Customer Reviews

On the Walls and in the Streets: American Poetry Broadsides from the 1960s

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If you ever wanted to enter the treasure troves of a rare manuscript collection, you can now become an arm chair traveller with James Sullivan's book that explores the "ephemera" of poetry broadsides. He analyzes the role of single-sheet poems, once passed out at rallies, peace marches, and other community events (and now carefully archived as historical documents) as a form of counter culture communication. Studying poems rising from the civil rights movement and war protests, Sullivan examines the social and economic context of these poetry "fliers" by famous and unknown poets, as well as their aesthetic design. He also provides background stories on the production process and collaborations between writers, artists, designers, and printers. Critiquing as well as celebrating this "grass roots" alternative press movement of poetry for the people and by the people, freed from the system of major commercial publishing houses, he authenticates a literary tradition that has otherwise disappeared into wastebaskets and library vaults. Started as a dissertation, this book is both scrupulously researched and highly readable, with excellent illustrations of this genre -- including works by Merwin and Ginsberg. The only book in the field that I've been able to find, it is a must for poets, poetry teachers, lovers of small press, aging hippies, and believers in art's humanitarian role in bringing change.