levy As Folk Art


THE MARRAHWANNA QUARTERLY, Vol. 1, No. 1

Cleveland: Renegade Press, 1964
First edition, stapled sheets with printed cover, 150 copies, letterpress. Contributors include: Russell Salamon: V (AFTER PYNCHON), John Keys: PRESCOTT VIA HUDSON, d.a. levy: SHIPENSBURG, Roberta E. Badger: PLEASE, Margaret Randall: THE BROKEN GLASS BEGINS TO WHOLE ITSELF, Marvin Malone: THE PROFESSIONAL, Ann: FALL, J. Cornillon: POEM, Dave Rasey: MIDWESTERN MANIFESTO, Erik Kiviat: [UNTITLED POEM], d.a. levy [print]: YOU MURDERERS WITH YOUR INDIFFERENCE, Allen Katzman: THE TRANSGRESSION, George R. Beck: TWO BROTHERS, Judson Crews: MEDICAL SCIENCE, Pat Crayton: [untitled print] (Lowell B2, T&H P-38)

Is it an insult to d.a. levy to think of his printing efforts in terms of folk art?  Why should that thought come to me?  Is levy a naive artist?  Does his youth imply a certain immaturity?  A lack of sophistication?  A lack of talent?  I do not think so.  Nobody says this of Ed Sanders or Ted Berrigan.  Fuck You, a magazine of the arts and C:  A Journal of Poetry are now viewed as high art.  They are bought, sold and displayed in New York galleries.  Is it because levy is from Cleveland and outside of the art capital of the world?  Maybe it is more accurate to view levy as outsider art, like that of Henry Darger.  levy as obsessive.  His printing the product of madness and compulsion.  Can all the publications of the Mimeo Revolution be viewed in the same terms?   

JB

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