Mid-Century Tulsa Juvenilia Collection [Joe Brainard, Ron Padgett, Larry Clark, George Kaiser]

Tulsa: White Dove Press, 1960; Tulsa Central High School, 1958-1960. Three 8 ⅛ x 10 ¾ in. offset printed yearbooks in leather boards, and one saddle-stapled 5 ½ x 8 ½ in. book (24pp). All very good. Item #6871

A collection of materials produced by or featuring four of the most important figures to emerge from mid-century Tulsa. Included is the fifth and final “Summer” issue of the high school periodical , the White Dove Review, edited by Ron Padgett, Joe Brainard and Betty Kennedy, and three yearbooks from Tulsa’s Central High School [Tom Tom], 1958 - 1960. Joe Brainard and Ron Padgett were students at Tulsa Central High School, attending concurrently with future billionaire George Kaiser and one year ahead of filmmaker and photographer Larry Clark. All four are featured in the yearbooks.

This issue of the White Dove Review featured poems from Ted Berrigan, Richard Gallup, LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], Gilbert Sorrentino, Robert Creeley, Ron Padgett, Jack Anderson, David Omer Bearden, Richard Dokey, Carl Larsen, C. Cleburne Culin, and Martin Edward Cochran, and illustrations from Joe Brainard and Dan Teiss.

The White Dove Review was started by then high school student Ron Padgett with the aid of Dick Gallup and Joe Brainard, who were also secondary students in Tulsa. Inspired by Baraka’s Yugen and Wallace Berman’s Semina, both of which are modernist journals modestly stapled together at the saddle, Padgett made a visit to his local printer and asked if this sort of thing was possible. The trio then sent very earnest pleas to top Beat writers Kerouac and Ginsberg, as well as New York avant-gardists Amiri Baraka and Clarence Major, and received significant contributions for their efforts. The precocious Brainard and Padgett published five issues of the magazine while students at Central High School, where Joe Brainard edited these Tom Tom yearbooks, before moving to New York in 1960.

A collection sure to leave you wondering what was in the water at Central High School.

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