One of the earliest memorial tributes to Jack Kerouac, issued in November 1969 just a few weeks after his unexpected death at the age of 47. Considered among the rarest and most expressive of Kerouac's ephemeral panegyrics. A striking memory of the Father of the Beat Generation.

A LAST HAIKU by JACK KEROUAC

November - how nasal the drunken conductor's call

Published by Portents [Sam and Ann Charters], [New York], 1969. First printing. BROADSIDE, printed on white textured card stock, 10" x 14" with a beautiful portrait of Kerouac by Robert LaVigne. This broadside was published "As a memorium - J.K., March 12, 1922 - October 21, 1969" at the bottom is printed "This was to have been published as Portents 12, but it was sadly delayed, and these copies have been printed, as an expression of our love, for his friends." VERY GOOD Condition: spots of foxing, light toning that frames the drawing (not the text) resulting from being framed, and two tape ghosts at the top of the verso, otherwise solid and bright. Quite scarce. Charters A26.

Portents was a record label and small press created by Sam and Ann Charters in 1963 to encourage a social and cultural revolution by publishing the unheralded African American composers of classic ragtime and country blues to the then obscure American composer Charles Ives and Beat writer Jack Kerouac.

Jack Kerouac (1922-1969) American novelist and poet, who alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg was a pioneer of the Counterculture Beat Generation. A Last Haiku appeared later in the posthumous publication "Scattered Poems."

Robert LaVigne (1928-2014) American visual artist and designer whose subjects and collaborators included many of the central figures of the Beat movement, including Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and Robert Creeley.