a bit of personal history about Dave Christy and my involvement in the small press

Dave and Ana Christy

http://www.luver.com

Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene

Doug Holder

This blog consists of reviews, interviews, news, etc…from the world of the Boston area small press/ poetry scene and beyond. Regular contributors are reviewers: Barbara Bialick, Lawrence Kessenich, Lo Galluccio, Zvi Sesling, Irene Koronas, Rene Schwiesow, Dennis Daly, and others. Founder Doug Holder: dougholder@post.harvard.edu. * B A S P P S is listed in the New Pages Index of Alternative Literary Blogs.

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Showing posts with label Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away Doug Holder. Show all posts
Monday, February 08, 2010

Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away…

I received notice that Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press has passed away. The press was very prolific and influential in the little magazine and chapbook scene in the 80’s and 90’s. I had my first chap published by Dave Christy: “Poems of Boston and Just Beyond: From the Back Bay to the Back Ward” May he rest in peace.

From the website:

Alpha Beat Press has been publishing Beat Generation, post-Beat Independent and other modern writings since 1986. Alpha Beat Press had its beginnings in a Montreal flat with the idea of keeping the aesthetics and sensibilities of the Beat generation alive. Our first magazine, Alpha Beat Soup was unique, being the only small press magazine publishing original and current Beat writings. In our new magazine Bouillabaisse and in our other poetry publications we have continued in that tradition, publishing a wide variety of writers and styles, from Bukowski to the lesser known poets. Alpha Beat Press is certainly the best of the small press!

Past Contributors include: John Clellan Holmes, Charles Bukowski, Beatrice Wood, Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Carolyn Cassady, Gary Snyder, Carl Solomon, Ken Kesey, Simon Vinkenoong, Kaviraj George Dowden, John Montgomery, Jack Kerouac, Ken Babbs, Bruce Fearing, Ray Bremser, Al Aronowitz, Ana Christy, Gerald Nicosia, Diane Wakowski, Bob Kaufman, Steve Richmond, Janine Pommy Vega, Antler, Herbert Huncke, Pradip Choudhuri, Jack Micheline, Gregory Corso, Joan Reid, Allen Cohen, Yusuke Keida, Barbara Moraff, A.D.Winans, Tuli Kupferberg, Richard Morris, George Montrgomery, Frank Moore, Erling Friis-Baastad, t.k.splake, ruth weiss, elliott, Ted Berrigan, Neeli Cherkovski, Clayton Eshleman, Gerald Locklin, Joy Walsh, Anne Waldman, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Michael McClure, Kurt Nimmo, Ron Androla, Graham Cournoyer, Bill Costley, Jan Kerouac, Jeanne Conn, Stephan Ronan, Christine Zwingman, Chris Challis, Lyn Lifshin, Ulvis Alberts, Lorrie Jackson, Tony Seldin, Judson Crews, Steve Allen, William S. Burroughs, Neal Cassady & Ted Joans.

Posted by Douglas Holder at 2:31 AM 4 comments:

Labels: Dave Christy founder of the Alpha Beat Press Has Passed Away Doug Holder

Review: COKEFISH ing IN ALPHA BEAT SOUP
A Beat-Post Beat Independent Poetry Broadsheet
January 2009

“Cokefish” or “Cokefishing” is a pretty unique publication in that it really is a broadsheet, printed on two sides of a giant piece of paper which arrived at my door (at least) folded in quarters, and set in a variety of types, largely because the type that each poem or letter (it features author letters too) was submitted in seems to have been copied directly onto the broadsheet. And this is a choice the editors Dave and Ana Christy are making: “This broadside is dedicated to the small press and the way it used to be,” reads the legend over the top of the first poems, next, in this issue, to a photocopied picture of the late, much lamented Dave Church, whose passing several poems and letters commemorate.

I like their style here. This is the sort of homemade, no-frills publication which sold me on the romance of the small press in the first place, when Bryn Fortey was doing something similar in Wales, though he folded his sheets in half and stapled them. Bryn introduced me, through his “Outlaw” magazine, to some of the best living poets, including (as he was) Church and t.kilgore splake; and Dave and Ana’s roster includes both of those old greybeard heroes, along with Steve Dalachinsky, whose work I found impossible to format for BEATNIK (sorry Steve) and Gundy, whose name I came across a few years ago and haven’t heard from for a while, during my own weird peregrinations around the literary world and in real unreality. It’s good to know that there are still some places where the way a magazine/ publication looks doesn’t matter and the way it reads does. Lately even Beat-influenced sites have gone for fancy production which has nothing to do with the original spirit of the writing.

You can track “Cokefish (ing)” down via Alpha Beat Press and Dave and Ana Christy at 806 E. Ridge Ave. Sellersville PA 18960 USA. And like I said, it’s a buck an issue, so remunerate the Christys accordingly.

Posted by Bruce Hodder at 2:26 AM

Sell on Amazon

Charles Bukowski and Alpha Beat Press 1988-1994 Paperback – January 1, 1994

by Dave and Ana Christy (Editor)

1 Collectible from $125.00

Can Man Says Goodnight on luver.com an internet weekly radio show

Join Dave & Ana for an hour of good talk, a lot of laughs and a lot of vodka! Reminiscent of the old radio show, THE BICKERSONS – The Christy’s add a special guest poet/musician along with a Country Classic tune and Ana’s “Pick Your Nose” of the week.

Friday, April 20, 2012

Can Man Says Goodnight #81

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Can Man Says Goodnight #80

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Thursday, April 12, 2012

Can Man Says Goodnight #79

Download/listen to the show by clicking on the title.

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Can Man Says Goodnight #78

Download/listen to the show by clicking on the title.

Hiway America- City Lights Bookstore -The Beats -San Francisco,Ca

 

A TOUR OF THE BOOKSTORE
http://www.citylights.com/bookstore/?fa=books_tour

LAWRENCE FERLINGHETTI

A Brief Biography of
Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A prominent voice of the wide-open poetry movement that began in the 1950s, Lawrence Ferlinghetti has written poetry, translation, fiction, theater, art criticism, film narration, and essays. Often concerned with politics and social issues, Ferlinghetti’s poetry countered the literary elite’s definition of art and the artist’s role in the world. Though imbued with the commonplace, his poetry cannot be simply described as polemic or personal protest, for it stands on his craftsmanship, thematics, and grounding in tradition.

Ferlinghetti was born in Yonkers in 1919, son of Carlo Ferlinghetti who was from the province of Brescia and Clemence Albertine Mendes-Monsanto. Following his undergraduate years at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he served in the U.S. Navy in World War II as a ship’s commander. He received a Master’s degree from Columbia University in 1947 and a Doctorate de l’Université de Paris (Sorbonne) in 1950. From 1951 to 1953, when he settled in San Francisco, he taught French in an adult education program, painted, and wrote art criticism. In 1953, with Peter D. Martin, he founded City Lights Bookstore, the first all-paperbound bookshop in the country, and by 1955 he had launched the City Lights publishing house.

The bookstore has served for half a century as a meeting place for writers, artists, and intellectuals. City Lights Publishers began with the Pocket Poets Series, through which Ferlinghetti aimed to create an international, dissident ferment. His publication of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl & Other Poems in 1956 led to his arrest on obscenity charges, and the trial that followed drew national attention to the San Francisco Renaissance and Beat movement writers. (He was overwhelmingly supported by prestigious literary and academic figures, and was acquitted.) This landmark First Amendment case established a legal precedent for the publication of controversial work with redeeming social importance.

Ferlinghetti’s paintings have been shown at various galleries around the world, from the Butler Museum of American Painting to Il Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. He has been associated with the international Fluxus movement through the Archivio Francesco Conz in Verona. He has toured Italy, giving poetry readings in Roma, Napoli, Bologna, Firenze, Milano, Verona, Brescia, Cagliari, Torino, Venezia, and Sicilia. He won the Premio Taormino in 1973, and since then has been awarded the Premio Camaiore, the Premio Flaiano, the Premio Cavour. among others. He is published in Italy by Oscar Mondadori, City Lights Italia, and Minimum Fax. He was instrumental in arranging extensive poetry tours in Italy produced by City Lights Italia in Firenze. He has translated from the Italian Pier Paolo Pasolin’s Poemi Romani, which is published by City Lights Books. In San Francisco, his work can regularly be seen at the George Krevsky Gallery at 77 Geary Street.

Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind continues to be the most popular poetry book in the U.S. It has been translated into nine languages, and there are nearly 1,000,000 copies in print. The author of poetry, plays, fiction, art criticism, and essays, he has a dozen books currently in print in the U.S., and his work has been translated in many countries and in many languages. His most recent books are A Far Rockaway of the Heart (1997), How to Paint Sunlight (2001), and Americus Book I (2004) published by New Directions.

He has been the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Los Angeles Times’ Robert Kirsch Award, the BABRA Award for Lifetime Achievement, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Award for Contribution to American Arts and Letters, the American Civil Liberties Union’s Earl Warren Civil Liberties Award. Ferlinghetti was named San Francisco’s Poet Laureate in August 1998, and he used his post as a bully-pulpit from which he articulated the seldom-heard “voice of the people.” In 2003 he was awarded the Robert Frost Memorial Medal, the Author’s Guild Lifetime Achievement Award, and he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters.

FERLINGHETTI QUOTES

http://www.citylights.com/ferlinghetti/

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Freedom, Speech, Exists

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Death, Making, High

We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

QChange, General, Poets

Don’t patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he’s stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti quotes

Time, Him, Read

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they’d been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Government, Dark, Realize

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Read more at http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/l/lawrence_ferlinghetti.html#TXTmAeYWi67tHCLb.99

I LIKE TOO MANY THINGS – – JACK KEROUAC

Jack Kerouac Sold Out

Hand made Lino Cut block prints

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. JACK KEROUAC

 

THE CITY LIGHTS-SAN FRANCISCO CATALOG

 

http://www.citylights.com/catalog/?category_id=278