Hirschman, Jack

The Graffiti Arcane

San Francisco, CA: Deliriodendron Press, 1995. First Edition. Inscribed and signed by Jack Hirschman to Thomas Rain Crowe. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters.”--Antonio Gramsci. There are few writers who, over the course of their lives, have been as in-touch with and contributed to a scene as much as Jack Hirschman (1933–2021). Hirschman was a New York-born poet and activist who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry and essays that exemplified the “fuck you” attitude of the Beat Generation; his poetic predecessors. Hirschman earned degrees from City College of New York and Indiana University, where he studied comparative literature. After attaining his degree, he went on to become a wildly innovative and popular professor at UCLA in the 1970s, before he was fired for participating in anti-war protest and speaking out against American imperialism in Vietnam. Hirschman lived in California ever since, making an artistic and political home in the North Beach district of San Francisco. He is known for his radical engagement with both poetry and politics: he was a member of the Union of Street Poets, a group that distributed leaflets of poems to people on the streets. He was also instrumental in the formation of the Union of Left Writers of San Francisco. The former poet laureate of San Francisco, Hirschman’s style was compared to poets ranging from Walt Whitman (1819-1892) to Hart Crane (1899-1932) to Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), and Beat poets such as Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997). His poems’ commitment to leftist politics draws comparisons to Vachel Lindsay (1879-1931) and Pablo Neruda (1904-1973). A communist since 1980, Hirschman told Contemporary Authors, “It is vitally important at this time that all poets and artists collectivize and form strong socialist cadres in relation to working-class cultural internationalism.” Offered today is the 1995 collection of poetry, The Graffiti Arcane. Part of the magnum opus known as The Arcanes, The Graffiti Arcanes is at once an ode to the age and art of “tagging” that dominated every major city in the U.S. throughout the 1960’s to the 1990’s (although the art persists today), and also manages to be a volume that showcases Hirschman’s often surrealist/dream-like style. Sandi Abram, Anthropologist at University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, in her paper “Graffiti, Street Art and Murals Against the Neoliberal City” says the following on The Graffiti Arcane: “Jack Hirschman’s poem The Graffiti Arcane, later part of his magnum opus The Arcanes, opens with the line “The code the kid, now fled, spraycanned on the wall / there is a hieroglyph and a defiance, / and the particles thereof” (1995, p. 1). In the poem, Hirschman weaves his ode to the idiosyncratic code with an allusion to a now-absent graffiti tagger and the persistent figure drawn with a black marker (in fact, the lettering read ‘REDISTRIBUTE’). These inscriptions, which persist on the vertical surfaces of the cityscape, were portrayed as nothing less than “act[s] of the revolutionary” (ibid.). Hirschman, a prolific author with a keen eye, reflects in his pamphlet-poem (Hirschman, 1995) on what he has witnessed: the process of ‘bombing’ the streets of New York City, the creation of an extensive array of tags and/or throw-ups in a specific area, in the cradle and long-standing epicenter of this puzzling communicational medium.” The Graffiti Arcane is, while not substantial in size, substantial in its content; an ode to revolutionary street art and a masterclass in poetic construction, The Graffiti Arcane is one of Hirschman’s most underappreciated and phenomenal works! Inscribed and signed in thin blue ink at inside of front cover by Jack Hirschman to Thomas Rain Crowe: “For Tom, / Love and solidarity / Jack Hirschman. / Nov. 1995.” From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe, scholar, writer and member of the Baby Beat Generation. 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 #3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (see item #1010), 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. Chapbook in sewn binding. First edition though not explicated as such at copyright page, presumed first printing though similarly not explicated as such thereon. In very fine condition with only minimal wear to fine edges and light smudging to front and back covers. Very Fine. [Item #7528]

Price: $50.00