BEATITUDE #8 Bob Kaufman Jail Poems, + Ginsberg, Meltzer, Weiss, Ferlinghetti, et al BREAD & WINE MISSION S.F. 1959
BEATITUDE #8 Bob Kaufman Jail Poems, + Ginsberg, Meltzer, Weiss, Ferlinghetti, et al BREAD & WINE MISSION S.F. 1959
BEATITUDE #8. Published by the BREAD & WINE MISSION, San Francisco, 1959. Includes Jail Poems by Bob Kaufman and poetry by many others.
Twenty four (24) mimeographed leaves printed on one side only, including the cover sheet which is blue, 8.5x11 inches, side stapled.
Beatitude was printed at the Bread & Wine Mission in San Francisco, a hub of counterculture and beat poetry. Printed on simple mimeograph machines by the poets themselves, few copies of the early issues remain.
GOOD condition: The front cover printed face and stars of this copy have been shaded in with pencil - perhaps before being distributed (this was printed by the crazy Beats, after all), perhaps by the owner - giving the printed face the nice look of a person of color. There is an R written at the top left corner of the front cover. The pages have some toning, there is a variation in the intensity of the mimeo printing, and the mimeo process has left some smudges; one poem has a couple margin marks noting a passage and "Plato's allegory?" written in the margin beside the passage; overall a complete, solid, nice copy.
SCARCE BEATITUDE printed in 1959 at the BREAD & WINE MISSION in San Francisco.
From the first page:
******In the snakepit of our city jail, with a man next to him dying unattended and himself sick from having been stamped upon by a public SERVANT, Kaufman writes his poems of suffering and compassionate identification. Their immediacy characterizes much of the poetry here printed. Margolis adds his poem of protest. The two poems are "confiscated" from the window of the bagel shop by officer 67. Ed Freeman, descending on the beach [North Beach, San Francisco] for a week. makes some great scenes performing his poems and adds his sympathy to both the black and the blue. Ginsberg sends a telegram but his poem on sakyamuni counsels more. Beatitude changes offices, we run through three bad mimeo machines, finally get a good one. At last, with many poems we find beautiful to print and a good percentage of the poets out of jail, we resume our publication at the bread and wine mission, corner greenwich and grant or at various outlets on the beach.******
About the BREAD & WINE MISSION (From a 2021 Issue of Outside Lands - Journal of San Francisco History):
******Despite the place's obscurity today, the Bread and Wine Mission played a substantial role in the Beat scene by providing a space where poets, artists and intellectuals could commune and make their ideas manifest. [The article includes a photo with the caption: William Margolis, Eileen Kaufman, and Bob Kaufman printing Beatitude at the Bread and Wine Mission, April 1959.]******