Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts
Edward Sanders
New York
Nos. 1–4 and no. 5, vol. 1–no. 5, vol. 9 (February 1962–June 1965).
Fuck You 1 (February–April 1962).
In February of 1962 I was sitting in Stanley’s Bar at 12th and B with some friends from the Catholic Worker. We’d just seen Jonas Mekas’s movie Guns of the Trees, and I announced I was going to publish a poetry journal called Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts. There was a certain tone of skepticism among my rather inebriated friends, but the next day I began typing stencils, and had an issue out within a week. I bought a small mimeograph machine, and installed it in my pad on East 11th, hand-cranking and collating 500 copies, which I gave away free wherever I wandered. Fearful of getting arrested, I nevertheless mailed it to my heroes around the world, from Charles Olson to T. S. Eliot to Marianne Moore, from Castro to Samuel Beckett, from Picasso to Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Allen Ginsberg.
Ed Sanders at the Berkeley Poetry Conference, July 1965.
Fuck You was part of what they called the Mimeograph Revolution, and my vision was to reach out to the “Best Minds” of my generation with a message of Gandhian pacifism, great sharing, social change, the expansion of personal freedom (including the legalization of marijuana), and the then-stirring messages of sexual liberation. I published Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts from 1962 through 1965, for a total of thirteen issues. In addition, I formed a mimeograph press which issued a flood of broadsides and manifestoes during those years, including Burroughs’s Roosevelt After Inauguration, Carol Bergé’s Vancouver Report, Auden’s Platonic Blow, The Marijuana Review, and a bootleg collection of the final Cantos of Ezra Pound.
— Ed Sanders, Woodstock, New York, October 1997
Fuck You, no. 5, vol. 5 (December 1963). Hand-drawn-on-stencil for the “Notes on Contributors” page.
Joe Brainard, “Banana Letter,” 1965. Original drawing. From an unrealized Fuck You Press book.
A partial list of Fuck You books
Auden, W. H. The Platonic Blow. 1965.
Bergé, Carol. The Vancouver Report. 1964.
Burroughs, William S. Health Bulletin: APO-33, a Metabolic Regulator. 1965. Fewer than twenty copies of this publication are extant; the rest were destroyed.
[Burroughs, William S.] “Willie Lee.” Roosevelt After Inauguration. Cover illustrations by Allen Ginsberg. 1964.
Ferlinghetti, Lawrence. To Fuck Is to Love Again (Kyrie Eleison Kerista), or, The Situation in the West, Followed by a Holy Proposal. 1965.
Lawrence, D. H. Maxims and Aphorisms from the Letters of D. H. Lawrence. 1964. Compiled, with appended poems, by Marguerite Harris. 1964.
Pélieu, Claude. Automatic Pilot. 1964. Translated by Mary Beach. Published for City Lights Books.
Pound, Ezra. The Cantos, CX–CXVI. 1967. Cover by Joe Brainard.
Sanders, Ed. The Toe Queen Poems. 1964. With a foreword by Consuela. Cover by Ed Sanders.
Sanders, Ed. Fuck God in the Ass: Poems by Ed Sanders. 1967.
Sanders, Ed. A Description of the Regal Society of Sooey Semen. 1969.
Sanders, Ed, Ken Weaver, and Betsy Klein, eds. The Fugs’ Songbook! [1965]. Notes on Fugs by Ed Sanders.
Sanders, Ed, ed. A Valorium Edition of the Entire Extant Works of Thales!: The Famous Milesian Poet, Philosopher, Physicist, Astronomer, Mathematician, Cosmologist, Urstoff-freak, Absent-minded Professor & Madman. 1964. With an introduction by Aristotle.
Sanders, Ed, ed. Bugger!: An Anthology of Buttockry. [Title on table of contents/dedication page: Bugger: An Anthology of Anal Erotic, Pound Cake, Cornhole, Arse-Freak & Dreck Poems.] 1964. Cover by Ed Sanders.
Sanders, Ed, ed. Despair: Poems to Come Down By. 1964.
Sanders, Ed, ed. Poems for Marilyn. 1962.
Fuck You Quote of the Week
The Fuck You Quote of the Week 1 (by Harry Fainlight). September 7, 1964. Broadside.
The Fuck You Quote of the Week 2 (by John Ashbery). September 14, 1964. Broadside.
The Fuck You Quote of the Week 3 (by Kenneth Koch). September 23, 1964. Broadside.
Newsletters
The Dick: An Occasional Newsletter of Observation, Literature & Commentary, vol. 1, no. 1 (February 1967). Sole issue. Edited and largely written by Sanders although it does not carry the Fuck You imprint.
Ed Sanders Newsletter. [1966]. Sole issue.
The Marijuana Newsletter, nos. 1–2 (January 30, 1965–March 15, 1965).
The Sanders Report: A Journal of Reportage & Opinion in the Fields of Telephone & Electric Rate Reform, Public Power, Nuclear Energy, Toxic Wastes, Military & National Security Affairs, Poetics, Art, and Consumerism, nos. 1–2 (November 1982–August/September 1983). Edited, written, and published by Sanders while he lived in Albany, New York. Does not carry the Fuck You imprint.
Catalogs
A Catalogue of Manuscripts, Holographs, Literary Relics, Tape Recordings, Drawings, Books, Magazines, Broadsides, Tractata, Ejaculata, Drek, & Other Effluvia of the Literary Divinity Offered by Sale by Ed Sanders. [1964].
Continue readingEd Sanders’ Catalogue #2: Books, Rare Magazines, Poetry, Manuscripts, Broadsides, Relics, Instruments, Tapes, & Other Literary Ejaculata. [1964].
Ed Sanders’ Catalogue #3: Books, Freak-Tomes, Literary Relics, Magazines, Tapes, Broadsides, Tractata, Zapata, Rare Book Scenes, & Other Vectors from the Litereary Ejaculatorium. [1965].
Ed Sanders’ Catalogue #4: Of Manuscripts, Holographs, Literary Relics, Drawings, Books, Magazines, Tractata, Ejaculata, Dreck, Freak-Spews, Gobble Vectors, Poetry, etc. [1965].
Special Ed Sanders Catalogue #4½: The Szabo Edition: a Group of Books from the Legendary Szabo Library—Forfeited in a Deal Where the Famous Poet Szabo Burned Sanders Down in a Loan Scene Using These Books as Collateral. [1965].
Ed Sanders’ Catalogue #5: A Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts, Freak-Items, Lower East Side Relics, Magazines, Broadsides, and Other Literary Ejaculata from the Stock of the Evil Peace Eye Bookstore. [1965].
Ed Sanders’ Catalogue #6: Books, Freak-Tomes, Manuscripts, Fragile Lower East Side Poetry Magazines, Broadsides, Tractata, and other relics spewed from the literary world. [1965].
Peace Eye Bookstore Catalog 7. [n.d.].
Peace Eye Bookstore Catalog [8]. 1968.
Special thanks to Timothy Murray, from whose unpublished checklist of Fuck You publications the original version of this list was compiled. Special thanks also to Jed Birmingham for contributing his ongoing Fuck You bibliography to this new compilation.
Resource
Scans of the compete run of Fuck You/ a magazine of the arts as well as scans of other Fuck You Press items are available on the Fuck You Press Archive page at Reality Studio.