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.