Improvised Poetics
Buffalo: Anonym Books, 1971. First edition. Limited to 2000 copies. 8vo (7 x 5 in.) in pictorial wraps. 52 pp. First edition. Wraps pulled away from the glue of the text block, thus good only, but repairable, and otherwise a clean example. Item #ANT196
Signed and inscribed by Ginsberg on title page, “11/8/86 For Judith” referring to Judith Malina of The Living Theatre.
This book is a transcription of a discussion between Allen Ginsberg, Michael Aldrich, Edward Kissam, and Nancy Bleeker at Ginsberg’s farm in Cherry Valley, New York, on November 26, 1968. The text deals with the literal act of writing, the way poems look on a page, and ways in which people read poems on the page and speak them in their minds. From the introduction by Mark Robinson, “Improvised Poetics demonstrates Allen Ginsberg’s own methods of composition at the same time it provides a direction in which poetry may move toward in the future. Its main prosodic concern centers around the notion that: the line is a measure of thought. It also shows how poetry is mapped and/or charted in Ginsberg’s and his contemporaries’ practice. Which carries the further implication: how to read.” Ginsberg later taught classes on Improvised Poetics at Naropa and continued to write about and develop this idea so central to his compositional method. [dl].
Price: $250.00