Shig Murao: The Enigmatic Soul of City Lights and the San Francisco Beat Scene is officially online: http://shigmurao.org/. As is well known, Shig, who worked at City Lights, sold the copy of Howl that lead to the obscenity trial, and went on trial with Lawrence Ferlinghetti, was written out of the Howl movie. Such treatment reminds me of the 1957 photo of Jack Kerouac that copped Joyce Johnson out of the shot. Johnson took matters into her own hands and wrote the classic memoir Minor Characters. Shigmurao.org has the makings of a classic website that will serve as an archive to all things Shig.For Mimeo Mimeo readers, the opportunity to view issues of Shig's Review should be a special treat. Unfortunately, Shig's Review has largely been written out of histories of the Mimeo Revolution. Until previewing Shigmurao.org, I had heard of Shig's Review but never actually seen a copy. I was unaware of the publishing history of the Review. I thought the Review ran for many more issues in the 1960s and was shocked to discover just how many issues there were in the 1980s. The site provides a sampler and an index. I know for a fact that this material fills a need for scholars and collectors alike.
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.
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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.
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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).
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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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1 comments:
You want irony? I've got irony. Shig and Lawrence Ferlinghetti had a falling out in 1976, which I describe in the "End of an Era" chapter of my biography on shigmurao.org. The disagreement resulted in Shig leaving City Lights and never speaking to Ferlinghetti again.
The irony here is that the Shig cropped Ferlinghetti out of the photo pictured above! In the original, taken in 1974 at the City Lights in North Dakota Conference, Ferlinghetti is seen on the right, next to Ginsberg. (Peter Orlovsky is also in the original next to Gary Snyder, though Orlovsky is cut in half by the frame of the photo.)
--Richard Reynolds
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