Item #ANT104 Madison Poems. D A. Levy.
D.A. Levy

Madison Poems

Madison, WI: Quixote Press, January-March 1969. Variant edition or possibly a later edition. (9 x 12 in.) Envelope with screenprinted cover, containing various sized leaves. Printed on different colored paper. Includes 19 loose leaves of collages as well as a 4to staplebound booklet of 24 pages. Item #ANT104

Two variant copies of d.a. levy's The Madison Poems. Envelope with screenprinted cover. Contains 12 loose leaves, 24-page collection of poems, also includes 35 page edition of the poems with collages. D.A. Levy was born in Cleveland, Ohio on October 2, 1942 and died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound on November 24, 1968. An iconic small press publisher and poet, during the 1960s he prolifically produced handmade publications, and along with publishers like Ed Sanders, helped to define the aesthetic of the Mimeo Revolution. Founding Renegade Press in 1963 he printed and edited journals like the Marrahwanna Review and the Buddhist Third Class Junk Mail Oracle, along with discrete work by himself, poets like Ed Sanders and D.R. Wagner. Throughout his short tenure in publishing he experimented widely with format, typography, printing, and collage, consistently defying the specialization of media. One of the truly great artist-poets of the 1960s, Levy’s unclassifiable work and intense spiritual striving embody the subversive spirit of a time which he came to embody. The Madison Poems, offered here in two editions, is a group of work produced by Levy during a period of time he spent at the University of Wisconsin as “The free university Poet-in Residence.” Assembled after his death by those who knew him, it provides perhaps the best retrospective anthology of Levi’s work, created in his own signature style, as a sort of assemblage visual and textual work. Along with collages, each edition contains an introductory essay by David Wagner, who describes in detail Levy’s time in Wisconsin, his poetry and art, and his mental state. The two editions have slight variations between them. The second edition, for example includes a side-stapled text that doesn’t appear in the first. Additionally, several poems which appear on the verso of collages in the later edition are absent from the earlier edition.

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