Hirschman, Jack

Broadside: The Birth Arcane

San Francisco, CA: Sore Dove Press, 2005. Limited First Printing. Folded Single Sheet. Signed by Jack Hirschman. “A child on my lips / (not yet born, / the hoped-for, waited-for / simplicity in the midst / of inescapable / warplex stress): / inescaped / light / in the womb / […] / O most radical / Event, / advent, amid myriad / bytes and hits and exploding / bombs and prolific death, / And then it happens, / you’re happening, you’ve happened: / Isabella Rose Black / is” (excerpted qtn. from title poem). Offered here is the Birth Arcane by Jack Hirschman (1933-2021), central among mentors to poets of the Baby Beat Generation & Second San Francisco Renaissance during the mid-to-late 1970s. This meditation on expectant and eventual fatherhood is trenchant as ever: resonant for fans of the poet as well as for fathers & fathers-to-be who have never heard of him. From the archive 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 (Item No. 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. Large-format broadside in folded single sheet: “Printed in an edition of 75 signed and numbered copies,” per colophon near bottommost fine-edge of back cover though not itself numbered. Hirschman’s signature, on front cover — (near bottommost fine-edge of same, just beneath the poet’s printed name) — in thin, red felt pen ink, reads: “Jack Hirschman.” In very fine condition with only minute shelf-wear, light bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge, otherwise pristine. Very Fine. [Item #7530]

Price: $75.00