I give City Lights a hard time, but that's what happens when you are the King of the Hill. People want to knock you down. No matter how much I buy into Jack Spicer's criticism of Ferlinghetti as a profiteer in the Culture Wars, I have to admit that the successful business model of City Lights made possible some great satellite publications. I am thinking of Claude Pelieu and Mary Beach's Beach Books imprint and Jan Herman's Nova Broadcast.
Pelieu, Beach and Herman all worked at City Lights and while working there took advantage of the City Lights resources for their own projects. Nova Broadcast would never have been what it was without the fact that City Lights was a good customer of a local printer. The printer operated a 24 hour shop in part due to the massive printing needs of City Lights. So if there was nothing on tap at 4am on a Sunday night, the printer pushed through Nova Broadcast projects as an added perk.
There is no way Jan could have financed his productions otherwise. The complexity and production quality of Nova Broadcast publications are a cut above the normal Mimeo Revolution fare. Thus, Journal of the Identical Lunch, San Francisco Earthquake and other items have been admitted into the canon of artist's books and magazines.
I am not going to lie I like Jan personally which may influence my strong feelings for his literary productions, but even if I did not know Jan there is something appealing in how he made his connections with City Lights pay off. It is like the commandeering of a photocopy machine for a punk zine at an office or the clandestine running of a little mag on the presses of a corporate printer. This re-directing of energies, this siphoning off of resources from the corporate teat is another part of the economics of the Mimeo Revolution that often gets overlooked.
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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