Hirschman, Jack

Broadside: For the New Year 2007

San Francisco, CA: Sore Dove Press, 2007. Limited First Edition. Folded Sheet in Wrappers. Signed by Jack Hirschman. “O happy beginning, baby step year, unfold / as a love affair knowing no past, going / breathlessly / forward toward where you came from and are: / —all future, with caresses of innocence. / I dont want last year’s desert of snow, / bodies face-down dead of war on my own, / the lies and trivia that framed us up, / hopes rapidly rotted, dignities impaled, / drinks that drank us to bottomless pits, / tokes that turned off hearing anything / but The Ego Rag…”--Jack Hirschman, first several stanzas of “For The New Year 2007.” 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). Hirschman was a bridge between the first & second San Francisco Renaissance movements, and 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 exceptionally rare, 2007 folded broadside, For The New Year 2007. Published by the legendary Sore Dove Press founded by Iranian publisher Soheyl Dahi (b. 1954) in 1986 after relocating to San Francisco, CA. The press specializes in the writings of the Beat Generation, printing special limited-edition books and broadsides; their most recent release in June of 2024 is The Train Whistle: 7 Unpublished Poems by Joanna McClure (b. 1930), Beat poet and the ex-wife of fellow poet Michael McClure (1932-2020). Classically Hirschman, For The New Year 2007 is dark, flirts with the surreal, polemicizes against modern society, and maintains a lightness & humor that betrays Hirschman’s general Beat-Marxist disposition. Signed and numbered by the author in thin black & red ink at copyright page. Limited first edition “published in an edition of 76 copies of which 50 were signed & numbered by the poet” of which this one is numbered 16 of 50. In very fine condition with only minor wear to fine edges. Very Fine. [Item #8904]

Price: $250.00