Nelson Ball | Round Table

Nelson Ball

Round Table

Toronto, Canada: Letters Bookshop, 1996

[16 pp], 14 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 225 numbered copies [+ 8 lettered proofs]

The final of sixty-two TWOBITTER publications, released by Letters Bookshop in Toronto, from 1985 to 1996. Other authors in the series include Charles Bukowski, Victor Coleman, jw curry, Douglas Fetherling, Ron Giii, bpNichol, Michael Ondaatje, and numerous others [see below image].

Nelson Ball (1942 – 2019) was a Canadian poet, editor, publisher, and bookseller. He published approximately 50 books during his lifetime, as well as dozens of leaflets and pieces of small press ephemera. Ball was married to artist, writer, and publisher Barbara Caruso until his 2019 death by medically assisted suicide.

Rafael Barreto-Rivera | Here it Has Rained

Rafael Barreto-Rivera

Here it Has Rained

Toronto, Canada: Underwhich Editions, 1978

[12] pp., 21.5 x 14 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 500

Here it Has Rained was published by Paul Dutton’s small press Underwhich Editions. Barreto-Rivera and Dutton were members of the Canadian sound poetry collective, along with bp Nichol and Steve McCaffery. The title was printed at the Coach House Press in Toronto and the cover was designed by their resident typographer Glenn Goluska. 

Poems by John Giorno

John Giorno

Poems by John Giorno

New York City, USA: Mother Press, 1967

64 pp., 8 × 6 1⁄4”, softcover

Edition of 1000

Giorno’s first book, edited by Peter Schjeldahl, features new poems, and pieces that had previously been published in Mother, Spice and C magazines. Titles include Paratrooper, Alone on a Beam, Leather, She Tasted Death and Pornographic Poem. 

The book’s cover are frontispiece are by Robert Rauschenberg and Les Levine, respectively. Both were close friends with Giorno. Of the thousand copies produced, fifty were signed and numbered by all three. 

The trade edition can be purchased by Giorno Poetry Systems, here, for $250 US. Granary Books has a copy of the edition signed by Giorno, Rauschenberg and Levine for $1000 US, here. 

Jiří Valoch | Poem for bpNichol

Jiří Valoch

Poem for bpNichol

Toronto, Canada: GrOnk, 1988

print on yellow paper

5.4 x 15 cm 

Edition of 89

Kenneth Goldsmith and Joan La Barbara | 73 Poems

Kenneth Goldsmith and Joan La Barbara

73 Poems 

Brooklyn, USA: Permanent Press, 1993 

[102] pp., 15 x 21 cm., paperback 

Edition of 1000 signed and numbered copies

Goldsmith’s third publication is a collection of 73 visually rich poems comprised of associated words, linked by the device of over-printing. The book is accompanied by a CD featuring interpretations by vocalist Joan La Barbara, best known for her collaborations with John Cage (who this title is dedicated to). The disc feature 79 untitled tracks, only six of which surpass the one-minute mark.

Alexis Smith | Alone

Alexis Smith

Alone

Los Angeles, USA: Self-published, 

[32] pp., 7.5 x 6.9 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

An artist book in which Alexis Smith used sixteen black and white illustrations of herself and household objects to illustrate Edgar Allen Poe's short poem “Alone”:

From childhood’s hour I have not been 

As others were—I have not seen 

As others saw—I could not bring 

My passions from a common spring— 

From the same source I have not taken 

My sorrow—I could not awaken 

My heart to joy at the same tone— 

And all I lov’d—I lov’d alone— 

Then—in my childhood—in the dawn 

Of a most stormy life—was drawn 

From ev’ry depth of good and ill 

The mystery which binds me still— 

From the torrent, or the fountain— 

From the red cliff of the mountain— 

From the sun that ’round me roll’d 

In its autumn tint of gold— 

From the lightning in the sky 

As it pass’d me flying by— 

From the thunder, and the storm— 

And the cloud that took the form 

(When the rest of Heaven was blue) 

Of a demon in my view—

Gerhard Rühm | Wiener Dialektgedichte

Gerhard Rühm

Wiener Dialektgedichte

Tonbandverlag, Germany: Edition S Press, 1975

58:01 audio cassette

Edition size unknown

Audiotape recording of a text originally published in "Wahnsinn - Litaneien", Hansermanuskripte, Carl Hanser Verlag, München 1973.

Renat Absalyamov | Cafe 24-Hour Loneliness

Renat Absalyamov

Cafe 24-Hour Loneliness

Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2022

8 pp., 22.5 x 13 cm., loose leaves

Edition of 100 signed and numbered copies

Credited to Renat’s Left Hand, this work consists of a six short of poems about loneliness and consumption. For example: "A poem is a receipt you get for living in the moment. Thank you for your purchase.”

The poems are printed on thin strips of paper designed to resemble receipts, and the works are housed in a faux-leather check card holder cover. A smart use of the material, if somewhat underdeveloped. 

The 8th page is a brief bio that reads in part:

“Renat’s Left Hand’s life is a poem written in Russia and being read in Toronto, Canada. He is the author of Twenty Eight Poems, Love Letter to Nova Scotia, Instant Poetry and Twelve Thousand Six Hundred and Eighty Six Steps."

Emmett Williams | Genesis: A Light Poem

Emmett Williams

Genesis: A Light Poem

Lodz, Poland: International Artists' Museum, 1991

22 pp., 24 x 24 cm., hardcover

Edition of 95 signed and numbered copies

Genesis: A Light Poem - translated into Polish by Piotr Bikont and Andrzej Chetko - consists of twenty-two pages with embossed typography on hand pressed white paper, and a portrait of Emmett Williams on front and back cover. 

During the book presentation in Lodz the artist recited the poem in a room lit by candles. After reading each letter he blew out a candle. By the time of the poem's end, the room was dark. 

bp Nichol | Love Affair

bp Nichol

Love Affair

Toronto, Canada: Seripress, 1979

[7] pp., 13 x 17 cm., loose leaves

Signed and numbered edition of 100

7 unbound sheets printed on one side only and interspersed with tissue paper, housed in folded blue paper portfolio. The last sheet is the colophon, numbered and signed by Nichol. 

The scarce title is available from Attic Books, here, for $200 CDN. 

Bern Porter | The Last Acts of Saint Fuckyou

Bern Porter

The Last Acts of Saint Fuckyou  (Window Shade Version)

Cincinnati, USA: Volatile, 1990 

40" x 5" x 2.5" (unrolls to 70")

Edition of 20 signed and numbered copies [+2 AP]

The Last Acts of Saint Fuckyou is a poem presented in alphabetical order, with the same number of acts for each letter. Saint Fuckyou is a comic tyrant, along the lines of Alfred Jarry's Ubu. He is a "common man", so common that that Pope anointed him a saint. 

The poem was first published as a book in 1975 and again as a broadsheet two years later. In 1988 Porter recorded himself reading the diatribe poem for an album called Williamson Street Blues. 

This window shade version followed two years later. It consists of a red ink screen print on a white window shade with maple panel casing. 

"In his 93 years on this Earth, he contributed to the invention of television, worked on the Manhattan Project and the Saturn V rocket, and made the acquaintances of Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Werner von Braun; published Henry Miller, Kenneth Patchen, and Kenneth Rexroth, among others, and knew Gertrude Stein, Anais Nin, Allen Ginsberg, and anyone else you might name; exerted a profound influence on the phenomenon known as mail art; traveled hundreds of thousands of miles on cruise ships; was married three times, once happily; spent several years in Guam; was an irascible crank; theorized a union of art and science called Sciart; was briefly committed to a mental institution; wrote more than 80 books, including important bibliographies of Miller and F. Scott Fitzgerald; had a massive FBI file; lived and worked in Rhode Island, New York, Tennessee, California, Texas, Alabama; also Guam and Tasmania; at last settled in Belfast, Maine, where he ran for governor, served on the Knox County Planning Commission, called his house the Institute of Advanced Thinking, barraged the local paper with letters, and at the end of his life subsisted largely on soup kitchens and food gleaned from the munchie tables at art openings."

Jackson Mac Low | 22 Light Poems

Jackson Mac Low

22 Light Poems

Los Angeles, USA: Black Sparrow Press, 1968

84 pp., 23.5 x 16 cm., softcover

Edition of 750 

Mac Low began the Light Poems series in early June of 1962, as a chart listing 280 names of kinds of light. Publication of the volume was troubled by the poet's roof caving in and the subsequent misplacing of the light chart. 

Another setback followed: 

"Then Sunday morning – I know you won’t believe it but the painting rack over the bed fell on us at 7 AM & we both nearly got killed. I got a terrible hitna head from the heavy shelf that had overhung the bed or from one of the stretchers – dunno which – & several bad bruises & cuts on my arms and legs. Iris got away with a cut elbow. So I wasn’t in any shape to do proofreading until about the middle of the week."

The book was eventually released in October of 1968, by the Black Sparrow Press in Los Angeles. In addition to the 22 poems, the volume contains six pages of notes on the artist's methodology. 

The Light Poems continued over the ensuing years, written intermittently, with the final being the “60th Light Poem: In Memoriam Robert Duncan, 8–9 October 1988.” A collection of the complete series was published by Granary Books in 2015. 

In addition to the 750 copies of the 'trade' issue, there were also 125 signed cloth copies of the book released, and four 'presentation copies' (see below).

Milton Acorn | More Poems For People

Milton Acorn

More Poems For People

Toronto, Canada: NC Press, 1972

116 pp., 11 x 18.5 x 1 cm., softcover

Edition size unknown

I picked this up last month at a University of Toronto book sale that was otherwise a bust. Acorn is quoted in my Dead Ringer film, which I had just screened the night before. He was one of several residents of the now demolished Waverly Hotel:

“The Waverley Hotel was full of character and characters,” said poet Milton Acorn, “a place for all sorts of strange but true types. People who were certainly down, but not out.” Acorn, known as the “people’s poet”, resided at the Waverly from 1970 to 1977, reportedly paying the daily rate rather than the monthly, in case he needed to leave quickly, and often changing rooms, fearing that he was under surveillance by the RCMP.

The copyright page of the book explains that the poems may be used "free of charge by anyone serving the cause of Canadian independence and the cause of the working people in any country."

It wasn't until I got home that I realized that the cover image is by Greg Curnoe. 

"I remember Greg Curnoe as the artist among the poets. He did pictures for books by David McFadden and Milton Acorn. When I published a little book of Victor Coleman's poetry, Greg made a cover drawing of Victor as a bust, a kind of statue or chesspiece. Greg did the covers of two of my Vancouver books, and he did the piece seen on the cover of an issue of a magazine about my stuff. I cherished that connection and I do so even more now. I love his great circles of colour and I love his drawings on my books, even if no one has the books."

- George Bowering, 1992

Kenneth Patchen

Kenneth Patchen was born on this day a hundred and ten years ago. 

Jake Kennedy | The Rublev Horse

Jake Kennedy

The Rublev Horse

Kentville, Nova Scotia, Canada: Gaspereau Press, 2021

[32] pp., 20 x 14.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition of 400

Speaking about his 1966 historical drama Andrei Rublev, Andrei Tarkovsky said: 

“I’d like to point out the film ends with an image of horses in the rain. It is a symbolic image as the horse for me is a synonym for life. When I’m looking at a horse, I have a feeling I’m in direct contact with the essence of life itself. Perhaps it’s because the horse is a very beautiful animal, friendly to man, and is moreover so characteristic of the Russian landscape. There are many scenes with horses in Rublev. Take the scene in which a man dies after an unsuccessful attempt to fly. A sad-looking horse is a silent witness to the scene. The presence of horses in the last, final scene means that life itself was the source of all of Rublev’s art.”

In this chapbook, Jake Kennedy aims his turn-of-phrase at untangling the many horses in the Russian epic, in a poem by Mahmoud Darwish ("the horse is not symbolic because it's skin is more polished than your dining room table") and on holiday with his family ("my mother sings with the horses"). 

Available from the publisher for only $4.95 CDN, here. 

Jake Kennedy's poetry has appeared in The Malahat Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Best American Experimental Writing. He is also the author of three collections of poetry: The Lateral (Snare Books), Apollinaire's Speech to the War Medic (Book*hug), and Merz Structure No. 2 Burnt by Children at Play (Book*hug). Kennedy is the recipient of the Robin Blaser Award, the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Writing, and the bpnichol Chapbook Award. 

Simon Cutts | Quelques Pianos

Simon Cutts
Quelques Pianos
Kendall, UK: Jargon Society, 1976
[24] pp., 16 x 21 cm., staple-bound
Edition size unknown

Fifteen short poems on the theme of pianos, with references to Beethoven, Chopin, Debussy, etc.

"The book's power was to throw the reader's mind into relief with each reading. One looked and saw clearly; each moment being like the instant when a difficult problem suddenly resolves itself"

-William Oxley

Available here, for $15.00.

Jackson Mac Low | Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955-2002

Jackson Mac Low
Doings: Assorted Performance Pieces 1955-2002
New York City, USA: Granary Books, 2005
248 pp., 10.5 x 8", softcover
Edition of 1000