PART OF MY HISTORY by LEWIS WARSH

8. PART OF MY HISTORY. Toronto, ON: Coach House Press, 1972. 6x6" 168 pages. (A)

Printed offset with navy blue ink on light blue paper, perfect-bound paperback. Blue, yellow and white cover by Joe Brainard. Includes photographs. Published in an edition of 1,000 in the winter of 1972.

“This was my first extended autobiographical work and my first experience putting together a book-length work made up of disparate pieces of writing. It begins with work written when I was living at 33 St Mark’s Place, including ‘New York Diary 1967,’ and all the transitional work written when I returned to New York from Europe summer 1969, including the poem ‘Release’ which I wrote that August when I was staying at George and Katie Schneeman’s apartment. And then there’s everything I wrote during my trip across country, with stops in Ann Arbor and Iowa City, and finally some of the poems that I wrote in Bolinas, along with excerpts from journals I kept along the way. Also included is a kind of reading diary, ‘On Reading,’ which consists mostly of quotes from books I was reading in transit and letters I was receiving. The book is dedicated to Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Joanne Kyger, Joe Brainard, and Neil Young, and published by Coach House Press in Toronto. David Rosenberg was the Coach House editor who made the book happen and we were in almost daily correspondence for a good deal of this time (1970–’71).” (LW)