Kohav, Alexander

Emigroarium: A Roaratory!

San Francisco, CA: Amerus Press, 1977. First Printing. Softcover. “Alexander Kohav’s journey from a Soviet Union whose politic he fled to a western welfare state wwhose politic he reveals in all its absurd chaos, is canvassed in his longest poem, EMIGROARIUM, composed in San Francisco during the winter of 1976-77. Of his works to date, EMIGROARIUM is his most ambitious effort. The futurism which Kohav adheres to is in the tradition of the Russian ‘Wanderers’ — except that the field of wandering now includes the notoriously important theme of lyripolitical exile, and the need to affirm the creative continuity of poetry in the face of a world becoming — in his [Kohav’s] eyes — more and more bourgeois on the one hand, and more and more robotic on the other” (from Introduction by Jack Hirschman [1933-2021]). Alexander Kohav was a Second San Francisco Renaissance-compatriot of poet-publisher-impresario Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949; the interview subject of TMB's debut publication, "Starting from San Francisco: The Second San Francisco Renaissance and the Baby Beat Generation" [TMB Item #3071, Softcover, & TMB Item #3075, Hardcover]). In SFSF, Crowe writes of Kohav: "Alexandr [sic] Kohav was the discovery and the translation partner of Jack Hirschman. He showed up in San Francisco in 1975, I think. He and Jack began working on translations of various Russian Futurist poets, as well as translating Kohav's poems into English and some of Jack's poems into Russian. From the time that he appeared at the Trieste Caffe that year, he was a constant participant in what we were doing with "Beatitude" (Magazine) and otherwise. He and Jack did joint bilingual readings in venues all over town and in Berkeley--and Alexandr [sic] appeared at various Beatitude-sponsored readings, including the 1st Annual San Francisco Poetry Festival. His poems and translations also appeared in the pages of "Beatitude Magazine." Kohav was a bona-fide Futurist poet from Moscow and in the tradition of Khlebnikov, Burlyuk, Kamensky, and even Mayakovsky and Pasternak. He himself was a "Baby Futurist," so to speak, who had immigrated to the U.S. to be liberated from the confines of censorship in the Soviet Union and to find literary freedom in the free media environment of the U.S. He added a true international flavor if not gene pool to the whole Bay Area scene and Kohav helped influence younger poets like myself to pursue to art of translation in whatever additional languages we were proficient in." (pg. 86). This book, Emigroarium: A Roaratory! is a testament to all the virtues ascribed to Kohav by Crowe and Hirschman, and was published at the height of the Second San Francisco Renaissance by Amerus Press over on Kearney Street in the heart of SF. From the collection of Thomas Rain Crowe, the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book, Starting from San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (Item No. 3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive, which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Softcover original: First Edition, one of 300 copies printed by Amerus Press. This copy is additionally signed by Kohav to Crowe at FFEP. Kohav’s signature, in purple felt pen ink, reads: “For Tom, / keep on! / [indiscernible cyrillic] / Dec. 5, ’77 / S.F.” In Very Good condition with only minute-to-moderate shelf-wear & light-to-enunciated exhibits of bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge; moderate-to-enunciated age-toning (spotting, yellowing) to same, otherwise clean. Very Good. [Item #7198]

Price: $45.00