Jacobs, Brian

Postcard-Broadside: "a coward's judicious murk..."

Boulder, CO: Kavyayantra Press, 1995. Limited First Edition. Single Sheet. “I’m not real modest about the impact of this; there’s nothing like it in publishing history. Random House could never do this. In fact, neither did we. It was the artists and poets who did it, and we were the distributors, sending those cards on to our subscribers, generally other artists and writers, for over thirty years. It was fun.” (Ken Mikolowski, From a Secret Location) This broadside-postcard, by poet & publisher Brian Jacobs, comes as part of one of the later iterations of the famed and long-running Alternative Press Postcard Project. Founded by husband and wife Ken Mikolowski & the late Ann (1940-1999) in 1969 in a basement in Detroit, the Alternative Press was known for its unique postcards and broadsides. The Postcard Project, a thirty-year-long effort, saw poets given 500 blank postcards “to do with as they pleased,” Mikolowski wrote in the aforementioned “From a Secret Location” post. “Each card was handmade and unique, no two alike: poems, paintings, collages, photographs, even metal works and ceramics. Everyone brought whatever they had and gave everything they had.” This broadside-postcard was published by Kavyayantra Press, the imprint run by faculty and students in the Department of Writing and Poetics at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado. Alternative Press collaborated with the school and provided equipment to the Harry Smith Print Shop at Naropa. The card has a short, three-line poem at recto, with publishing information and a small drawing in the postage corner at verso. From the collection of Brian Jacobs (b. 1969), the author of this poem & a most-distinguished author, publisher & educator who attended Naropa University during the 1990s, where he was the student of its co-founders Anne Waldman & Allen Ginsberg- he was appointed by Ginsberg as his official assistant in the later period of his attendance. Jacobs has gone on to ever-greater heights as a True Beat Progeny, & we have been privileged to obtain his stellar collection, highlights of which including this are the exclusive focus of this group of New Arrivals. Single Sheet. Limited Edition, presumed to be run of 500 per Postcard Project convention. In Fine-Very Fine condition with some very minor smudging to both sides, and light bumping & creasing to edges & corners. Fine-Very Fine. [Item #8588]

Price: $50.00