434 - 583
AMERICAN LITERARY AVANT-GARDE
BLACK MOUNTAIN, SAN FRANCISCO RENAISSANCE, BEAT GENERATION and NEW YORK POETS
- First issue w. some tiny ruststains from staples.
= A magazine devoted to the review and discussion of literature, with i.a. two letters by Charles Bukowski to the editor/publisher, Richard Morris. Morris published Camels Coming as a little magazine in the 1960s, reviving it in a newsletter format in 1972, and focusing mostly on commentary on literature. The collaboration with Ghost Dance includes highly experimental work by Opal L. Nations, Dick Higgins, Robert Bringhurst etc. Clay and Phillips, p.267. SEE ILLUSTRATION PLATE XII.
Camels Coming Newsletter. No.1-5 [all published]. Ed. R. Morris. Ibid., idem, 1972-1975, 5 issues, orig. stapled lvs. without wr., 4to. The Camels Hump. No.1-5. Ed. R. Morris. Ibid., idem, n.d. (1966-1967), 5 issues, orig. stapled lvs. without wr., 4to.
= "The Camel's Hump is a poetry newsletter published occasionally by Camels Coming (...)".
- Upper hinge no.1 broken; a few vols. w. owner's entry on first leaf. No.18 completely annotated in ballpoint and pink marker.
= The complete run of Clayton Eshleman's inventive and provocative periodical whose contributors include a diverse roster of significant writers and artists: Paul Blackburn, Robert Duncan, Gary Snyder, Cid Corman, Stan Brakhage, Allen Ginsberg, Diane Wakoski, Lorine Niedecker, Charles Olson, Jack Hirschman, Nancy Spero, Leon Golub, David Antin, Jackson Mac Low, Wallace Berman, R.B. Kitaj, Carolee Schneeman, and many others representing various streams from post-Beat, Black Mountain, and avant-garde sources. This run includes the controversial wrapper on no. 2 by Carol Schneeman. Clay and Phillips, p.124f: "Commercially produced and substantial in size, it provided considerable space, over the course of its twenty issues, for work by a wide range of younger writers and artists as well as many of those associated with its precursors, The Black Mountain Review and Origin."
= Contains i.a. poems and prose by i.a. Denise Levertov, Umberto Eco, Raymond Carver and Grace Paley. Writers such as W. S. Merwin, Sylvia Plath, A.R. Ammons and Paul Auster were published in the magazine when they were still emerging. The magazine ran until 2007.
- Trifle dustsoiled.
= Contributions mainly by New York school poets: i.a. James Schuyler, Tom Clark, Ted Berrigan, Ron Padgett, Anselm Hollo, David Drum, Dick Gallup, Jim Carroll, Bill Berkson, Frank OHara, Clark Coolidge, Anne Waldman, John Ashbery, Kenneth Koch, Joe Brainard, Bernadette Mayer and Michael Bronstein. Clay and Phillips, p.268.
- Lacks the first issue. A fine set.
= Interesting typography and numerous illustrations and covers by Bern Porter, George Barrows (creative photography), Rexroth, Jean Varda (in a feature written by Henry Miller), Bezalel Schatz, Edwin Ver Becke, John & James Whitney (Audio-visual music), Jim Fitzsimons (Solarized Photography) a.o. Issue No. 9 is present in three of the four cover variants featuring original silk-screens by Bezalel Schatz. Clay and Phillips, p.269.
- Trifle fingersoiled. Otherwise a fine set.
= No. 2 with a SIGNED AUTOGRAPH DEDICATION by LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI. One of the major publications of the counterculture and the Beat generation, published as thick paperbacks, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti (No. 4 by Mendes Monsanto, appeared in 1978). Contributions by i.a. Allen Ginsberg, Alex Trocchi, Charles Bukowski, Wm. C. Williams, Jack Kerouac, Gary Snyder, William Burroughs and H.M.C. Corman. No. 2 contains the English translation of Epocas interview with Ezra Pound; no. 3 is devoted to Poetry San Francisco 1966 and Spoleto 1965. With a duplicate of issue no.2. Clay and Phillips, p.98f: "Ferlinghetti started the City Lights Journal in 1963, basing it on such older and distinguished European literary journals as Botteghe Oscure and Transition and on the yearly American anthologies from New Directions. The entire Beat pantheon (...) contributed to the first issue."
- Wrappers partly sl. sunned/ sl. toned.
= Peter Martin came to San Francisco from New York in the 1940's to teach sociology. Inspired by the Chaplin film, City Lights, he started this literary magazine in 1952, publishing key Bay Area writers like Philip Lamantia, Pauline Kael, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, as "Lawrence Ferling". In 1953 Martin and Ferlinghetti founded City Lights bookstore. After two years Martin sold his interest and returned to New York and opened The New Yorker Bookstore. This first issue opens with Robert Duncan's "Open Letter to City Light", and an interesting review of San Francisco's Newsvue Theatre at Market and Mason streets, a third-run movie house.
- Lacks no.10; 2 issues w. stamp on frontwrapper.
= East Coast based poetry magazine which published many radical poets including John Beecher and Thomas McGrath. It was the epicenter of the Los Angeles poetry movement. Contrtibutions by i.a. Charles Bukowski, Winifried Cullen, Alvaro Cardona-Hine, Genevieve Davis, Robert Eskew, Stanley Kiesel, Gil Orlovitz, Tom Viertel and Peter Yates. No. 14/15 is the double issue "Los Angeles: The Non-Existent City", no. 19 the "Anti-War Issue" was guest edited by Curtis Zahn, and no. 21/22 is the double "Final Issue."
= Early issues feature the work of editor Jeff Goldberg, and his friends Victor Bockris and Andrew Wylie, but then the format changed to focus on a single poet, with the last issue on John Wieners. The first number in this run has had the published play by Goldberg completely edited in his hand in blue ink, and has enclosed a signed explanatory printed slip from contributing poet Marty Watt. Clay and Phillips, p.214f.
= No. 1 was published under Contact. The San Francisco Jounral of New Writing, Art and Ideas. Contributions by i.a. Ray Bradbury, William Saroyan, William Carlos Williams, Aldous Huxley, John Updike, Wendell Berry, Evan Connell, Denise Levertov, Norman Thomas, Alan Watts and Norman Mailer.
= Complete run of a West Coast literary little magazine. Contributions i.a. by Gary Snyder, Charles Olson, Diana Wakosky, Allen Ginsberg, David Meltzer, Robert Kelly and Philip Whalen. Cover art i.a. by Zoe Brown, Diana Hadley, Philip Roeber and Jed Irwin. Clay and Phillips, p.270.
- Folded; sl. dustsoiled along fold.
= Edited and largely written by Ed Sanders, although it does not carry the Fuck You imprint. Contributions by i.a. Ted Berrigan and Michael McClure. Clay and Phillips, p.167.
= First and only issue published. With num. photographs by i.a. Peter Moore. Contributions by i.a. William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Gregory Corso (Notes on the Lenny Bruce obscenity trial), Leroi Jones, Norman Mailer, Kenneth Patchen, Michael McClure, Kenneth Rexroth, Robert Bly, Tuli Kupferberg and John Wieners.
= Complete run in fine condition of this little poetry magazine. Contributions by i.a. Joseph Ceravolo, Ruth Krauss, David Shapiro, Clark Coolidge, Ted Berrigan. Clay and Phillips, p.274.
- No.2 lacks the "Beat Nickel Bag".
= Complete run of the little poetry magazine in four issues with an anthology published as the Winter 1967-1968 issue of The Human Voice, Vol. III No. 4. Contributors included many of the most prominent Beat Poets: Charles Bukowski (in three issues), Douglas Blazek, D.R. Wagner, William Wantling, Harold Norse, The Willie and Steve Richmond as well as d.a. levy, Tuli Kupferberg, Ted Berrigan, Clarence Major and Lyn Lifshin.
- Rare complete set in a good/ fine condition with the following minor defects: no.35 and 55 wrapper (partly) loose; a few issues w. some minor soiling on wrappers and some minor dam. spots. The poster is rolled and lacks sm. piece of lower left corner; some tiny marginal tears.
= The magazine of the Beat-Generation with contributions by i.a. Henri Miller, L. Ginsberg, Albert Camus, Jack Kerouac, Samuel Beckett, J.P. Sartre, Eugène Ionesco, Karl Jaspers, Tennessee Williams, Malcolm X, Vladimir Nabokov, Boris Pasternak, interviews with Bernadette Devlin, Fernando Arrabal and Ingmar Bergman. Several issues were banned. The second issue (the famous "San Francisco Scene" issue) SIGNED by LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI, MICHAEL MCCLURE and GARY SNYDER in black pen and ink on their respective entries. Clay and Phillips, p.103: "In 1957, with the backing of Grove Press, Barney Rosset and Donald Allen began editing Evergreen Review, whose early issues reveal "preoccupations with European philosophical and political debates, an enthusiasm for relatively accesible forms of American and European mainstream literary expreimentalism and a compulsion to challenge censorship by publishing ols and new 'great outlaw masterpieces'". SEE ILLUSTRATION PLATE XIII.
- Backwr. discoloured. Otherwise fine.
= First and only issue of this rare work devoted to avant-garde theatre. Features "On The Everyday Theatre" by Brecht, "Liner Notes From Howl and Other Poems" by Ginsberg plus work by Baby Jane Holzer, James Waring, Alan Solomon and Burgess Meredith. Very rare.
= Libertarian journal and important 60's publication. The magazine was notable for having been sued by Barry Goldwater over a 1964 issue entitled "The Unconscious of a Conservative: A special Issue on the Mind of Barry Goldwater". In Goldwater v. Ginzburg, a federal jury awarded Goldwater $1 in compensatory damages and $75,000 in punitive damages, to punish Ginzburg and the magazine for being reckless. It put the magazine out of business. Cover designs by Herb Lubalin.