Crowe, Thomas Rain

Handwritten Poem: "Of Thee I Sing"

San Francisco, CA: No Publisher, 1975. Original Handwritten Manuscript. Single Sheet. Signed by Thomas Rain Crowe, the co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. Presented here is an original handwritten manuscript by Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949) featuring a sonorous and affirmative poem, titled “Of Thee I Sing,” which Crowe composed in April of the Second San Francisco Renaissance’s ‘sophomore’ year, if you will. By April of 1975, the spirit of the SSFR had already taken hold. The organizational footwork — which Thomas Rain Crowe was so skilled at — was already taking place; consider, for example, the bus rides they’d take as a unit to Marin Co. to go see Eugene Ruggles (1935-2004); and similar trips to Berkeley, where the self-described ‘street energy’ of Berkeley, CA would influence their perspective on what might be meant by “immediacy” in both poetry and the formation of a social movement — essentially affecting how the poets in North Beach thought about organizing. The scene in Berkeley took the great Jack Micheline (1929-1998) — the quintessential street/outlaw poet-artist who was a major figure of the Beat Generation & San Francisco Renaissance — as its crowning example of the poet. For the Street Poets there, Micheline was integrity’s very embodiment. Micheline was like Herbert Huncke in this regard, though the historical record does not show Micheline as sharing with Huncke Genet-like proclivities. He wasn’t into theft, or men, put bluntly. However, he did monetize his knowledge informally, like Shakespeare’s Falstaff in “Henry IV.” He was a notorious “mooch,” — and the record shows as much, to be sure. His way was often paid, however, because Micheline knew what it meant to “do this,” — to actually be a poet, “for real.” Micheline understood, like all great Modernist authors (and those who capitalized on their cultural inheritance; including The Beats) that “Art is all a matter of personality,” like Duchamp said. The formula for developing an original line (whether in verse, or in prose) is simple then: first, study theory and method: learn why and how “what you love, works.” Second, remember that authenticity wins: the minute you start lying to the page, it’s over. Third, the development of your personality — your own lifelong project, as an artist, of becoming an artist and a person you're proud of; of becoming someone you’d admire, if you will — those are the pillars. The third, by far, is the most important: because it’s really what makes or breaks you in the end. “Talent, lying in the understanding, is often inherited. Genius, lying in the character, rarely or never,” like Coleridge said. I guess it’s not so bad to want to monetize a hard-fought knowingness, as both Micheline and Shakespeare’s Falstaff did. Three or four beers a week is a small price to pay for an audience with a master. This poem, like TMB Item #7557 (which Crowe wrote about Jack Micheline) evinces Jack’s influence. Here, that influence is not the Hunckean, low-down, Blues side of Beat — but the aspirational buoyancy on the other side of that paradigm, or ‘coin.’ 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. The manuscript is signed & dated at the lower right-hand corner of recto. Crowe’s signature — in the same thick, blue felt pen ink the poem itself is composed in — reads, “4/19/75 / TD.” The “D” in Crowe’s name refers — for readers who don't know — to the following biographical fact. "Dawson" Was TRC's last name by birth, & he officially changed it to Crowe at the end of his San Francisco residency. Furthermore, as the pictures attached to this listing do show, Crowe wrote his adopted name (without the word “Rain,” of course) directly under the dating of the poem described above. Crowe’s second signature, in thin, black pen ink, reads: “Thomas Crowe.” In relatively very good condition with the blue ink bleeding through to the verso; only moderate edge-wear, some light bumping to fine-edges & corners of front, back covers & spine-edge; some page curling (near topmost fine-edge of same); mild-to-moderate horizontal, as well as vertical creasing-indentations & age-toning throughout; & a horizontal fold (running through length of manuscript at a particular point (see photos) near/at/along topmost fine-edge of same — a fold made by Crowe himself to fit the manuscript into a letter-sized, Comic-Care board-&-sleeve [and is thus, to us, “as issued”]; otherwise clean & well-preserved. Very Good. [Item #7555]

Price: $50.00