John Giorno, Cancer in My Left Ball, 1973

John Giorno dissects the American consciousness. With his scalpel he cuts through the layers that collectively make up America, and his poems expose all the vileness and beauty. 

His metaphors are the hells of heroin, the hungry ghosts of trashy pornography, the animals of hamburger cattle, the titans of B-52 bombers, the Gods of the cheap thrills of consummate bliss, and the human trying to figure out its own suffering. 

He is a spiritual poet and his images are visualizations in his meditation. He is a Buddhist in the Tibetan tantric image of Nyingmapa (red Hat) Sect. 

His use of repetition creates mantric rhythms, making the poems into heavy flowing chants singing the essence of poetry.

(From jacket cover)

Gysin’s friendship with Burroughs dates back to the early fifties…and it is this organizing principle behind the various pieces which make up (the book)…(he) has injected intoxicating does of music and magic into the mainstream of modern writing. 

(Robert Palmer, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

Geoff Hendricks is a cloudsmith, specializing in cumulus and altocumulus formations, for aesthetic purposes, not only to canvas but also to shirts, clotheslines, packages, stairs, windows, porches, VW buses, and all kind of appropriate surfaces. 

When not forming clouds, Hendricks is apt to: a.) teach at Douglass College in New Jersey, b.) smile, c.) dream, d.) keep journals, e.) seriously consider his children, Tyche and Brackee, f.)be in love, g) travel to England, the Netherlands, Japan or Germany to perform and to present his work, h) enjoy a fine Sushi dinner, i) ask a serious question, j) wish he were at his Cape Breton (Nova Scotia) summer home, k) show you some of the chanterelle mushrooms he has gathered, l) wear his leathers, m) water the plants in his Church Street (New York City) loft, or n) walk someplace marvelous and find something. You can take this as a multiple choice question, but it doesn’t matter what you choose, because they’re all true. And somehow this work suggests his experiential world. 

The book, Ring Piece, is, apart from the introduction, a small red journal - mentioned in #d above - such as Hendricks has been keeping since the early 1960s. Little red books. This one was written during the 1971 performance from which it gets its name. 

Watch out. Hendricks is alive and to be considered dangerous. 

(From jacket cover))

And while we’re still on Stein, for goodness sake don’t miss Leon Katz’s adaptations of The Making of Americans, with Al Carmine’s music and Larry Kornfield’s directing. If you can sneak away to NYC while it’s still on - at the Judson Memorial Church’s Judson Poets’ Theater - you’ll never feel badly doing for doing it. And nobody who cares about Stein can possibly forgive themselves if they miss it. All the Stein mayhem with the families comes through crystal clear, as does the sweetness and richness of her language. You know we did the complete version of The Making years ago (it’s four times as long as the abridged one), and it’s still to be had for $10.95 in cloth. But now we’re doing a giant paperback of it, for $6.45

(From Dick Higgins, Something Else Newsletter, Vol. 2 No. 6)

For yeas there has been both idle chatter and serious discussion of the expansion of the possibilities in fiction of the broadest sort - the art of the narrative, of time applied to language. This international anthology includes visual works, schematic legends, linguistic sequences and even a few almost traditional yarns, but all of them are in some sense stories. We hop this book does for prose what Emmett Williams’ An Anthology of Concrete Poetry did for poetry. The collection is inclusive rather than exclusive, informative rather than hermetic (hence the biographies at the end). 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

Cover drawing by Alison Knowles. 

This book, as long as it was available, was the mushroom collector’s bible and, in fact, even today there is no exact replacement. We have produced the 1902 edition in facsimile (but later than other editions and easier to read) except that we have chosen to do the plates in black and white since the old colors in the original did not match modern mycological standards in any way and have virtually no taxonomic value. While the nomenclature has changed a great deal since McIlvaine’s time, the accuracy of his macroscopic descriptions has not been surpassed. 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

How to Write is “difficult” Stein at her best - and often the most difficult pieces are the most delightful. 

Stein was not difficult for its own sake. Her work was as it was because her intentions could not be realized in normal prose. She was no hermetic. But in her best known self-expiations - Narration, “Composition as Explanation,” “An Elucidation,” An Acquaintance with Description and Lecture in America - she gives in to the temptation, to work within the confines of “straight,” traditional prose, and to repudiate her own most characteristic style. Not that all the above books are not extremely valuable insights - they are, into her work, into literature and into philosophy. But somehow they seem about literature rather than being literature, as a good essay should be. They also seem self-defeating - if her style is necessary for the points she wants to make, why not discuss her art in her own style? Of course one can make apologies and explain that most of Stein’s other critical writings are based on the transcriptions of lectures, and this is partly true. 

But fortunately How to Write exists, is now available for the first time since the early 1930’s, and allows us to see her discussing her art by example rather than by mere explication. Furthermore, the essays in this book, while undated, stem from her richest period when she did her most unique artistic innovation, roughly 1910 to 1929, while in the other critical works, she writes of herself in the past tense and creates a sense that her mission has basically been achieved. 

These essays are, then, from the thick of the battle against old baggage. As such they have a timeless resilience which the others lack. 

(From jacket cover)

Long unavailable, with illustrations by Juan Gris, this is a facsimile edition of the original, which was printed in 1925 for André Simon and Company. It includes the well-known story whose title was taken for the book, as well as short invaluable texts. 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

Recent long works which we are co-publishing with Edition Hansjörg Mayer of London and Stuttgart. The poet calls the book “four variations on a scheme,” which is a humors indication of his punning ways and his technical methods. This is the incomparable “IBM” poem with its sweet, jazzy flavor. Just listen to the opening lines: “red up going/perilous like sex/yes hotdogs/evil Jesus red black evil.” There are also the suspense poem “Ego Hero Shego,” the two color tragic poem “Soldier,” and the concluding, graphic poem “Fête Duchampêtre,” 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

At last a charming and informative gardening book which uses the “organic method” pioneered by the late J.I. Rodale. The book is for homesteaders who live too far north for a normal growing season, or for those, like teachers and other professionals, who have limited gardening time in the summer. No matter whether you are an adult or an 8th grader, the pace of the book is made to order for following instructions. 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

Every large city now has alpha rhythm brain wave studios, it’s became a fad, and we’ve heard of bio-feedback. But you probably haven’t heard of bio-music which describes “a class of electronic systems that use biological potentials in feedback loops to induce powerful, predictable, repeatable physiological/psychological states that can be elegantly controlled in real time.” Eaton is a composer and communications researcher whose philosophy of non-chemical alteration of consciousness is based upon years of bio-music experiments. The purpose of this handbook is to provide guidelines for other researchers and to prevue the types of systems that are now or soon will be within the capabilities of the electronic art. It is engrossing reading both for the layman and the technician. 

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)

After all, it does get boring to see the same old writers and artists appearing together in book after book. So we refused to be anthologists in this one. Most anthologies are artificial reprints anyway, pure literary hocus-pocus, unless they’ve exhaustively mapped out a new terrain. We like to think of this Yearbook as more in the spirit of a workbook, something to record a year’s worth from lots of people.

(From Dick Higgins and Jan Herman, Catalogue Fall/Winter 1973-1974, Something Else Press, 1973)