GNOMONOLOGY: A HANDBOOK OF SYSTEMS by Howard McCord
Sand Dollar Press (distributed by Serendipity Books), Berkeley 1971
1st edition, 26 pages. 1000 copies printed.

I can think of no chapbook more fitting to begin this blog cataloging Western American poetry chapbooks of the 1960’s and 70’s than Howard McCord’s GNOMONOLOGY. While a text about texts it is also a book that contemplates books as tools, weighing their value against purpose through time. Titles and authors of many books are listed in McCord’s journey-like treatise, from the classics of both east and west to mystical texts, scientific literature and books ruminating upon the ancients, myth and prehistoric art. History, geology, geography, biology, economics, law, culture, all are woven. Although written in verse the lines are an amalgam of both science and art, of curation and contemplation, a kind of alchemy of words, a labyrinth of signposts and doorways. McCord uses Chinese ideograms, drawn arrows, diagrams, tiny drawings (proto-emoticons?) boxes and underlining to emphasize and highlight his treatise which results in a unique and original typography and layout.

The chapbook concludes with two letters written to Howard in response to his poem. The first by author, publisher and bookstore owner Gus Blaidell of Albuquerque New Mexico magnifies McCord’s text, amplifying it. The later by Beat poet, writer, teacher and activist Gary Snyder questions McCord’s text, yet despite Snyder’s wry criticism his letter acts as the perfect counterbalance to McCord’s tome of tomes, as if at the end of the text we are watching (visually, as well as mentally and spiritually) the snake eat its own tale, that image well-known from the study of Jung.

Howard McCord is a wonderful American poet and writer of the late 20th and early 21st century who is sometimes grouped in with the Beat Poets of the 1960’s and has had a number of exceptional chapbooks published in the 1960’s and 1970’s along with many other acclaimed books of poetry, essay and fiction.

Note: A trial issue exists, preceeding the first edition. According to a bibliographer, approximately 12 copies were issued. While the plates for the two printings were the same, the trial issue is much smaller, 4 1/4" by 5 1/2". The booklet is bound in a textured card stock, stapled across the top. The bibliographer mention that the copy of the trial issue that he examined had the title hand-lettered on the cover yet copies exist that have no lettering.

     I wanted to kick-start this blog "In a Gathering of Leaves: Poetry Chapbooks from 1960-1980" with an excerpt form Merla Levinston's & Kyle Waugh's essay "Chapbooks from the Mimeo Revolution: From New American Poetry to New Sentence", an essay that served as a primer to a small exhibit of American poetry chapbooks from the later half of the 20th century that was held at the Poetry House in NYC in April of 2014.

     Levinston & Waugh write: "This exhibit focuses on the chapbook production of roughly a dozen small presses (of the many, many dozens) that sprang up in North America (and beyond) during what has now come to be known as the Mimeo Revolution. Stretching from the early 1960's through the early 1980's, this typographical upheaval gathered energy around the members of he Beat movement, as well as former faculty and alumni of the wildly influential North Carolina arts college, Black Mountain, but its soon attracted a much broader spectrum of writers, artists and amateur printers. "With direct access to mimeograph machines, letterpress and inexpensive offset," write Steve Clay and Rodney Phillips, in their indispensable biographical history, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side: Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980,  this "underground economy of poets" designed, printed and distributed a massive and vastly diverse body of countercultural, often ephemeral literature that circulated internationally".

     I would add that this "Mimeo Revolution" was not only a cultural movement but an important new renaissance in American letters. As the cost of the means of book production became more affordable literature was taken out of the hands of the overly academic and corporate publishing houses and put in the hands of the people, the self. In this new paradigm the written word flourished, new voices emerged, established voices strengthened. Like a tidal wave in the night the movement captured the spirit of the chaotic and powerful energy of the 60's and 70's with maximum efficiency.

     As Levinston & Waugh states, this revolution in the means of production soon lead to many small presses sprouting up across the North American continent (and the entire world) and the movement solidified and became an established force in how poetry was produced and presented. Today some of these small presses are cultural institutions (City Lights, Coffee House, Black Sparrow to name a few) that forever changed the face of poetry and publishing.

     It is all well and good to read the poetry of the 1960's and 70's in anthologies or collected works, but to hold in your hands and read an original chapbook of poems published by a small press from say 1967 is to experience the force and unbridled beauty of a movement and revolution that we are all now a part of.

     With that said I hope to bring awareness to, and help catalogue, some of the fine, often times more rare examples from the small presses that were part and parcel of this revolution. Not only to present the books themselves but also to discuss the presses, the people behind the presses, and the authors and artists who created these exceptional works of art and literature.