If you've bought and enjoyed Ginzap's Pond's Cold Cream, you must get your hands and genitals on Wiener's Orgasm Tonic. Drink the hard stuff.The Wiener ad is the last page of the last issue of Fuck You. I have read through the entire run. Prepare for some generalizations.
I see three phases to Fuck You, a magazine of the arts. The first four issues spurted from the peace and civil right activities of Sanders. The first issue was printed on the Catholic Workers' mimeograph machine and these early issues are full of the gossip and playful banter of the movement. The poems read like turned on camp songs. Nelson Barr, Al Fowler and Sanders are the core of the mag.
The shift in bibliographic numbering in Issue Five (Number 5 Vol. 1, Vol.2, etc) represents a shift in focus. The magazine expands to more fully represent the literary freak scene of the Lower East Side. Barr's Bouquet of Fuck Yous are a carry over from the early issues but more established poets, like Charles Olson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Frank O'Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Leroi Jones, or Michael McClure (who was living in NYC at the time) as well as the Four Lady Poets of the 1962 Corinth/Totem publication (Carol Berge, Barbara Moraff, Diane Wakoski, Rochelle Owens), take over.
In the later issues the Bouquet section disappears and the size of the magazine expands. This is particularly true of Number 5, Vol. 7. The editorials get longer and the visuals of the magazine become more ambitious, see Warhol's Couch Cover. Sanders is struggling with the limitations of mimeo. There are plans for a prose issue of Fuck You, prose being a labor intensive process on the mimeograph. In addition images like Warhol's have to be thermofaxed. By this time, Sanders puts out a call for an offset press to meet these demands and to expand production. The twelveth and thirteenth issue were incredibly strong issues visually and it is clear that Sanders was increasingly becoming intrigued with the possibilities of other media like music and film. In January 1966, the police raided Peace Eye and effectively ended Fuck You magazine. Yet reading through the entire run, it seems that Sanders was in the process of moving in a new direction.
JB
MIMEO MIMEO #8: CURATORS' CHOICE features 16 bibliophiles on 6 highlights from their personal or institutional collections. Contributors include Steve Clay, Wendy Burk, Tony White, Brian Cassidy, Thurston Moore, J.A. Lee, Michelle Strizever, Adam Davis, Michael Basinski, Joseph Newland, Alastair Johnston, Tate Shaw, Michael Kasper, Steve Woodall, Molly Schwartzberg, Nancy Kuhl, James Maynard, and the Utah posse (Becky Thomas, Marnie Powers-Torrey, Craig Dworkin, Emily Tipps, Luise Poulton, & David Wolske)
MIMEO MIMEO #7: THE LEWIS WARSH ISSUE is the first magazine ever devoted in its entirety to poet, novelist, publisher, teacher, and collage artist Lewis Warsh. Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, co-founded Angel Hair Magazine and Books with Anne Waldman in 1966, and went on to co-found United Artists Magazine and Books with Bernadette Mayer in 1977. He is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction and autobiography, the Director of the MFA program in Creative Writing at Long Island University in Brooklyn, and as you’ll soon discover, so much more. Includes an introduction by Daniel Kane, an interview conducted by Steve Clay, 10 new stories, 5 new poems, dozens of photographs and collages, and an anecdotal bibliography.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #6: THE POETRY ISSUE is devoted to new work by eight poets who have consistently composed quality writing that has influenced and inspired generations since the golden era of the mimeo revolution. Contributors include Bill Berkson, John Godfrey, Ted Greenwald, Joanne Kyger, Kit Robinson, Rosmarie Waldrop, Lewis Warsh, and Geoffrey Young. Cover art by George Schneeman.
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #3: THE DANNY SNELSON ISSUE examines the relationship between structuralism and the poetries of the mimeo era by presenting a detailed analysis of Form (a Cambridge-UK magazine published in 1966) and Alcheringa (a journal published by Boston University in 1975), two exemplary gatherings that illuminate the historical, material and social circumstances under which theory informed art (and vice versa) in the early works of some of today's most celebrated experimental writers. Also includes a special insert, The Infernal Method, written, designed and printed by Aaron Cohick (NewLights Press).
OUT OF PRINT
MIMEO MIMEO #2: features Emily McVarish on her artist's book Flicker; James Maynard on poet Robert Duncan's early experiences as an editor and typesetter; Derek Beaulieu on the relationship between the influential Canadian poetry journal Tish and Black Mountain College; and an extensive interview with Australian poet and typographer Alan Loney conducted by Kyle Schlesinger. Cover is by Emily McVarish.
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