Malone, Hank

Broadside: "To Write a Poem Like Dickey"

Detroit, MI: Red Hanrahan Press, 1971. First Edition. Single Sheet. “That old city-planner, Death, caught up with Jack Kerouac this October. Reportedly, it was an ugly death; drunk and despairing, his guts literally busting and bleeding inside the heavy lonely flesh. Kerouac had ruined his great good looks years before and now he had finally ruined his body, his brain, his life and perhaps his very spirit and karma. As Allen Ginsberg, his old friend, recently said, “he threw up his hands & wrote the universe don’t exist & died to prove it.”/Jack Kerouac dead in his mid-forties. Alcohol-suicide. The spectre of loneliness apparently burning his ears. The Witch of Lethe crushing his sad heart. In the end he was living with his wife and his mother. He once said: “I wish I was free of that slaving meat wheel and safe in heaven dead.”--Hank Malone, Safe In Heaven, first stanza. Hank Malon, like many of Red Hanrahan Press’ cadre of artists, is a writer of whom, unfortunately, little is known. While the finer details of Malone’s background remain shrouded in the mists of time, what is sure is that Malone was relatively prolific in the underground poetic scene of Detroit in the 60s and 70s. Having written for and being a prolific contributor to, at the very least, both Detroit’s Red Hanrahan Press (underground-avant-garde press named after the Yeats character) and the venerable Fifth Estate, Malone’s writing has undoubtedly proliferated the minds of readers across the U.S. and throughout the decades. Offered today is a 8x12 broadside of one of Malone’s most beloved poems, To Write A Poem Like Dickey (1971). Printed on thick, yellowed, almost-papyrus-like paper, the broadside has a brilliantly tight and neatly presented type-face; along with an almost constructivist-minimalism in its line work, three crimson lines vivisecting the poem. 8x12 Broadside. First & presumably only edition though not explicated as such. In very fine condition with only the slightest wear to fine edges, otherwise substantially mint! Very Fine. [Item #6888]

Price: $100.00