Gerd Stern — poet, multimedia artist, performer, 1960s Happenings guy — visited the Writers House in September of 2000. (Gerd was one of the founders of “USCO,” a group of artists, engineers and poets creating multi-media performances and environments which toured U.S. museum and university venues during the 1960s.) He gave me this magnet (see image above) that night.
Photo: Angel Hair cover: Lewis Warsh and Anne Waldman at Bolinas
When and where the new wave of poetry began: A sampler of writing selected by Jacket editor John Tranter from the 630-page Granary Books anthology of material from the collection of Angel Hair magazine and books edited by Lewis Warsh and Anne Waldman between 1966 and 1978.
I've recently published a long essay on the poetry of Bob Perelman. It's called "The President of This Sentence." It's about the convergence in Perelman's writing of two parallel and also, at times, convergent analyses--one of modernism's rise and fall; the other of the state of Cold War at the point of giving way to New Left and countercultural skepticism. Here is a link to the whole essay, and here is the opening paragraph:
Take the no out of now
Gerd Stern in 2000