chax AND black mountain (1)

Chax was not a dream in a mind when I met, after a few years of reading their work, Robert Duncan, Robert Creeley, and Ed Dorn, at a conference in Iowa City on Charles Olson. I was at the time in grad school at the Univ of Wisconsin, in Madison, and I was TA-ing for Merton Sealts, one of the very few Melville scholars Charles Olson admired. Sealts had loaned me his notebook of correspondence with Olson. I was already writing poems that were influenced by Olson, Dorn, and Creeley. The first book I agreed to publish, a year later perhaps, was by Ed Dorn. At the time, not far from Iowa City, and in presence at this conference, was the already thorny or crusty Allan Kornblum and his Toothpaste Press. That was perhaps my first vision of contemporary handmade, letterpress books. Allan told me when I returned to Madison, I should look up Walter Hamady in the Fine Arts program. I’ll have to continue this in a later post on chax AND The Perishable Press Limited. Chax was still a few years off, but I was soon to begin printing work, buy a press, and begin to design, print, and publish books.