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An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan and Their Circle
This issue of the Paperless Occasional is based on the excellent new book and traveling exhibition of the same name, edited by Michael Duncan and Christopher Wagstaff. This is our favorite art survey since Semina Culture, which Michael Duncan also co-edited. This book also examines a community rather than a single artist, here taking the relationship between Jess and Duncan as a central vantage point, and illuminating how the relationships between these artists were central to their practice. It also traces some of the strands of outside influence, especially from Black Mountain College and the anarchist and pacifist communities on the west coast at the time. Inspired by the book, we’ve put together a short list of new arrivals related to members of the circle, including original art, reading copies, new publications, and some rarely seen little magazines. Click on each the individual entries for more photographs and the complete description. Thanks for reading - Adam, Kate, James, and, last but not least, Jack.
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Michael Duncan and Christopher Wagstaff et al. An Opening of the Field: Jess, Robert Duncan and Their Circle. Portland, Ore.: Pomegranate Books, 2013. New from the publisher and in stock at DL. Published in conjunction with the traveling exhibition of the same name...more
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Duncan, Robert. Untitled Drawing. A beautiful line drawing signed by Duncan within the image...more
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Norris Embry. The catalog for the 1975 exhibition by the unique and talented artist, a student of Oscar Kokoshka, who at the urging of Robert Duncan moved to San Francisco in the early fifties and lived with Duncan and Jess for four months. The three shared a love of crayons...more
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Robert Symmes and Virginia Admiral, eds. Ritual Vol. 1 No. 1. Annapolis and New York: Ritual, 1940. First edition. 4to, mimeographed and saddle-stapled into mimeographed wraps. The first and only issue published of the little magazine, which would...more
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Madeline Gleason. The Metaphysical Needle. San Francisco: The Centaur Press, 1949. First edition. Gleason's second and best book, and one which represented a turning point in her career, with a turn towards taught verse with increasingly metaphysical concerns; it was during the writing of these poems that she also began to paint, eventually creating one of the most interesting (and criminally overlooked) bodies of ...more
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Madeline Gleason. Poems. San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1944. First edition. One of 250 copies printed. The first book by this seminal figure in the San Francisco Renaissance, who inaugurated the First Festival of Modern Poetry in 1947 at Lucien Labaudt Gallery - perhaps the first established poetry reading series in the US...more
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Robert Duncan. Roots and Branches. New York: Charles Scribners Sons, 1964. First edition. Title page inscribed "Robert Duncan/ at Lawrence/ May 1965" with a beautiful full-page drawing by the poet, of roots and branches of course. We didn’t know that Duncan was in Kansas in 1965, either. He took his travels, and perhaps his role of a sort of poetry ambassador seriously, and did perhaps more than any other poet of the era to connect the far-flung poets and poetry communities of the era. Duncan was the internet for poets ...more
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Cow Nos. 1-3 [All Published]. San Francisco: Cow, 1965-66. First edition. 4to, each issue mimeographed and stab-stapled in offset printed covers. All issues published of one of the strangest, gossipiest Bay Area zines of the Mimeograph Revolution - sort of a Sinking Bear for certain Bay Area poets. Cow was edited by Martin Link, who was a member of the Cockettes, an associate of Helen Adam ...more
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Wallace Berman. Semina 1955-1964 Art Is Love Is God [Complete Copy with Errata Reproduction]. New York: Boo-Hooray, 2013. First edition. 4to, 174 pp, perfect bound in wraps. With 16 pp. saddle-stapled booklet laid in and the folded ephemera slip, which was passed out after it was discovered that one reproduction had been left out of the first edition ...more
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Jess. Untitled Drawing. 1950. A striking drawing by Jess, of a recumbent male nude. A rare large format work from Jess’s earliest period, made only two years after he had a dream about the coming end of the world, turned his back on his career as a nuclear scientist, and moved to San Francisco to become an artist...more
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Robert Duncan. Ruddy Radiances. 1951. Approximately 12 x 13â€, unsigned. Framed and Matted. Crayons were a favorite medium for Duncan. According to Wagstaff, Duncan “liked to work in crayons because they were inexpensive, mostly used by children, and not associated with high or ‘serious’ art.†...more
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James Herndon. Everything as Expected. This elegant, succint memoir of the Herndon's and their relationship with Jack Spicer somehow escaped our attention until we read it early this spring - it's been passed back and forth at the DL office ever since, and has become one of our favorite...more
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Madeline Gleason. Untitled Painting. np: 1951. 20 x 23 1/2" . Signed and dated at lower right hand corner. An untitled, early painting by one of those rare writers "who produced a body of drawings and paintings corresponding to the beauty, subtlety, or power found in their literary works ...more
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Madeline Gleason. Collected Poems. Np: Talisman, 1999. First edition. 8vo, 265 pp, wraps. New from the publisher. Madeline Gleason is perhaps the most unjustly neglected figure of the San Francisco Renaissance. One of only four women included in Allen's the New American Poetry, she also founded the San Francisco Poetry Guild, and was a large influence on Robert Duncan. She also ...more
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Helen Adam. city/three. New York: R. Fitzgerald and QWERTYUIOPress, 1968. First edition. Illustrated with tarot drawings by Robert Fitzgerald and photographs by Peter Reinstorff, and a reproduction of the mural San Francisco's Burning by William McNeill (a student of Black Mountain College). A special issue of the little magazine, this devoted entirely to the work of Helen Adam ...more
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Duncan, Robert. The Collected Later Poems and Plays. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014. First edition. Profoundly original yet insistent on the derivative quality of his work, transgressive yet affirmative of tradition, Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was a generative force among American poets, and his poetry and poetics establish him as a major figure in mid- and late- 20th-century American letters. This second volume of Robert Duncan’s collected poetry and plays presents authoritative ...more
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Wallace Berman: Photographs. Santa Monica: Rose Gallery, 2007. First edition. Out of print. A fine copy still sealed in the publisher's shrinkwrap, and offered at the publication price ...more
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James Broughton. [Davi Det Hompson]. High Kukus. New York: The Jargon Society, Inc, 1968. First edition. 24mo, pamhplets laid into a printed card box. Haikus by James Broughton, book design by Davi Det Hompson and featuring drawings by Hok Vogrin ...more
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