Meltzer, David

Reds vs. Feds (Xerox Copy of Original MS Poem Dedicated to Jack Hirschman and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg)

San Francisco, CA: Beatitude Magazine, 1976. Xerox Copy of Original Manuscript. Single Sheets. “Reds vs. Feds. All that I know. / Feds get up earlier than anyone else. They all look like somebody else. You’re never sure who. / Reds never sleep. They’re always alert. / A new age never comes. Books and newspapers keep being printed. It never ends. It is always forgotten the next day or the day after. / In movies Feds were usually Pat O’Brien or Dennis O’Keefe and Reds were Paul Muni or John Garfield. / Reds met in store-front lodges on Church Avenue in Brooklyn and men in blue workshirts [sic] invited Negro singers and writers to the meetings. / Women are always tender. / Men free only the dead. / Like she says, All poets are Reds [sic]. / All that I know. It’s all forgotten. A new age never comes” (from “Reds vs. Feds”). David Meltzer (1937-2016) — the youngest American poet to be featured in Don Allen’s seminal anthology, The New American Poetry, 1945-1960—is known primarily for three things. The first of these is the achievement previously alluded to: Meltzer’s inclusion in the Allen anthology, which forever ties him to the “San Francisco Renaissance” & “Beat Generation” traditions. The second thing Meltzer’s known for — staying, for a moment, in the realm[s] of the literary or art-historical — is his associations with the near-mythic ‘Wallace Berman Circle.’ The Berman Circle was, in short, a boundary-breaking coterie of revolutionary poets, artists, and artisans who came together “over” (to obliquely make a Beatles reference) the artist-&-filmmaker, Wallace Berman (1926-1976), whose soirees (first in Los Angeles, and then in Topanga Canyon) became the stuff of legend. The third item worth mentioning here is that Meltzer — arguably more than any other figure associated with the Beat Generation — is the obvious link between the Psychedelic Revolution of the late 1960s, & the far lesser-known “Mimeograph Revolution” of the early-mid 1960s. The critical-historical chronology, then, goes something like this: [1] The Beat Generation [appx. 1944-1960] >> [2] The Mimeograph Revolution [1960-1965] >> [3] The Psychedelic Revolution [1966-1969]. Meltzer is, by his inclusion in the Allen anthology, a veritable member of “The Beat Generation,” as critically understood. As someone who was both published in the literary journals of the Mimeograph Revolution, and an active participant-&-friend in its West Coast circles, Meltzer is definably a presence there, too. Lastly, Meltzer and his wife, Tina had a psychedelic rock band called “The Serpent Power.” Two critical comments are here worth mentioning (as they further illustrate this last of three links). The famed music critic, Robert Christgau, once called them “the Bay Area’s version of the Velvet Underground,” — & their self-titled debut album was described as “[a] true representation of the San Francisco sound in the psychedelic era.” While Meltzer didn’t continue on with music —(professionally or vocationally, that is) — he did continue on with poetry; and his musically-inflected, West Coast prosody reminds Your Devoted VP-of-Operations here at TMB of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (1919-2021) great maxim: “Have wide angle vision, each look a world-glance.” 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. [4] Stapled Single Sheets: Xerox Copy of Original Manuscript; initially folded in thirds by TRC but since unfolded & the only MS copy of this poem that we are aware of. In Very Good-Near Fine condition with only moderate-to-enunciated shelf-wear, light bumping, rubbing, some bump-creasing, & age-toning to fine-edges & corners of verso & recto sides; & some rusting, bleeding to staple at top left-hand corner of recto side; otherwise, clean. Very Good-Near Fine. [Item #7655]

Price: $45.00