FLOATING BEAR #34 by di PRIMA, Diane (Editor)

San Francisco: The Poets Press, [November], 1967. 24pp. Two sided, single sheets secured with two staples. A bit of yellowing to extremities. Small stain (coffee?) to three pages. This issue features “Newark Black Survival Committee” by LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka], along with contributions from Jack Kerouac, Jack Spicer, Keith Wilson, Gary Snyder, Stuart Perkoff, Rajkamal Chowdhury, Lorenzo Thomas, George Stanley, Frank O’Hara, Johannes Koenig, Yukiko Matsuda, Yu Suwa, Atsushi Sekiguchi, Philip Lamantia and David W. McKain. Cover by Michael Bowen. The Floating Bear was one of the most influential mimeograph magazines published during the1960s. Edited by LeRoi Jones [Amiri Baraka] and Diane Di Prima, its pages featured many of thebeat poets such as William Burroughs, Allen Ginsbeg, Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Wallace Berman, as well as many of Andy Warhol’s Factory regulars. This “newsletter” was unique among the multiple mimeographs because of its distribution. Floating Bear could not be bought over the counter but rather distributed through a special mailing list that consisted of a certain group of poets, artists, bookshop owners, reviewers, and critics. Receiving a copy meant you were part of a literary and artistic community. Copies were hand addressed, folded for mailing, or contained a mailing label and stamp. Our copy has not been folded and lacks a recipient. This may perhaps be one of the editors’ personal copies. The magazines were stained or poorly mimeographed, but that is a large part of the charm of Floating Bear, according to Jed Birmingham. In Birmingham’s study of Floating Bear, he comments, “You can see that these magazines were used. They were argued over, read aloud, passed around.” Leroi Jones left as editor with Issue 25, and Diane Di Prima took over full editorial duties. You can see the geographical shift from New York to California as well. Herms, Jess, and Berman were all active in the California art scene that moved between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Billy Linich otherwise known as Billy Name, famously linked with Warhol’s Factory, assists with a few issues after Jones’s departure. This suggests Floating Bear‘s link to the speed culture of the New York art scene in the 1960s. FB served as an important venue for the poets of the Beat and New York schools, as well as other experimental and avant garde writers of the decade. (See REFERENCES for Birmingham link).