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El Sol poetry book by Rosemary Manno

The late poet Rosemary Manno moved to San Francisco in 1983. She grew up in Buffalo, New York and had lived in Paris whenever possible. Most winters she would travel to her beloved Mexico with artist-musician Roger Strobel. They shared a home life in North Beach for many years.

Rosemary was a poet, artist, lover of foreign tongues, the natural world and revolutionary struggle. Her work has appeared in numerous chapbooks, magazines and anthologies.

El Sol is a posthumous collection of poems that Rosemary and editor Tate Swindell worked on during the final years of her life. Faced with a terminal diagnosis of brain cancer these poems deal with the fragility of life with an uncompromising and unwavering fierceness that embodies the true spirit of Rosemary Manno.





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Vali Myers, A Memoir

A legend in her own time, Australian artist Vali Myers was the premiere dancer with the Melbourne Modern Ballet at the age of seventeen. Leaving home in 1950, she spent years in Paris, where the Dutch photographer Ed van der Elsken photographed her and some of the other young people hanging out in the cafes. Those photos became the book, Love on the Left Bank. During that period she befriended George Plimpton, who published an article about her, along with some of her drawings, in The Paris Review, the first time her artwork was in print.

In 1958, Vali and her then-husband Rudi Rappold made a home for themselves in the wild Valley of Il Porto in Positano, Italy, where she would live for the next forty years, working on her exquisite drawings and looking after a large menagerie of animals. She fought local authorities who wanted to introduce loggers into the Valley, and succeeded in having it designated a protected wildlife oasis.

When she returned to Australia in 1993 for the first time since she’d left, she found herself welcomed as a national treasure. In this memoir by her long-time companion Gianni Menichetti, Vali’s life and life’s work are brought into beautiful, clear focus with wit, candor, and great affection.

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Bob Kaufman broadside – TIN PAN ALLEY

 

This letterpress broadside, 10 x 14 inches, was exquisitely produced by Nick Whittington at Impart Ink in Oakland.

The poem was discovered, by poet S.A. Griffin, after the Collected Poems of Bob Kaufman went to print.

Bob wrote this poem in NYC in 1961. Thus, 61 copies were printed to celebrate Parker Kaufman’s 61st birthday. 100% of the sales of this broadside go directly to Parker.





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Bob Kaufman – Rappin Elite

Limited Edition of 200
Heavyweight 180 gram
Available in 3 different colors of virgin vinyl
No digital version !
Release date  October 13, 2020
Culled from various source tapes this is Bob Kaufman as you’ve never heard him before! On stage, at home, in bars and cafés, Bob is Rappin Elite.




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Gregory Corso – The Gold Standard

Limited Edition of 250
Heavyweight 200 gram
Gold colored virgin vinyl
No digital version !
Available August 1, 2019
This record was compiled from the recently discovered Scrivani Tapes. George Scrivani, Corso’s longtime friend, traveled with Gregory in the late 1970s throughout Europe. Having cut his bootlegging chops at various Operas in Europe, Scrivani recorded Corso at various readings, interviews and events. This included an impromptu lecture Corso gave at the JFK Institute, in Berlin, on the genealogy of the Beat Generation.
Upon returning stateside, Scrivani continued to record Corso in San Francisco, in the 1980s, at locations such as S.F. Art Institute, New College (r.i.p.) and the legendary Keystone Korner in the North Beach neighborhood.
The Keystone Korner tapes include a phenomenal reading with Allen Ginsberg in 1980. The two had not read together in San Francisco since 1956.
Another Keystone Korner tape features Jaki Byard on piano, the legendary multi-instrumentalist/composer/arranger,  joins Corso for two extended poems.
Each side contains 27 minutes of unprecedented Corso material.