as in films by Jean Dupuy, Rudy Burckhardt, Andy Warhol and Red Grooms. She also participated in the Happenings of Jim Dine, Robert Whitman, Dick Higgins, Alex Hay, Steve Paxton, Simone Forti, and Sally Gross.
Patty Mucha farms, writes and paints near St. Johnsbury, Vermont. Her essential role in the Pop Art and Happenings scenes is revealed in her as-yet-unpublished memoir, Clean Slate: My Life in the 1960's New York Art World, which in 2022, the title was changed to Threads. Portions of the book have appeared in Art in America as well as in the catalog "Seductive Subversion: Women Pop Artists, 1958–1968." Her poetry books include Poems Traveling, 1971-1973 (Panorama, 1973) and See Vermont: Poems, 1974-1978 (Poets Mimeo Cooperative, 1979).
Barbara Lanctot
Chicago School of Architecture Foundation
(c) 1977
61 page booklet filled with cemetery sculpture photos throughout. Map in the back. Fine booklet.
This is not a chapbook.
Ordinarily I wouldn't even mention it but the author and the Press are both deceased. The author was both in 1915 and died in 2017. This book was published in 2003. This is both a labor of love and an acknowledgment of existence. It seems to have been her only published book.
The press also disappeared sometime after publication of this book. The Press had been located in Zuni, Virginia. Ms. Hood lived toward the end of her life in Williamsburg, VA - a short distance from the Press.
