WRITING THROUGH & CUTTING UP II

Carl Weissner, ed.  
Klacto 23.  
PANic Press, September 1967. 

Cover collage features photographs by Mary Beach, G.S. Belart, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Harold Norse, Jeff Nuttall, ‘the priest,’ and Claude Pélieu. This was a one-shot offshoot of Carl Weissner’s magazine Klactoveedsedsteen. It was accompanied by “Klacto/23 Tape,” a mono tape with readings by Carol Bergé, Charles Bukowski, William S. Burroughs, Henri Chopin, François Dufrêne, Brion Gysin, Harold Norse, Jeff Nuttall, and Claude Pélieu. 

Carl Weissner, ed.  
Cut Up. Der sezierte Bildschim der Worte.  
Joseph Melzer Verlag, 1969.   

Contributors include Mary Beach, William S. Burroughs, Brion Gysin, Harold Norse, Jeff Nuttall, Claude Pélieu, Jürgen Ploog, and Carl Weissner. 

Charles Plymell.
Life Begins with Love.  
[1965].   

A “collage mag” with work by Charles Plymell, a poet, writer, editor, printer, and collage artist. Plymell was known for his association with the Beats, and as printer of Zap! Comix, and, with Pamela Beach, Cherry Valley Editions. For this work, of which fewer than 100 copies were produced, two editions in different dimensions were printed offset by Plymell—though neither edition contains a statement of edition size.  

Ira Cohen, ed.  
Gnaoua, No. One [no. 1].  
Spring 1964. 

Cover by Rosalind Schwartz. This one-shot magazine’s namesake, the Gnaoua, or Gnawa, are an ethnic group originally brought to Morocco as slaves, who became part of the Sufi order of the Maghreb, while continuing to practice indigenous rituals related to music, healing, and magic. Contributors included a range of Beat and expatriate poets, including William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Brion Gysin, Michael McClure, and Jack Smith, as well as Gnaoua and Arabic works in translation. Gnaoua had surprising cultural reach; it can be glimpsed on the cover of Bob Dylan’s 1965 album Bringing it All Back Home.

Jan Herman and Norman Mustill, eds. 
The San Francisco Earthquake, no. 5.  
1969.

Distributed by City Lights, this magazine focused on Beat and cut-up writers as well as those in other experimental modes, including George Bataille, Edward Ruscha, and Dick Higgins. Its co-editor, Herman, was later an editor at Higgins’ Something Else Press in the 1970s, as well as the publisher of the Nova Broadcast Series pamphlets. Contributors include Alan Ansen, Mary Beach, William S. Burroughs, Gail Dusenbery, Alison Knowles, Jeff Nuttall, Claude Pélieu, Annie Rooney, and Wolf Vostell, among others. 

Jan Herman, Jürgen Ploog, and Carl Weissner.  
Cut Up or Shut Up.  
Agentzia, 1972.   

This volume was published as Agentzia, no. 34. Agentzia was a French little magazine, begun after the student revolution of 1968 in Paris. It shared this spirit of political protest by championing work with political consequence and beyond what it saw as the earlier “purist” typographic experiments of the 1950s. A ticker-tape commentary across the top of the page is provided by William S. Burroughs. 

Jean-François Bory and Julien Blaine, eds.  
Approches, no. 1.  
1966.

Subtitled the Revue de recherches (Research Review) and La revue poche de l’avant-garde (The Avant-Garde Pocket Review). Contributors include Stephen Bann, Julien Blaine, Max Bense, Jean-François Bory, Jean-Louis Brau, Henri Chopin, François Dufrêne, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Yasuo Fujitomi, John Furnival, Ilse and Pierre Garnier, Eugen Gomringer, Bohumila Grögerová, Ludwig Harig, Bernard Heidsieck, Josef Hirsal, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Jacques Legrand, Cavan McCarthy, Seiichi Niikuni, Cat Parczewska, Frank Popper, and Jean-Marie le Sidaner. 

Michael McClure.  
Love Lion Lioness.  
N.p., [1964].   

McClure designed this work in the style of a fight poster and had it produced at Telegraph Printers in San Francisco, specialists in the genre. It features portraits of Jean Harlow and William Bonney, better known as Billy the Kid. McClure describes placing the poster behind his desk and receiving dictated inspiration to begin typing The Beard. Once written and produced, The Beard became symbolic of censorship struggles in postwar America when police raided a 1966 performance and arrested the actors, prompting the ACLU to take on the case. 

Robert Basara, Leonard Belasco, Jed Irwin, and William Levy, eds.  
The Insect Trust Gazette, no. 2.  
1965.

Named after a line by William S. Burroughs, the magazine’s second issue has a special section on “Concrete, Kinetic, and Phonetic Poetry” with contributors including Edgard Braga, Augusto de Campos, Ian Hamilton Finlay, Eugen Gomringer, José Lino Grunewald, Dom Sylvester Houédard, Ira Cohen, Jess, Clark Coolidge, Brion Gysin, S.J. Leon, Jackson Mac Low, Christopher Middleton, and many others.