Ginsberg, Allen (Cupidi, Richard)

Wales Visitation with: Ephemera

Hereford, England: Five Seasons Press, 1978. Limited Edition. Sewn Binding. With hand-written letter from publisher Glenn Storhaug to Richard Cupidi. “White fog lifting & falling on mountain-brow | Trees moving in rivers of wind | The clouds arise | as on a wave, gigantic eddy lifting mist | above teeming ferns exquisitely swayed | along a green crag | glimpsed thru mullioned glass in valley raine.” (First stanza, Wales Visitation, Allen Ginsberg) This is a special, later production of a short poem by Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997), a Founding Father of the Beat Generation-&-Beyond, recounting his visit-&-vision-to Wales on July 29, 1967. The first incarnation (see our item no. 8211) was an Hors Commerce edition by Cape Goliard Press in 1968. This limited edition version of 350 copies comes from Five Seasons Press, founded the year prior by Glenn Storhaug and still publishing in Hereford, just over the border from Wales. It includes the revised text used by City Lights, but with Ginsberg’s “preferred unbroken lines,” per the publisher. A pair of sepia photographs of Ginsberg in the Black Mountains by British publisher and writer Tom Maschler are included inside, with a third on the cover; Five Seasons notes they are handprinted off letterpress blocks.  From the collection of Richard Cupidi (b. 1945), who managed the fabled Unicorn Bookshop in Brighton, England with Bill Butler (1934-1977, the famed American-expatriate bookseller & publisher). From the late 1960s through the early 1970s, Unicorn proffered & published many outstanding productions by William S. Burroughs, J.G. Ballard et al., some of which have become the scarcest, all-but-unobtainable Beat-&-Beyond collectibles (see for example our item nos. 8217, 8366). After prevailing against censorious harassment efforts, Unicorn closed & Butler died in short order. Cupidi went on to found the Public House Bookshop in Brighton, which had a long & successful run but is also now closed, & he still resides there. We have been honored to obtain what Cupidi has termed "The Last Hurrah," all the remaining treasures of Unicorn & Public House, some of which have become the stuff of myth. This Ginsberg piece is greatly enhanced by ephemera we are including with purchase:  We found & have retained an Oct. 18th, 1980 hand-written note from publisher Storhaug on Five Seasons Press stationary, in cursive black ink, to Cupidi, in which Storhaug explains he can only provide one copy, instead of the requested five, of this piece since it is out of print. Storhaug says he may print another with Ginsberg’s revisions (he never did). He also details overall delays in printing further items due to spending the summer building a new workshop in his garden and his wife taking a parttime job while they have a young child. “Besides which there’s a lot of living to do before the bombs drop…” he ends the letter. Also retained is a 1980 promotion piece by Five Seasons advertising an upcoming printing of The Kilpeck Anthology as well as the Hereford Poem Series, of which this piece was number four. Chapbook in sewn wrappers. Limited Edition of 350 copies. In Fine condition with light scratching to front & back covers; some light creasing to edges & corners of same & sewn spine. Interior Fine with some spotting and age-toning to leaves. Fine. [Item #8630]

Price: $150.00 save 15% $127.50