RICHARD HELL's SMALL PRESS PUBLISHING White Columns
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RICHARD HELL’S SMALL PRESS PUBLISHING White Columns – January 16 – 27, 2018 Exhibition guide. Vitrine #1 (towards rear of gallery.) Genesis : Grasp magazine and Genesis : Grasp Press [1968-1971] Richard Hell dropped out of high school at 17 and came to New York to be a poet. It was 1967 and in that year Hell started the literary magazine Genesis : Grasp with David Giannini, whom he’d met at a raggedy-ass Dylan Thomas-centric New School poetry workshop. The magazine would last for six issues, numbers 1-5/6. The first issues were professionally handset in moveable type by grizzled craftsmen at a small L.E.S. print shop, Gutenberg-style. The magazine’s initial editorial stance was similarly outdated, but mostly unformed. Its contributors were a mix of the workshop students, other young artists and writers the editors happened to meet, and semi-random literary names who responded to solicitation letters. (There are a great few pages in Proust where, in the voice of his master painter Elstir, he forgives himself and all other striving art bumblers, prescribing acceptance of one’s puerile foolishness rather than shame and regret.) After issue #3 Hell bought a $300 used tabletop offset printing press and would rent an Addressograph-Multigraph Varityper for typesetting, enabling him to print in his apartment. He designed the covers of issues #4 and #5/6, which numbers each also came with a subscriber supplement of a poet’s first book, namely a One of me by Yuki Hartman, Svelte by Simon Schuchat, and uh by Ernie Stomach (which was/is a heteronym of Hell’s). By its final issue the magazine was pretty interesting. Both editors also released folders of letterpress broadsheets. Giannini’s was called Opens, and Hell’s was called Fun and included 3-D poems (with some of their lines’ words printed on one side of the page and others on the other). Vitrine #2 (center of gallery.) Dot Books [1972-1973] The taste and viewpoints of Hell and his co-editor at Genesis : Grasp had diverged quickly, and by 1971 Richard realized he wanted a line of publications he edited solo. Among prospective names for a new journal were Blak & Wite and The Philosophical Review, but he decided to do a book series rather than a magazine and to go with the monolithic, perky Dot. This fit with his new plan to present poets as youth-trendy, if dirty and visionary, stimulation, like rock and roll. (In the brief interim between G : G and Dot he also produced at home some professional stationery for himself as well as four or five editions of poetry broadsides, typing with his manual typewriter directly onto paper printing plates.) Dot books were physically modeled on mass-market paperbacks, and there were two of them, both poetry: Andrew Wylie’s Yellow Flowers (1972) and Theresa Stern’s Wanna Go Out (1973). Wanna Go Out? was collaborations between Hell and high school friend Tom Verlaine, though that wasn’t revealed in the book. Three further manuscripts were in hand and ready to go to press: Verlaine’s 21st Century, Patti Smith’s Merde (a title Richard had been hoarding), and Hell’s The Voidoid (a prose “novelina,” while all the other Dots were poems), but by 1973 Richard had become so wrapped up with his actual rock and roll band—The Neon Boys, soon to become Television—that he let the publishing dissolve in favor of music. cuz magazine [1988-1989] Richard dissolved his band the Voidoids and retired from music in 1984. In 1988 he was hired by The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church to book their Monday night poetry reading series. He had loved the mimeo books and the mimeo poetry magazines published at the Project in the sixties and seventies, but they weren’t doing that anymore, so he requested permission to start a new magazine. The Project agreed and Hell called the periodical cuz. In those days he was also working part-time as a proofreader for a digital typesetting shop, and his employer allowed him to both typeset the magazine on their computer system and print it on their photocopiers. Hell indulged in the new technology with a different typeface for nearly every magazine contribution. Contributors to the three issues were: Bruce Andrews, John Ashbery, Lee Ann Brown, William Burroughs, Dennis Cooper, Michael DeCapite, Lizzy Mercier Descloux, Maggie Dubris, Larry fagin, John Godfrey, Terri Hardin, Richard Hell, Mitch Highfill, Janice Johnson, Rochelle Kraut, Kim Lyons, Cookie Mueller, Eileen Myles, Will Patton, Rene Ricard, Molly Russakoff, Jerome Sala, Patti Smith, Susie Timmons, David Trinidad, Tom Verlaine, David Wojnarowicz, John Yau, and Nick Zedd. A feature of each issue was “The Story of My Poem,” in which a poet described the origin and history of a poem of his or hers in the issue. CUZ Editions [1998-2001…to present] By the time Richard’s novel Go Now was published in 1996 he was chafing against the isolation of novel writing, and he decided to start a new publishing venture. He conceived a series of books in a uniform format to be called CUZ Editions. They were to be a kind of personal homage to the stapled mimeo poetry publications he grew up on, but using modern equivalents of that sixties DIY technology. He typeset the books on his PC with PageMaker software, printed out master copies of two-page spreads at home, made 500 photocopies of each, collated those, trimmed the pages, slapped on heavier stock covers to render unbound books, staple-bound those, and then wrapped every finished copy with the black and white card-stock dust jackets he’d had printed offset at a neighborhood copy shop. Across four years there were eight books in the series, in this order: Richard himself, Susan Noel, Maggie Dubris, Michael DeCapite, Will Patton, Nick Tosches, Rene Ricard, and Ron Padgett. Each book had art on its jacket and four were illustrated by their cover artists too. The corresponding artists were: Christopher Wool, Mette Madsen, David Wojnarowicz, George Schneeman, Will Patton, [Nick Tosches opted for a stock image on his cover], Robert Hawkins, and George Schneeman again. Richard still uses the CUZ Editions imprint for the stray items he continues to publish today. The Voidoid (New York: CUZ, 1991), first edition of Hell’s 1973 novelina The Toilet Paper Columns (New York: CUZ Editions, 2007), 14 monthly columns about whatever was on Hell’s mind, written October 2004-May 2006 Vitrine #3 (closest to gallery entry. titles in chronological order.) I Was a Spiral On the Floor (Amsterdam: Soyo, 1989), small selection of poems 1970-88 in a miniscule edition published by an Amsterdam nightclub/cultural center for a reading Richard gave there Across the Years (Amsterdam: Soyo, 1991), Hell’s collection of the few poems he could tolerate from across his career in 1991; a small cloth bound book laid in a black wooden box along with a CD of Hell reading all the poems in the book Artifact (New York and Madras: Hanuman, 1992), notebooks 1974-1980 The Voidoid (Hove, UK: CodeX, 1996) first version of the 1973 novelina in an edition with distribution Hot and Cold (Ancram, NY: Vehicle, 1998), “writing and drawing”—an art exhibition “preview” edition of the much expanded version of the book published by powerHouse two years later 2-D Beckoning (Colorado Springs: Angry Dog Midget Editions, 2002), an essay on Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Gödel and translating poetry, from a draft of Hell’s 2005 novel Godlike; one in a box set of 26 chapbooks, each by a separate writer, including Ron Padgett, Eileen Myles, Devendra Banhart, and Ed Berrigan; limited to 300 copies, each individual book signed by its author Rabbit Duck (Milwaukee: REPAIR, 2005), 13 collaborative poems Hell wrote with David Shapiro Psychopts (New York: JMc & GHB, 2008), artists’ book collaboration with Christopher Wool The Voidoid (New York: 38th Street, 2009), Hell’s 1973 novelina illustrated by Kier Cooke Sandvik Disgusting (New York: 38th Street, 2010), drawings and writings by Hell with unique painted endpapers by Josh Smith Chapter 28 (Minneapolis: Rain Taxi, 2010), from Hell’s autobio-in-progress I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp, significantly different from what would appear in the 2013 book Untitled broadside poem (“Ont Ray”) (San francisco: X-Ray, 2011), signed, limited giveaway for a reading at Justine’s Brasserie in Austin, TX On the wall. Richard Hell – untitled, collage, 1973. (Made for the cover of Theresa Stern’s Wanna Go Out?, Dot Books, 1973.) Richard Prince – untitled photograph of Prince’s signed copy of Wanna Go Out?, number 38/50 from the signed edition of 50 copies. (Photograph appeared in Prince’s book Women, Hatje Cantz, 2004.) .