Book As Art XIII (2001)

Artists' Book About Artists
Books As Art XIII
The National Museum of Women in the Arts
Library and Research Center
Washington, D.C.
Jan. 22 - May 13, 2001

Exhibition booklet with text by Krystyna Wasserman. 20 pages. B&W images throughout with description of some of the featured work presented during the exhibition. Including pieces by Carol Schwartzott, Elizabetha Gut, and my favorite, Gloria Persiani. Very fine indeed.

A New Cold by Judith Soucek (1970)

A New Cold
judith soucek (illustrated by abigail pope)
University of North Carolina YMCA-YWCA
(c)1970
The Pitcher Poetry Pamphlet series #1

Interesting blending of illustrations by abigail pope with poems by judith soucek. They handled it well. 40 page staple-bound chapbook. First chapbook (pamphlet) in series. Ms. Soucek seems to have been most productive in 1970 when she had two books out on the same Press (UNC-YMCA YWCA) and not much since. The Press itself is not in operation currently. Perhaps it was her press or she was one of the founders of the imprint. In either case, the trail disappears in the underbrush of time.

a chapbook exchange in Alexandria, VA on Nov. 23, 2013

There will be a chapbook exhibition, conversation, and exchange at the Martha Washington library, 6614 Fort Hunt Rd. Alexandria, VA 22307-1710 featuring a number of small presses from the Northern VA/Washington DC area. A display of unique and distinctive chapbooks will be available for viewing from 11AM-12:45PM with the exchange, discussion, etc. beginning at 1PM across the hall.

Open to the public, free of charge.

contact steven.allenmay@gmail.com for more details.

Tar River Poets

Tar River Poets
Regina Kear, Vernon Ward, John Woods
East Carolina University Poetry Series No.9
Greenville, North Carolina
publication date unknown

This chapbook is part of a series of work produced or read on the campus of East Carolina University during the 1960s into the 1970s. I have never heard nor previously read any of these poets. All were connected to the University. 26 pages. Staple-bound. This came from my North Carolina lot a few months ago.

Electric Banana by Mary Beach (1975)

Electric Banana
Mary Beach
Cherry Valley Edition
Cherry Valley, NY
(c)1975

This is a prize for some of us collectors. Mary Beach was an American artist much forgotten in her homeland. This chapbook is a collection of cut-ups she put together in a similar fashion to William S Burroughs, who wrote the intro to this chapbook. Mary Beach was also the shadow behind "Beach Books, Texts and Documents" which printed a paperback version of Minutes to Go in 1968. In fact, many of Burroughs work in the 1960s were translated into French BY Mary Beach and her press published a few additional works as well.

This particular chapbook was published by Cherry Valley Edition which is the imprint for Charles Plymell. His press started in 1974 so this is an early chapbook. It's printed on brown paper. Some merging of mimeo with "standard chapbook formatting"?

My poet/friend Michael Gushue sent me a link to Lost Recordings which lists and describes The Lost Tapes of Carl Weissner, Claude Pélieu and Mary Beach, 1967-1969. There is a 12 minute recording of Mary Beach reading from Electric Banana and it's interesting to try and read along with the text only to notice that the text was published differently than on tape. Ms. Beach's name ought to be better associated with Burroughs at least (except that Burroughs never met a woman he liked, that he didn't shoot in the head). The link with the Beach and other recordings was set up and is run, nominally, by Jeb Birmingham who additionally is the cofounder of Mimeo mimeo.

Nine Men Against America by Rosalie M. Gordon

Nine Men Against America
Rosalie M Gordon
America's Future, Inc.
New Rochelle, NY
(date unknown)

23 page anti-government pamphlet. Before "birtherism", around the time of the rise of the John Birch Society, came this lovely little booklet suggesting that the Supreme Court was anti-American. I seem to have heard that recently, in fact. There was something in the water in New Rochelle. Something very distasteful.

3 forms by Marten Clibbens (2012)

3 forms
Marten Glibbens
Buffalo Ochre Papers
Buffalo, NY
(c)2012

This tiny booklet was created for a reading at Rust Belt Books in downtown Buffalo on 12/16/12. The reading showcased the collective work of the author and Edward Gates, Anne Reed, and Richard Scharff. One of 250 printed. 3 poems short. Collectible, rare, and very Buffalo.

Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision by Anthony Robinson (2006)

Brief Weather & I Guess a Sort of Vision
Anthony Robinson
Pilot Books
Lewisburg, PA & Portland, OR
(c)2006

Pilot Books came and went. It's gone now. It started in Lewisburg, PA at the college there; Bucknell. This book was among the first things they created. It's akin to a flip book. It was designed by August Herling. Unpaginated. Staple and tape bound. All the pieces were created in 2006. #36 of 200 printed. I like the concept, and wish they had managed to survive. However, they have gone puff. Look for the poet elsewhere, he's out there and worth finding. In 2006 he was an editor at The Northwest Review and lived in western Oregon.

Death Angels by Alan Catlin (2004)

Death Angels
Alan Catlin
Four-sep Publications
Friendship, Indiana
(c)2004

43 page staple-bound chapbook. This publishing firm has brought out at least 4 collections by Alan Catlin, a bartender/writer. Fairly standard in design. Uncertain what to call the text; Prose with poems? Poems ladened with prose? I didn't connect with it. Sorry to say.

5 part investigation (Cape Cod) V

Finding Her Voice.....
Jadene Felina Stevens
Salt Winds Press
East Harwich, MA
(c)1996

The fifth series of clues are found in the last of the chapbooks from this lot. I found Jadene Stevens to be an alum of Cape Cod Community College. There is a listing of 6 collections of poetry, several from Salt Winds Press. East Harwich is on the Cape. Most importantly, the inscription to "Mark" mentions the Community College. So, "Mark" was at the Community College, as a teacher.

At this point I do some serious Googling and find the Mark in question. Mark Doty.

This chapbook is a study in Lavender and Pink. I had not seen a chapbook so PINK before. The author admits in her inscription that some of the poems were "far from finished" (so, why include unfinished poems?) Perhaps Ms. Stevens was directly involved in the operation of Salt Winds, that's a different puzzle.

I understand the need to purge, even gifted items, as a person needs to get to moving weight somehow. It's unfortunate that anything had to be jettisoned, but I know that feeling. Not everything can be saved. No one has THAT much room in their house (lives).

5 part investigation (Cape Cod) IV

Little Ideas About Roads
Jonathan Wilks
Stop Light Press
Bronxville, NY
(c)1989

This is the fourth part of my little chapbook lot investigation, this one a chapbook by Jonathan Wilks who doesn't seem to have a presence online, nor does "Stop Light Press". Unpaginated. Cover image that doesn't relate to the title, or the work. Chapbook is dedicated to a Mike Heller. Inscription is the key again; inscribed to Mark alone. Not much else here. The work is thin.

5 part investigation (Cape Cod) III

Gamelan
Sarah Randolph
Cosmos Press
Provincetown, MA
(c)1991

Small (5 1/2" X 4 1/4") hand-sewn booklet, very nice indeed. 8 haiku. Single sided. Not much in the way of history about the Press or the author. The inscription is to "Mark & Wally". Mark & Wally again. Provincetown, Cape Cod. Also in the inscription, "from the poetry table" - hmm, a book fair? Unknown. I do know what a gamelan is: "an Indonesian orchestra of gongs and chimes: its insistent, reverberating music". Learn something new every day, right?

5 part investigation (Cape Cod) II

a Cardboard Suitcase Full of Ghosts
:the bad city & suicide poems
joshua m. wilson
jumping bad press
Seattle, Washington
(c)2000

Presentation-wise, this chapbook is every bit the wreck that the first one was. The clip art of an Ark filled with animals relates to the title of book NOT AT ALL. Here is what happens when the technology for anyone who can make a book does so - there were no brakes or editorial control exhibited anywhere in the 49 pages of self-indulgence. There is an introduction by J. Wesley Fullerton who has been published since 2000 but the author seems to have "misappeared" into the fog of time.

The clues again are in the inscription, this time to Mark alone. The author was a student of Mark's in Prague. Okay, so now we are getting somewhere. Prague. Mark taught a class in Prague. Earlier than 2000. Also, jumping bad press was in Seattle and Fullerton lives in Washington State. So there are a couple of clues. Fullerton and someone named Mark.

5 part investigation (Cape Cod)

A Slim Volume of Banal Carnalites
Jon O. Smith
self published


I open my 5 part investigation into a 5 chapbook lot that I got from someone on ebay with all items having a connection (or several) to one another. This particular dud should never have been printed. It's horrid. A waste of the life of a tree. Ugh!

Yet there are clues here, none about the author nor the details of the production of this piece of crap but it introduces us to "Mark and Wally" who the book is inscribed to, and there is a copyright mark of 1991. So, there's a year and two names. Apparently the author knew the gents he adds a note to. The person I got them from was located in Massachusetts, this person confirmed that the 5 chapbooks came from a bookstore on Cape Cod that had closed a few years earlier. So, there's a Cape Cod connection.

One can easily see that this item was self published: a line of poetry was hand written on the last page of the book (apparently forgotten)Ooops. Yeah, that's how I feel about the chapbook itself - SAVE A TREE !

back stories

Every chapbook has one - or many. Every author has one, every publisher has another. Every artist whose image or work adorns a chapbook cover has a different one. Books are often dedicated to someone, they each has one as well. Many people list the places where individual poems have previously appears, be it journal or magazine. Guess what? Each of those publications have their own back stories to tell. Publications as run and edited by people with different lives than the poet. Ripples across a still pond. And then you, the reader, pick up a chapbook and flip through it or study the cover or see if it's signed or written in at all. Layers of complexity, endless things to note or think about, or research.

That's where I end up going : into the rabbit's hole. Peeling onion skin layers down to the nub of nothingness. To this thin slice of nothingness that chapbooks are anyway. This is my endeavor which I have opened up for others to observe, witness, and possibly connect with. I am surprised by what is responded to, and what isn't. I guess most publishers feel the same way; it's a crapshoot. One really doesn't know what is going to "sell" or be written about, or connect with people.

This is especially true of the small presses that specialize in chapbooks and the poets who work best in that form. Allan Kornblum was great at it when he started Toothpaste Press. He ran that pony as far as it would go and then re-imaged the Press right into Coffee House Press. There are so many others. The guys behind Mimeo Mimeo do an incredible service in helping to name names and list small presses. Still....I wonder when the actual "revolution" began - which is the first press or operation to use the mimeograph for poetry? How did that all start?

We are the children of those first innovators. Those of us who collect, read, publish chapbooks. We walk a path that they blazed.

Axe by Charles Tillman (2002)

AXE
Charles Tillman

(c)2002

One of a kind, 6" X 4.5" hand-made, single-sided item. Not exactly a chapbook. Not exactly a booklet. Hard to define but not hard to appreciate. This item was made same year as his Trade Names chapbook which I first encountered in Philadelphia during a Ugly Duckling Presse/Loudmouth Collective event.

Similar to that book, this one uses randomized text, hand-written (sometimes smudged) on unidentical pieces of paper. Hole punched, bound by a piece of denim jeans, knotted with contact info on back. Perfectly primitive. This item is part of a long tradition of self-made books that predated the Mimeographic Revolution. Much of this "print primitivism" has been lost since many were single copies which disappeared over time.

Charles Tillman is an artist of diverse interests and completely worth following. As with many artists who cross genres and interests, sometimes the results are murky. While I don't completely understand the puzzle of words here, I greatly appreciate the effort.

All the Aldas by Daniel Kane and Gillian Kane (2002)

front and back covers of All the Aldas
All the Aldas
Daniel and Gillian Kane
Evil Twin Publications
New York
(c)2002

Evil Twin Publications - unique/bizarre tag-team of Amber Gayle and Stacy Wakefield Forte - making primarily "artist" books although a quick glance on their website showed books with dogs on the cover (umm....) The one I have and wish to mention is Daniel and Gillian Kane's twisted effort called All the Aldas. Collage images throughout. Fold-out pages as well. Design difficulties not scored well by the East German judge but really a very engaging effort. Bizarre path to take but worth the time in getting there.

The Nailed Down Cloud by ben tibbs (1979)

The Nailed Down Cloud
ben tibbs
Stovepipe Press
(c)1979

I had not heard of nor read ben tibbs before receiving this chapbook. Nor had I heard of or have found anything about this Press, Stovepipe, prior. ben tibbs seems to have been much published. This particular chapbook is not so much a collection of poems as a miscellany of one liners. I know that Mr. Tibbs is deceased and as far as I can tell the Press was a one-time blip. There is no address listed nor any other publisher information. I am here to say it exists. That's about it.

"Lipsmack! A Sampler" edited by Diane Borsenik (2012)

Lipsmack!
A Sampler Platter of Poets From Nightballet Press
Year One 2012
edited by Diane Borsenik
Nightballet Press
Elyria, Ohio
(c)2012

The world sometimes flows into my hands, like this little chapbook, and all I can do is write. I don't have a lot of information about the small Press out of Elyria, Ohio. I have this chapbook. I am taking the time to write about it because it's an tiny anthology worth finding. It's some talent in it that I am familiar with. Ralph LaCharity of Cincinnati. Alex Gildzen who apparently grew up in Elyria. Lyn Lifshin who hasn't met a single small press she didn't want to be published in. She is the Queen of the Small Press for a reason!

Nightballet Press has been around since 2011. So, they are newbies. But this is quite a collection so they are also talented and one needs to acknowledge Diane Borsenik who is the driving force behind the Press. She seems to be the "do-all, be-all" of the Press. But Elyria, Ohio as a publishing capital of Ohio?

Yes! I remember now! Crisis Chronicle Press! John Burroughs! They came from there. They are all over Northern Ohio and into Western Pennsylvania. Burroughs is also a force to be reckoned with/acknowledged. So this town has given birth to two small presses. How literate they are in Elyria!

If this anthology is any indication, I would wager a bright future for Nightballet!

must atone for a single posting in April

busy - distracted - lazy

sorry


promise to do better


stevenallenmay