Carl Morse Collection

New York: Fairy Books, 1982-86. (1) Square 8vo book, Stapled in cardboard wraps, with paste-on illustrated paper to cardboard wraps, though it is coming detached from front and back board. Editioned #65 of 100. (2) Photocopied and hand-illustrated broadsides 8 1⁄2 x
14 in., one stapled and double-sided. (3) Kinderscenen typescript, 2 stapled sheets, 8 1⁄2 x 11 in. All materials good to very good with minor wear and creases. Item #ANT175

A signed and annotated copy of Carl Morse’s self-published book, with poetry broadsides and a typescript from the gay activist author.

Carl Morse was a poet, playwright, activist, and editor. He influenced gay poets and playrights most prominently throughout the 1980’s and 1990s, serving as director of publications for MoMA as well as the editor of Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1988), a groundbreaking anthology of poetry by gay men and lesbians, which included work by W H Auden, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara and many more. Morse’s work appeared in anthologies published by gay presses such as Gay Sweatshop, the Oscars Press, and Gay Man’s Press, amongst others. Morse cultivated a unique radical gay sensibility in his works, as artistic collaborator Steve Cranfield wrote in an obituary for The Guardian on September 4, 2008, “His plays, like his poetry, were fueled by rage, leavened by humor and punctuated with a surprise tenderness.”

This small collection of Morse’s work features a signed and annotated copy of his self-published book of poetry The Curse of the Future Fairy, as well as two illustrated Gay Pride ‘86 broadsides of poetry from the book and a typescript laid into that work. Some of his poems featured in these materials were also printed in the groundbreaking Boston periodical Fag Rag. An intriguing figure of 1980’s literary underground, and well-known for his activism and championing of gay rights.

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