The City Lights Pocket Poets Series

I didn’t start reading books for enjoyment until 2001 (as sad as that is).  I didn’t start reading poetry (outside of class) until 2002.  I didn’t start collecting books until the spring of 2004.  I didn’t start collecting the City Lights Pocket Poets series until early 2005.  Late bloomer.

There have been 60 volumes released in the City Lights Pocket Poets series from Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s (poet and co-founder of the City Lights Press) 1955 Pictures of the Gone World to David Meltzer’s When I Was a Poet earlier this year.

Above: the City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology released in 2008, edited by Lawrence Ferlinghetti with excerpts of poetry released in the series.

I was introduced to the Pocket Poets series with Allen Ginsberg’s Howl, City Lights’ most famous/infamous publication.  Howl was extracurricular reading for an English assignment in my junior year of high school.  I don’t want to pretend like Howl is my favorite poem, but as soon as I read “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness,” I was intrigued.  Like Ginsberg or not, Howl is one of the three canonical Beat Generation works, the others being Kerouac’s On the Road and William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

Howl is one of approximately 20 volumes of the Pocket Poets series that are still in print.  I used to go to the local bookstore and look for poetry volumes that were half as tall as everything else on the shelf…I had a 5o:50 chance (or better) of finding a Pocket Poets.

The City Lights Pocket Poets series is responsible for publishing poetry collections by a number of Beat Generation poets which I spent the better part of my summer after high school plowing through (New York and San Francisco schools): Ginsberg, Kerouac, Corso…Ferlinghetti, Lamantia, Kaufman et. al.

What attracted me to collecting the Pocket Poets?

1)  City Lights published some of my favorite poets.

O’Hara’s Lunch Poems has a number of greats: “A Step Away From Them,” “Poem (‘Lana Turner has collapsed!’)” and “Ave Maria.”

2)  The aesthetic: It’s so simple and uniform in the early volumes.  Soft cover, two-tone…I’m not sure, but something struck home.

My gorgeous copy of Gasoline by Gregory Corso, another of my favorites…

3)  The early stuff is scarce!  There are a number of factors: the age of the books, printing sizes, the fact that they were soft cover with wraps and were intended to be kept in hip pockets, the demographic they were marketed to…

Number One: Ferlinghetti’s Pictures of the Gone World.  Talk about scarce.  To give you an idea, there are more books for sale online now than ever before.  AbeBooks.com has over 100,000,000 volumes for sale.  There is only one first edition of this book online, albeit a nicer copy, but some of these firsts are rare as hen’s teeth.

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Over the past six years with bookstore/online purchases, garage sale’ing and generous birthday and Christmas gifts, I have amassed the collection that I have today: 59 first edition, first printings of this series. (10/7/2011 **please see note below**)

That’s 1-60 (minus Number 4: Howl)  As you can see, most of the first editions were released in softcover.  There are two hardcovers in the picture: Lamantia’s Becoming Visible and Ginsberg’s Plutonian Ode.  I have since acquired the softcover firsts of those two and hardcovers of  a few others.  Some true firsts were originally released in smaller edition sizes as hardcovers with slip cases.

For instance, Ginsberg’s Planet News.

As you can see on the left page, the edition size on Planet News was 500 copies.  And if you didn’t know what Allen Ginsberg’s signature looks like, now you do!  Though nice to have, Ginsberg’s signature means considerably less from a collectible standpoint because he signed everything.  Some signatures add a ton of value.  Frank O’Hara’s signature adds a great deal of value to Lunch Poems because he died tragically at the age of 40 after being struck by a dune buggy on the Fire Island beach.

More interesting than signatures are personalized inscriptions.  Here are two inscriptions  in firsts of Clean Asshole Poems & Smiling Vegetable Songs from Ginsberg’s life partner and fellow poet, Peter Orlovsky.

After the crossed heart dialogue bubble for Orlovsky and the bird: “We love cold water bath,” the inscription, dated June 18^th, 1982 5:25am reads “For Bob Hilts, 1 teaspoon of bee pollen, chewed well because digestion starts in the mouth, has all 22 elements in the human body. – Samatha Vipashanna, meditation ta you—!”

Orlovsky inscribes in another heart-bubble “How we love cold water + now millet” with “Sweet wild apple juice to you!” as the salutation.  What a nut.  And how about that title?

**The Note Below**  As of 11/14/2011.  UPDATE.  I obtained a first edition first printing of Howl and I now have the entire City Lights Pocket Poets Series in first edition, first printing!  Where’s my Members Only jacket??

It’s a near fine copy with a bit of foxing and sunning to the spine and a barely visible corrected crease on the front cover .  I plan to upgrade eventually, as I do with a number of the volumes, but for now…hell yeah!

If I had a better camera, I could zoom in without losing focus on line 18 on the reverse side where the first printing has a misprint of a period instead of a comma.  “…Yucatan and Chicago 1954.  West Cost since then.”  If book collecting wasn’t dorky already, I just went there.

I have to extend a major thanks to my creditor, who shall go unnamed, but whom I resemble, share a last name with and he’s pushing 60.  He even agreed to 5% interest on the loan.  Christ.  I’m hardly earning it.

But, seriously…thank you, Dad.

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A few months ago, I stumbled upon a publication of a Pocket Poets collection while researching online.

The collection belongs to a gentleman by the name of Donald Heneghan.  Not only does he have a complete collection of firsts, most are in very fine condition, including signatures and inscriptions which add to the books’ historical importance and monetary value.  His collection also contains wonderful bits of Beat and City Lights photography and ephemera.

After some light internet stalking, I was able to track Mr. Heneghan down.  I emailed him out of the blue and to my elation he responded!  Mr. Heneghan, around my father’s age, ended his initial response with “I’d love to compare notes on how you pulled your collection together and some of the poets you may have met along this process. For me that was part of the reward.”  In my reply, I had to sheepishly admit that I’m only 26 and so most of the poets were dead long before I started collecting.

A quick digression: Several of the poets are still alive.  City Lights co-founder, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, is 92, Maria Ponsot is 90, Nicanor Parra Sandoval is 97, Jack Hirschman is 78, Anne Waldman is 66, Diane di Prima is 77, Anselm Hollo is 77, Brad “Antler” Burdick is 65…and there are a couple of birthdays to be celebrated this month: Charles Upton is turning 63, Jerome Rothenberg will be 80 and Robert Bly is pushing 85.  There are others, but these are all poets who were published by City Lights prior to 1980.

Above: Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Back to Mr. Heneghan…  He was nice enough to call me and share some wonderful anecdotes about collecting before AbeBooks which was refreshing to hear as a child of the age of the Internet.  He actually sat down and talked with poets, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Jack Hirschman (among others).  His collection has been exhibited twice: once in Chicago and once in New York City.  Pocket Poetess Anne Waldman even attended the opening of his NYC show!

Most important, Mr. Heneghan was very kind and encouraging.  After all, we are two of who knows how many collectors (he knows of at least one other) that have a complete collection of first edition, first printings of the Pocket Poets…in the world.

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All said and done, this collection is one of the few things in my life that I can say that I am very proud of.  I may not have worked nearly as hard or long as Mr. Heneghan to develop my collection because I’m an over-privileged brat, but I also purchased a number of the books on my [meager] dime, and when it came time to ask for Christmas gifts this year, I asked for new tires on my car and my father to go halvsies with me on a collectible book (John Clellon Holmes’ Go).

So, where do I go from here?  I honestly don’t know.  I’ve thought about collecting the City Lights poetry broadsides as I’ve picked up a couple along the way.

Copies of Bob Kaufman’s “Abomunist Manifesto” and Kerouac’s translation of Rimbaud.

Earlier this year, I got a copy of Corso’s “Bomb.”

Now I can read the poem the way it’s supposed to be read! (though I do have multiple copies of The Happy Birthday of Death)  “Budger of history    Brake of time    You    Bomb    Toy of universe   Grandest of all snatched-sky    I cannot hate you…”

If you’ve made it this far, you’ve graduated to the realm of bibliophile dorkdome.  In any event, thank you for taking the time to read the article.  Please email me at selfhatinghipster@gmail.com if you have any historical corrections or if you are interested in more information about the series.  I will be posting more on my collectible books in the future!

Tags: Allen Ginsberg, Bomb, City Lights, complete collection, Frank O'Hara, Gasoline, Gregory Corson, Howl, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lunch Poems, Pocket Poets, poetry