Hirschman, Jack

Broadside: Seagull (1977)

San Francisco, CA: Beatitude Press, 1977. First Edition, First Printing. Single Sheet. “All conservative ideologies justify existing inequities as the natural order of things, inevitable outcomes of human nature. If the very rich are naturally so much more capable than the rest of us, why must they be provided with so many artificial privileges under the law, so many bailouts, subsidies and other special considerations - at our expense? Their "naturally superior talents" include unprincipled and illegal subterfuge such as price-fixing, stock manipulation, insider training, fraud, tax evasion, the legal enforcement of unfair competition, ecological spoliation, harmful products and unsafe work conditions. One might expect naturally superior people not to act in such rapacious and venal ways. Differences in talent and capacity as might exist between individuals do not excuse the crimes and injustices that are endemic to the corporate business system.”--Michael Parenti, Black Shirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism. 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 broadside poem, Seagull (1977). Seagull is undeniably a classic Hirschman piece in its surrealist bent, and its Marxist spirit. Written in both english on right column, and cyrillic on the left, Seagull illustrates the period of Hirschman’s work where he was deeply enmeshed in translating the "Khrushchev Thaw” poets (Alexander Kohav, Andrei Voznesenskii et al). As he was translating these surrealist, Soviet poets, Hirschman became deeply interested in writing and translating his own work from cyrillic into english and vice versa. Seagull is quintessentially Hirschman and bleeds with style, pathos, and a working-class zeal that would make Marx proud. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949), scholar, writer and co-founding 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. Single sheet Broadside (approx. 8.5”x12”). First & presumably only printing. In relatively fine-to-very-fine condition with only the slightest wear to fine edges, slight smudging to recto, and two creases one vertically down the middle, and one horizontally across middle. Fine-Very Fine. [Item #7747]

Price: $35.00