Sunday, July 20, 2014

My Lost Idols by Jackie Botterio (1967)


My Lost Idols
Jackie Botterio
twowindows press
san francisco, ca
(c) 1967

I was going to write about this chapbook in terms that I have before: size, page count, details and all that. But with this one I got caught up in that printed in November 1967 in an edition of only 130 copies and that the copies were only distributed to friends. Why? Well, the clue is found on the title page at the bottom:

Jackie Botterio
1942-1966


The young lady, all of 24 years old, died. This is her only book. Her remembrance. The fact that there are 5-10 copies posted online to be sold is heartbreaking. This young woman, this small press, deserves more than the briefest mention. I did a quick search of this blog and found a different chapbook by Twowindows Press : a 1987 chapbook by Joanne Kyger and Michael Rothenberg. By that time, the press was located in Berkeley. Apparently the press brought out close to 50 books over its lifespan. Not done digging but wanted to put this up.

2 comments:

M. L. Benedict said...

By chance I saw your review of my old poetry book The Phoenician Sailor (in your 5-18-2006 post) and it said you had tried in vain to find out something about me...so here I am. My name was Waters back then. I'm not quite sure what a "sliver of nothing" means, and some of those poems are pretty embarrassing now, but Robert Bly did pick out two of them and send them to a friend of his who was just starting a little poetry magazine, Café Solo, which published them in, I don't know, maybe 1970 or so.

stevenallenmay said...

"sliver of nothing" is my general term for chapbooks which if placed on shelf with large books with spines tend to disappear from view.

I don't know how long ago you wrote this - I think we did exchange some emails on my poetic.com address some time back.

I will write you from there again