FLOATING BEAR [Complete Run of 37 Issues]

A Full Boat

FLOATING BEAR [Complete Run of 37 Issues]

Edited by Diane di Prima and Leroi Jones

1961-1969

Rare complete run of this foundational publication of the Mimeo Revolution and one of the most influential little magazines of the 1960s.

Very good to near fine overall.

Price: $12,500.00

FLOATING BEAR [Complete Run of 37 Issues]

"Sometimes it's a Boat, and sometimes it's more of an Accident."

Distributed primarily by mailing list, FLOATING BEAR (a name inspired by Winnie the Pooh) served as an important venue for the poets of the Beat and New York schools, as well as other experimental and avant garde writers of the decade. Ginsberg, Olson, Burroughs, O'Hara, Dorn, Creeley, Duncan, Wieners, Ashbery, and many others all appeared in its mimeographed pages. Indeed, BEAR's speed and vitality — conceived by di Prima and Jones as a more immediate response to YUGEN, which Jones also co-edited — was in no small part enabled by their ability to crank out issues cheaply and on demand.
A complete but mixed set, as common, this run includes issues addressed to John Weiners, W.S. Merwin, Gerard Malanga, Fairfield Porter, and others. It also includes the rare issue #24, which was infamously printed by Warhol scenester Soren Angenoux as a favor to di Prima, who sublet him her apartment. However, according to di Prima, Angenoux used most of the money she had left for the printing "probably [...] for dope" and he managed to mail out only about 200 poorly printed copies. Due to this, "[t]o this day, Floating Bear #24 is an elusive and sought-after item" (di Prima). Along with the first two issues, produced in similar numbers, a notoriously and increasingly difficult run to assemble. Only the second truly complete set we've encountered in the last fifteen years, a landmark of the mimeo form, and as important to the movement as Ed Sander's FUCK YOU or Ted Berrigan's "C."

Read more: Diane di Prima, Recollections of My Life as a Woman, 303; Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, 74-75; Eliot Anderson and May Kinzie, The Little Magazine in America, 699-700.

The Object

New York and San Francisco: The Floating Bear, 1961-1969. 11'' x 8.5''. Top-stapled printed self-wrappers. Mimeographed throughout, with offset pictorial covers by artists such as Ray Johnson, Michael Bowen, Jess, George Hermas, Wallace Berman, and others from issue 28 on. Some issued folded, stamped, and addressed for mailing, as usual. Some toning, mild soil here and there. Else a remarkably clean and sound group, with the early issues especially sharp. Housed in a custom clamshell box, with red leather spine label.

The Fine Print

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