Hirschman, Jack

D'Jackson

Salt Lake City, UT: Rainbow Resin, 1974. First Printing. Stapled Sheets. Offered here is DJackson 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. There are only two things, in the mind of this author, that clearly evinces this work’s relation to the rest of the poet’s oeuvre and writing style. The first of these is the dedication Hirschman has nested under the (otherwise obfuscatory) titling of the poem: “For Robert Stockwell, / acteur surrealiste.”The links to Robert Dean Stockwell (1936-2021) in the life of Jack Hirschman are found in Stockwell’s own friendship with Wallace Berman (1926-1976). Berman, to readers-students-&-collectors of Jack Hirschman, was central and affective among associates. Berman’s own legacy — as an American experimental filmmaker, assemblage and collage artist, and founder-publisher of Semina, is a major, major figure in the history of small-press publishing (at least in the West in the mid-20th c.). In the book, Semina Culture: Wallace Berman and His Circle, its authors write, “Berman introduced the young actor [Stockwell] to an anti-materialistic community of visual artists that Stockwell immediately responded to, and he became an important early supporter and collector of works by Bruce Conner, George Herms, Jess, and Wallace Berman, among others. Berman also familiarized Stockwell with collage experimental film, and photography, and led him to the artmaking practice that has been a part of his life ever since. During the early years of their friendship, Stockwell developed a visual art vocabulary combining metaphysical symbols with surreal juxtapositions. Working primarily in collage, Stockwell produced a large body of work in the 1950s that is, at turns, romantic, apocalyptic, and droll. Images of celestial bodies, Greek statuary, gothic architecture, advertising, and photography clipped from old Life magazines ricochet across the picture plane in collages that initially appear to be random, but on closer examination resonate with a strange portentousness.” The second link — which we almost don’t need to state, given the supplementary “evidence” above — is comprised by the cadence of the verse. In the same way that you know a Led Zeppelin series of “Band Hits” when you hear them — think “What Is and What Should Never Be,” — audially attuned authors (and readers) of poetry can point to, isolate, and map these particulars. Organized rightly, vague tonal relations, like these can be taught and understood — can rise to the level of method and fact. The final verdict, then of Your Devoted VP-of-Operations here at TMB — who has spent the better half of the last ten years untangling & codifying traits like these, whenever & wherever he finds them — sees and senses ‘Jack on this page.’ 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. Mimeographed chapbook in stapled sheets: the first & only printing of Hirschman’s lone, strange tribute to Robert Dean Stockwell. In Relatively Fair-Good condition with moderate-to-enunciated shelf-wear, staining, browning & mild horizontal, as well as vertical creasing [inc. horizontal fold running through length of page at center-middle — which we’ve actually seen on the other two copies of this we’ve seen/come across in our day] & related bumping; visible coffee-staining, age-toning, yellowing & artifacts similar to these occurring in low-impact clusters, throughout; otherwise, clean. Poor-Fair. [Item #7561]

Price: $55.00