C: A Journal of Poetry. Vol. I, Nr. 2. June 1963
New York: Lorenz Gude, 1963. Slim folio, publisher's side-stapled mimeo self-wraps.
Issue number two of Ted Berrigan’s mimeograph "little magazine." C emerged shortly after Berrigan relocated to the East Village from Tulsa, where he had gone to college. He was slated to publish a poem in Columbia University’s Columbia Review, where his friend Ron Padgett was an editor, but the dean rejected the issue’s proofs for "foul language." Berrigan and other editors on the Review resigned in protest and printed their own issue of the magazine using a mimeograph machine, retitling it The Censored Review. A flurry of activity surrounded the publication, including television coverage and an article in the New York Post, inspiring Berrigan and his friends to continue the magazine, now titled C ("I wanted a name without connotations and so, while thinking about Marcel Duchamp, one day said to myself, 'A' 'B' 'C' 'Voila!' and there it was. C..." (Berrigan). Priding himself on publishing work no one else would, Berrigan gathered poems, plays, essays, translations, and comics by his friends and contemporaries. The widely read magazine is credited for establishing the second generation of New York School Poets (Joe Brainard, Anne Waldman, Ron Padgett, et al.), while still publishing the School's earlier members (John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Frank O’Hara, Kenneth Koch, James Schuyler, et al.) with non-New York appearances by William Burroughs, Alice B. Toklas, and others. Small pencil notation to upper wrap. Last sheet detached but present. Some soiling and age-toning, light edgewear. Very good. Item #6005
$700.00