Adventures in Poetry

Larry Fagin
New York

Nos. 1–12 (March 1968–Summer 1975).

Covers by anonymous (10, 12), Gordon Baldwin (3), Joe Brainard (2), Rudy Burckhardt (8), Jim Dine (6), John Giorno (9), Rory McEwen (11), Ron Padgett (1), Ed Ruscha (4), Aram Saroyan (7), and George Schneeman (5).

Adventures in Poetry 1 (March 1968).

The title derives from a children’s textbook, Adventures in Reading. I was trying for a kind of funky elegance like 0 to 9, a little fancier than “C” or Lines. A typical issue was 300–350 copies, consuming thirty reams of 24# mimeograph paper, run through the Gestetner machine of The Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Most numbers were as thick as possible—as many as fifty doublesided pages. I purchased a state-of-the-art Novus stapler from Germany that cut through an issue like it was butter, a very satisfying sensation. After the final editing, typing, proofing, correcting, and mimeographing, a bunch of us would set up long tables in the Parish Hall, often after a reading, and collate and staple late into the night. Working at the Project and attending hundreds of readings over the years was a big advantage. If I heard something I especially liked at a reading, I would rush to the podium and claim the manuscript for Adventures. I was rarely refused. Editing was a good way to make friends (and, hopefully, not many enemies). I loved what Joe Ceravolo was writing then, as well as poems by Ron Padgett, Ted Berrigan, Dick Gallup, Tony Towle, et al.—the second-generation New York School crowd. But older poets contributed, too, and work from the West Coast, Chicago, and London was solicited. Adventures avoided the grab bag mode of publishing one or two pieces each from many contributors. Often, several poets were featured with up to a dozen poems each. One number was entirely devoted to three writers.

There was an all-prose issue. Number 10 was the “anonymous” issue—no authors were credited; not even the name of the magazine appeared; the covers were pornographic comic strips. I couldn’t pay the authors or cover artists, though once I commissioned Dick Gallup, who was in a slump, at $5 per poem, and he came up with his wonderful “Charged Particles” and several other beauties. Few legitimate publishers were taking on the kind of writing I like, so in 1970 Adventures published its first pamphlet, Tom Veitch’s My Father’s Golden Eye. Books by John Ashbery, John Godfrey, Clark Coolidge, and John Giorno soon followed. Writers who were completely off the radar screen—Steve Malmude, Richard Snow, Richard Elliott, Jamie MacInnis, Curtis Faville, Rebecca Brown—and painters Joseph White and Jennifer Bartlett made their debuts with Adventures pamphlets. One unsolicited manuscript was accepted: We Are Integrated and Wonderfully Made, poems describing the major body organs, written in lilting doggerel by Mrs. Thazarbell Biggs, a registered nurse. There were a number of abandoned Adventures projects—an anthology of children’s poems, translations of French poets, and pamphlets by Dale Herd, Ed Marshall, Alfred Starr Hamilton, John Wieners, and others. The magazine lasted through 1975. Money was becoming scarce, and at the end of 1976, after about thirty-seven books, I gave it a rest.

— Larry Fagin, New York City, September 1997

Adventures in Poetry catalogs

Edited by Larry Fagin. Nos. 1–2 (1973–75). Covers by Bill Brodecky (1) and Alice Neel (2).

Adventures in Poetry books (complete)

Anonymous [Clark Coolidge and Larry Fagin]. Tonto Lavoris. 1973.

Ashbery, John. The New Spirit. 1970.

Bartlett, Jennifer. Cleopatra I–IV. 1971.

Baxter, Glen. Drawings. 1974.

Baxter, Glen. The Khaki. 1973.

Berkson, Bill, and Frank O’Hara. Hymns of St. Bridget. 1974. Cover by Larry Rivers.

Berrigan, Ted. Clear the Range. 1977. Cover by the author and George Schneeman. Published with Coach House South.

Berrigan, Ted. The Drunken Boat. 1974. A translation of Rimbaud. Drawings by Joe Brainard.

Biggs, Thazarbell. We Are Integrated and Wonderfully Made. 1976.

Brown, Rebecca. For the 82nd Airborne. 1976.

Brownstein, Michael, and Ron Padgett. Kiss My Ass!/Suffering Succotash. 1971.

Carey, Henry. Chrononhotonthologos: The Most Tragical Tragedy, That Ever Was Tragediz’d by Any Company of Tragedians. 1971. Presented by Ron Padgett and Johnny Stanton.

Carroll, Jim, and Lewis MacAdams. [Two Poems]. 1973. Illustration by George Schneeman.

Cendrars, Blaise. Kodak. 1976. Translated by Ron Padgett.

Coolidge, Clark. Polaroid. 1975. Published with Big Sky.

Coolidge, Clark. The So (Poems 1966). 1971. Cover by Brice Marden.

Coolidge, Clark. Suite V. 1973.

Crabtree, Lee. An Unfinished Memoir. 1974. Edited by Peter Schjeldahl. Cover photograph by Linda Schjeldahl.

Dawson, Fielding. The Girl with the Pale Cerulean Eyes/The Man with the Grey Hair. 1974. Cover by the author.

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