Description

Aphrodisia Press, New Orleans [Published date: 1968]. Softcover, 76 pp; illustrated throughout with black-and-white drawings by the author and a frontispiece portrait by Allan D. Yasnyi; 23 cm. Second edition (limited to 500 copies, this being no. 175). In good+ condition. Yellow illustrated card covers with French flaps, printed in black with a bold line drawing of a bespectacled youth; Covers have a few small nicks and tears along edges and top and bottom of spine and light overall scuffing, soiling and toning along edges and spine. Binding tight. Pages clean and unmarked. Signed and inscribed by the author on front free endpaper: "Come breaking your mind; your eyes are but a corner of the universe - Marcus Grapes / New Orleans / 1969." Second printing of Grapes's second poetry collection, following A Savage Peace (1965). This limited edition compiles poems written between September 1965 and August 1966 and features an introduction by Douglas Blazek, founder of Open Skull Press and an early champion of the mimeograph literary movement. Grapes's verse, written in the midst of the 1960s small-press poetry renaissance, reflects his humanist, nonconformist stance and his rejection of academic formalism - his work was frequently featured in Ole, Earth, Kauri, The Wormwood Review, and other alternative magazines of the period. The book's vivid graphic design, orange and yellow pages, and expressive illustrations convey the visual energy of the New Orleans avant-garde press scene. [Colophon:] "This Limited Edition is a Selection of poems written between September, 1965 and August, 1966; a second printing of 500 copies." Frontispiece by Allan D. Yasnyi. Illustrations by the author. Marcus J. Grapes (b. 1943) is an American poet, playwright, and teacher known later as Jack Grapes. After early publications in New Orleans, he settled in Los Angeles, where he founded Bombshelter Press and the literary journal ONTHEBUS and taught his influential "Method Writing" workshops.