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Angels Gate Press, Published 1982. Wraps, [16] pp. (unpaginated); 22 cm; limited edition, number 244 of 500; pictorial covers, front with "The Venice Pier Looking North" (courtesy Security Pacific National Bank and the Los Angeles Public Library), back with portrait of the author by Arthur Secunda.
In Good condition. Staple bound. Black-and-white pictorial paper covers show mild to moderate foxing and soiling and some scuffing to front cover, with a 1 in. patch of the thin surface layer scuffed off at upper right. Binding tight. Pages mildly toned with occasional scattered foxing. Inscribed by the author to a couple on copyright page, limitation numbered 244 in ink, signed and dated "'82." Otherwise unmarked. Cycle of seven poems, Venice I through VII, on old Venice, California: canals, the pier rides ("The Race Through the Clouds," Noah's Ark, the Hippodrome), the oil boom that filled the canals with cement and mud, the Depression-era pier, postwar skid row, and "the tentacles of the Marina" moving in. Preface asks "Why did they destroy Venice? Why did they eliminate the Pacific Electric Railway?" Issued after the publisher heard Wagner read the poem aloud. Wagner (1915-1987), born in Redondo Beach and orphaned at twelve, worked the beach-town arcades as a boy, studied at Chouinard and UCLA, and spent twenty years as an aerospace engineer-designer. A pioneer of California assemblage, he showed at Ed Kienholz's Now Gallery in 1956 and in 1966 joined Noah Purifoy and Judson Powell on 66 Signs of Neon, made from debris of the Watts rebellion.