Alfred Starr Hamilton, 2: Bibliography in Progress

ASH 1914-2005

An introduction to this bibliography can be found here:

  

Alfred Starr Hamilton, 1: Biographical notes and reflections

  

I first put this online in November, 2001, updating it from time to time until 2004 or 2005.  This latest edition [2013] has a few additions and I hope readers will contribute as well.  

12 Dec 2016:  Updated with new Epoch references, Wake Up Heavy reference and images.

3 Nov 2022:  I recently came across the University of Chicago library's description of their ASH archives and was able to add about a dozen new citations for magazines, in effect doubling the bibliography's size.  I'm sure it's still incomplete.  Since I first put this up 20 years ago, the number of online articles about and referencing Hamilton has skyrocketed.

I.  Books & Chapbooks

Sphinx. Kumquat Press, Montclair, NJ 1968

Published by Geof Hewitt. 

Kumquat Press apparently still exists and you can reach them at: Kumquat Press, P.O. Box 51, Calais, VT 05648. Hewitt is himself a poet who leads workshops across the state of Vermont. Hewitt's been a juried member of the Vermont Arts Council since 1971.

The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.  Introduction by Geof Hewitt. Drawings by Philip Van Aver. The Jargon Society, Penland, NC 1970

"Al Hamilton is the kind of poet everybody says they'd like to be.  He doesn't apply for grants and has probably never heard of the national Council on the Arts.  He doesn't teach in a college or write reviews or wash dishes in a diner and other odd jobs.  He writes poetry.  All he does is write poetry."

The Jargon Society

PO Box 15458

Winston-Salem, NC 27113

The Big Parade. The Best Cellar Press, Lincoln, Neb., 1982

 

"This book is published as a special issue of the poetry magazine PEBBLE. This is issue number 22."

Best Cellar Press

Greg Kuzma, Editor

Department of English

University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Lincoln, NE 68588

(The next two books appeared after my ASH website ceased to exist)

Send This to the Immune Officer.  Commentary etc. by Lisa Borinsky.  Weird New Jersey, Inc., Bloomfield, NJ, 2010

Letters from ASH to the Montclair Police Dept. with commentary.  A fascinating and compelling read.

A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind:  The Poems of Alfred Star Hamilton.  Edited by Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal.  Introduction by Geof Hewitt.  The Song Cave, 2013

A comprehensive collection of early poems published in various journals, to previously unpublished, hand-written poems written during his final years at an assisted-living facility.  It's well-designed, and the occasional use of black pages, the title, and the introduction by Hewitt all recall the Jargon book.  It's even got a photo by Simpson Kalisher on the cover, almost certainly taken during the same session as the photo used for the Jargon collection.  Unlike the Jargon book, "Dreambox" includes an autobiographical blurb by Hamilton, originally written for Quickly Aging Here (1969).

John Latta mentions the following two works as well, but I'm not sure if they're books, chapbooks, or broadsides....Any info out there?  I got the the following info from WorldCat.

An orange drink at Nedick's.  Crawlspace, Belvidere Ill., 1985

War and Peace: poems.  Blue Moon, Tuscon AZ [?], 1960 [?]

The references on WorldCat give no indication of the length of these books and the date of War and Peace is incorrect; Blue Moon was founded in 1975.  Both publishers do exist, however.

 

II.  Magazines / Journals

Epoch.  Fall 1962 Vol. XII, No. 3  Cornell University:  "Crabapples"

Epoch.  Fall 1963 Vol. XIII, No. 1  Cornell University:  6 poems 

 

Epoch.  Winter 1963 Vol. XII [XIII?], No. 3  Cornell University

Epoch.  Spring 1964 Vol. XIII, No. 3  Cornell University:  3 poems

Epoch. Winter 1965 Vol. XIV, No. 4  Cornell University:  5 poems

Epoch.  Winter 1967 Vol. XVII, No. 2  Cornell University   

Metanoia. Vol. 1, No. 1 December 1967

Metanoia. Vol 1 (?), No. 4 1968 (?)

 

Monk's Pond. No. 1 Spring 1968.  Trappist, KY:  "Poems from Salvation Army"

Judging from Hamilton's correspondence with Merton, 6 poems were included.

Poems of the People.  No. 3 1970: 3 poems [Thanks to Eric Torgersen for sending these scans from PotP].

"This was a mimeographed publication sent free to underground papers....who were free to publish any of the poems etc. in the issue. Published by me [Eric Torgersen] with Michael Lally and Paula Novotnak. 

It was a publication in its own right, with some individual subscribers, but the service to the papers was the point. I can't name individual publications....but besides the three who produced it we had stuff from Robert Bly, from small-c communist poet Walter Lowenfels, Tuli Kupferberg of the Fugs, Vincent Ferrini (who plays a role Olson's Maximus Poems), plus many of the most political poets out there in little-mag world."

The Archive. Vol. 83, No.3 Spring 1971: 8 poems

The Archive. Vol. 83, No.2 Winter 1971: 19 poems

Note: the volume info for The Archive comes from the Guide to the Alfred Starr Hamilton Papers 1963-2015 at the University of Chicago Library; I'm not sure why No. 2 is Winter and No. 3 is Spring; I suspect an error with the numbering or the dates, and will try to clarify this with UC.

New Letters: A Continuation of the University Review. Vol. 39, No. 1 Fall 1972:  short biography and 4 poems

The Wormwood Review. Vol. 16, No. 1 (Issue No. 61) 1975: “Double Daring" (10 pages of poems dated 9/12/75)

Workshop 25. Fall, 1975. Bob Arnold, Ed.

I don't know what poems are included.

American Poetry Review. March/April, 1976:  "Color Lines," "Moon," "To Father Coughlin," "Pink Ponds;" p.13

"I am immune."

Poetry Now. Volume III. Numbers 3-6 (Issues 15-18), 1976:  "Our Flag," "The Pool," "Wilkes Barre, Pa.," "Broom Factory," "Visitations," "War;" p. 60-61

waves [sic], No. 1 1978: "Walden House," "Baloney," "Boy Meets Girl"

New Letters: A Magazine of Fine Writing. Winter 1981/82:  4 poems

The UC archives list “Apples” and “Crawlspace” as "Published Poetry" in 1985 but I'm not quite sure what that refers to, as no journal is mentioned.  Perhaps they were broadsides?  I think Crawlspace is a journal. They published "An orange drink at Nedick's" either as a broadside or in their magazine.

Cat's Eye, Winter 1980: "The War," "Ferlinghuysen Avenue," "Arena," "King Solomon" (I haven't verified this)

Cat's Eye, No. 3, Summer 1981: "With contributions from the reclusive outsider poet, Alfred Starr Hamilton...."

Exquisite Corpse. Vol. 5, Nos. 9-12 September-December 1987

Lips. No. 11 1985

Lips. No. 14 1988:  “A Drifting Cloud” and “The Month of Maine”

The Wormwood Review. Vol. 28, No. 1 (Issue 109) 1988:  “Yes” and “Poetry”

Journal of New Jersey Poets. Volume XVII. Number 2, 1995:  "Mirrorland," "Beautiful," "A Town without a Soul;" p. 1-3

Wake Up Heavy, No.3, 2000 

Chicago Review. No. 58 Summer 2013:. "Woodcut," "A Disciple of Red Christ," "Indomitably Bystanders," "City Wide," "Officers Shoes" 

(Hewitt apparently did a hand-printed broadside of a poem with this name in the late-60s.  WorldCat;  "Set and printed by hand, the Kumquat Press, Montclair, N.J., [196-?])  Hewitt writes:

I don't recall "Officer's Shoes," and cannot recall whether I issued a Hamilton broadside. I think there were 8, all on a nice white toothy paper with deckle edge, as I recall, each only as big as the poem plus margins, so there was Elliott Coleman"s "A Summer Sky" (18" x 14"+/-) and probably a Hamilton poem (10" x 6"). It's all getting a little foggy, but the broadsides are probably 1968 Iowa City, same letterpress shop as Sphinx.

Boston Review, 38, 2013: "Cinderella"

III.  Anthologies

Quickly Aging Here: Some of the Poets of the 1970's. Geof Hewitt, Ed. New York: Doubleday Anchor, 1969.

Alfred Starr Hamilton’s “Anything Remembered,’’ “April Lights,’’ “Guardian,’’ 
“Liquid’ll,’’ “Town,” “White Chimes,” from Epoch, © 1963, 1964, 1967 
by Cornell University; “Bronze,” “Didn’t You Ever Search for Another 
Star?” “Psyche,” from Sphinx, © 1968 by The Kumquat Press.

Bleb Twelve. Gardner, Geoffrey, Ed. New York, NY: Bleb, 1977.

Thus Spake the Corpse : An Exquisite Corpse Reader 1988-1998 : Volume 2. Andrei Codrescu & Laura Rosenthals, Eds: "God," "February," & "New York City Public Library Lions."

 

Bluestones and Salt Hay. An Anthology of Contemporary New Jersey Poets. Joel Lewis, ed. Rutgers University Press, 1990. Foreword by Anne Waldman. 

IV.  About Alfred Starr Hamilton

HAMILTON, Alfred Starr  1914-[2005]

PERSONAL:  Borne June 14, 1914, in Montclair, N.J.; son of Alfred Starr and Virginia (Gildersleeve) Hamilton. Education:  Attended high school in Montclair, N.J. Politics:  Socialist.  Religion:  "Immune."  Home and office:   41 South Willow St., Montclair, N.J. 07042.

CAREER:  Poet.  Military service:  U.S. Army, 1942-43.

WRITINGS:  Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton, Jargon Press, 1970.  Contributor to Epoch, New Directions, Foxfire, New Letters, Archive, and Greenfield Review.

SIDELIGHTS:  Hamilton has hitchhiked through forty-three states.

source:  Contemporary Authors:  A bio-bibliographical guide to current writers in fiction, general nonfiction, poetry, journalism, drama, motion pictures, television, and other fields. Volumes 53-56. 1975: p.264

 

New: American and Canadian Poetry. Number 9, 1969; p. 40-41

A review of Sphinx by Eric Torgerson.

"Notes towards extinction: American poetry wipe-out." New: American and Canadian Poetry. Number 15, 1971; p. 39-44

 

This essay is a "state of poetry today" kind of thing.  Hewitt doesn't say anything about Hamilton that couldn't be applied to any number of other poets, but he does praise his unique voice, apparent lack of concern for literary "fashion" and ability to maintain a strong "presence" in the poetry without being its sole object.

[I've always felt my description here sounds a bit flip, so I should reiterate my respect for Hewitt as a long-time champion of ASH and a stand-up guy.  I've had exchanges with a few Hamiltonians and to a number they're good people].

Three poems are given in full:  "Liquid'll," "April Lights," and "Hark"

The New York Times.  April 13 and May 25, 1975

On April 13 Jonathan Williams has "The Guest Word" in the New York Times Book Review.  He berates James Dickey for high reading fees and praises Hamilton.  The article repeats the Hamilton story told by Hewitt and makes a plea on his behalf for money, adding that for 1975 he only needs about $2,000.  A Spartan existence is outlined.  The details differ, but it is essentially the same story given by Geof Hewitt in his intro to The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton.

"I'm not immune.  I'm just out in the open.  There aren't as many bees as there used to be."

On May 25 Williams writes in to report that Hamilton donations have come to the tune of $5,600 dollars.

Blackbird Dust. Jonathan Williams. Turtle Point Press, 2000.

 

Includes his NYT article from May 25, 1975.

The New York Times.  "His Poetry Was Odd, but His Letters to the Police Were Odder." Peter Aplebome. 23 Aug 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/nyregion/23towns.html?_r=0. Accessed 06/11/13.

“Dear Police; Is anything of this kind surreptitious?” reads one letter dated Jan. 10, 1983. “I don’t know. Make sure everything is alright. Send this to the immune officer. I am immune. Alfred Starr Hamilton.”

Not so much a review as a description of Borinsky's magazine and the paradoxes in ASH's life.

CounterText, Vol. 7, Iss. 1 2021: Moreover: Reading Alfred Starr Hamilton. John Wilkinson.

Honest question. Is this a satire of academia?  I'm not saying it to take a dig at anyone, but this reads like a satire of academic jargon.

This article addresses the challenge to professionalised practices of reading represented by the oeuvre of Alfred Starr Hamilton (1914–2005), with broader implications for the contested category of Outsider Writing. Drawing on the author's experience, three types of early life encounter with poetry are specified, guided to its objects by cultural and parental authority and later reaction against them: a fetish of the book and representations of the poet, oral pleasure, and the magic of the word as an illimitably productive and plastic material. These are linked to encounter with Hamilton's poetry, at once unrelentingly repetitive, and sponsored and structured by a small seedbank of magic words, occasioning the sudden florescence of beauty. To read Hamilton requires a feline practice of submitting to reverie while registering disturbance and aesthetic shock precisely.

V.  Music  (Eventually, if such a thing were to happen, I'd add theater or cinematic works about or  

                     inspired by Hamilton)

A.  The Bye Bye Blackbirds have a song called "Alfred Starr Hamilton" on their 2016 album Take Out the Poison.  I wrote them and asked why, or if an ASH line is used as a lyric.  Singer/songwriter Bradly Skaught replied:

[The song] doesn't incorporate any of his lines (or even approximate his style) but it was inspired by him. It's not so much about his work, but him as a person and an artist, living and working so marginally and isolated, yet still creating this rich artistic life. I found myself thinking about artists at the margins, some of whom we never even hear of and vanish without a trace, but who lived an artistic life and navigated the world with a spirit of creative investigation and expression regardless of their relationship to anything like the art world, publishing, etc. I guess I was trying to capture something of the feeling of that spirit, and maybe relating to it as well -- to that core drive to be creative and create art in whatever little sphere of life we find ourselves in.

Here's that song:

B.  Composer Nathan Hall has set 5 ASH poems to music and put them on SoundCloud: here. 2019.

VI.  Archives

The University of Chicago has some archival material related to Hamilton (3 boxes / 1.5 meters of shelf space) which are open to researchers.

https://www.lib.uchicago.edu/e/scrc/findingaids/view.php?eadid=ICU.SPCL.HAMILTONAS

The collection contains biographical information, personal belongings, correspondence, drafted prose inspired by Hamilton written by family members, book reviews, newspaper clippings with interviews and biographies, poetry journals and magazines, books, and Hamilton’s unpublished poetry manuscripts.

There is a more detailed inventory at the UC Library website.  It appears as though there are some appearances in print of which I was earlier unaware, and I've updated the bibliography accordingly.  If anyone has an opportunity to see those archives and would like to share with us, we'd be grateful.

My own collection of ASH book (not including photocopies from his appearances in poetry journals).  I started with the Jargon book in 2001 and got a copy of Sphinx in 2020.

***********************************************************************************

If you know of any other appearances I've missed, please 

let me know and I'll add it to the bibliography.

Years ago I bought The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton for 30 dollars and The Big Parade for 10 or 15.  Booksellers have cottoned to his enduring popularity and the increasing scarcity of these small print runs; both now sell for about 90 dollars.  I don't see Sphinx for sale anywhere; when it was available it was - even then - beyond my means.  You might try asking Geof Hewitt directly if he still has copies.  

If you are interested in the work, and not a collector, I'd recommend the Dreambox collection.  It's affordable, comprehensive, and a nice little book, easy to read (an important consideration for fogies like me) and not too big or heavy to bring to a picnic and read to your companions à la Manet's Le Déjeuner sur l'herbe....

Here are some links, if you're looking (I get no remuneration for this):

• Sphinx

• The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton

• The Big Parade

• Weird NJ Presents: Send This to the Immune Officer--Found Letters of Alfred Starr Hamilton (out of stock, try the publisher)

• A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind: The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton (look around and you can find it cheaper than this link)

Many thanks to those who've helped me and agreed to be quoted.  I hope to annotate this bibliography further with anecdotes about the circumstances of these publications.  One day....

Alfred Starr Hamilton, 1: Biographical notes and reflections

modified from an original photo by Simpson Kalisher
from the back cover of
The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton

The first part of this post explains how I got into ASH and is followed by some biographical data.  For those who know the ASH story and don't care about how I got involved in all this, the bibliography would be a better destination.

A bit of background 

I put my first website online in 1994 and have had an uninterrupted online presence ever since.  My last website was hosted by 100 megs free but when their business model changed some years ago I lost the site.  Luckily by then I had started this here blog, focusing on what I do now rather than poetry.  I published several unknown poets back then and also wrote little blurbs about a few "underknown" others:  d.a. levy, Doug Blazek and John M. Bennett.  Those poetry 'zine sites included RetiCenter West (a weblog), amashumqua, The Reticenteer and Hand of Glory.  I first wrote about Alfred Star Hamilton in The Reticenteer. 

Discovering Hamilton was like winning a secret prize.  I'd been working at Cornell's Olin library for a while and rather randomly stumbled across The Poems of Alfred Starr Hamilton published by The Jargon Society in 1970.  It was a handsome hardcover book, with heavy paper alternating between creamy white and light grey pages; a black and white photo makes up the back cover.  Time, care and some expense had been put into this book; it wasn't just a chapbook put together on the cheap.  My copy is a paperback, but the quality is still evident. 

The poems inside were unlike any I'd read and still strike me as forceful yet gentle, mysterious, almost mystical and above all, original.  They sometimes remind me of certain surrealist poets, but even there they differ in their lack of calculated strangeness.  Reading his poems can be like seeing an object through a heavy fog, some non-threatening shape in the distance under an agreeable yellow light.  They make me nostalgic for things I haven't experienced.  They catalogue associations and take syntax out to the park for some gentle contortions.  They are good.

But who was this guy, Alfred Starr Hamilton?  Why would such be care be lavished upon his work?

This must have been in either 2000 or 2001.  Internet searches showed up very little, so I used the old-fashioned methods in Olin's research section, looking for magazine appearances, some of which were available at Olin;  I was able to obtain copies of others via ILS.  Little blurbs in these books led me to other books, such as Sphinx and The Big Parade.  The former was out of my price range, but the latter, as well as the Jargon book, were not.  I bought these and began compiling a bibliography of works by and about Hamilton.  I still have a relatively thick sheaf of photocopies and printouts from microfilm; it's on my desk as I write.

I was pretty excited to have tracked this stuff down.  I already had a website dedicated to poetry, so it was a logical step to put what I found online.  I also discovered that an Olin colleague and friend, poet and novelist Jon Frankel, had also stumbled across Hamilton.  He helped me acquire some of these texts and was to later write a review of a collection of Hamilton's letters on his "blogh" Last Bender.  You can read it here: For the Storm of our Lives is Never Over With: Alfred Starr Hamilton.

I started Hamilton's Wikipedia page in 2007, but to this day it remains a stub.  My own ASH page went online in November, 2001.  The contents of this page are reproduced in this and posts to follow.  You will find a complete bibliography of books (I think), what I'm sure is only a partial bibliography of magazine appearances, a (perhaps) complete list of anthology appearances and a few references to articles about Hamilton, including a call for financial assistance penned by Jonathan Williams that appeared in the New York Times.  There's also what I believe to be a self-written entry in the 1975 edition of Contemporary Authors.

I did all of this as a labor of love.  I was so enthusiastic about his work and wanted people to get to know it.  I dreamed that I might stimulate someone's interest and that perhaps someone might be inspired to write more about the man.  He was  an enigma for me and the poems themselves didn't shine much light onto the man.  I'm not sure what I expected in terms of response.

So in 2002 I was excited to receive a letter from Hamilton's niece, Jane Huber.  She shared a few anecdotes about her uncle and said she once thought of writing a book about him.  She also told me Hamilton was alive!  I wrote her back, thanked her for contacting me and expressed an interest in putting together a biography of the man, suggesting we could work together on something.  I never heard from her after that, despite sending her a few more emails.

I found it all rather odd that she would contact me and then disappear.  I was a little hurt by it too, I suppose.  In 2013, A Dark Dreambox of Another Kind, a new anthology of Hamilton's work, appeared.  Huber and the family were thanked in the acknowledgements.  I had long before come to believe that Huber wrote me to "feel things out" for the family:  What did I know?  What were my intentions?  Did I intend to publish something based on the website?  Apparently she got her answers.  I don't know if she'd already been in contact with the editors of Dreambox, but I do believe that when she wrote me she was shopping around for someone to work with.  

Dreambox is actually a nice little book, but the forward and introduction are too slight in my opinion, offering very little, if any, new biographical information about the man himself.  Nothing that couldn't be found in the intro to the Jargon book or in his skeletal entry in Contemporary Authors.   Poet Geof Hewitt, who published Sphinx and the intro to the Jargon book, also wrote the introduction to Dreambox.  Like I said, I would have liked to have seen more about the man's life and his history as a poet, but it's a touching remembrance of Hamilton.  Hewitt has done more than anyone else to make Hamilton's work known, so it's fitting that he is included here.

In May 2004 I received another email, this time from the director of a nursing home in New Jersey.  The director informed that Hamilton's health was fragile, but after hearing about my webpage, he wanted to communicate with me.  I wrote back saying I'd be delighted and expressed my admiration for his poetry.

I received a second email which made me quite happy:

Your note was well appreciated by Mr. Hamilton. I think it made his day.

That happiness turned to a stronger emotion when I read the following:

After reading him your Email, he decided he would like to write again. He
likes to write a poem a day.

And: 

He sends his regards. "I am pleased that my work is still appreciated".

I still am touched and glad to have brought Hamilton some happiness in his final days.  A small satisfaction.  In June I sent a paper letter to Mr. Hamilton directly but as I kind of expected, no response was forthcoming  I waited until October to email the director one more time.  He confirmed that although Hamilton got the letter and was very pleased, he hadn't had the strength to write a poem a day as he wanted.  Although ASH remained committed to poetry, he simply didn't have the physical strength to carry on.  He was, I believe, 90 years old.  I had at one point suggested a visit, but Mr. Hamilton, though appreciative, preferred not.

Sadly, further emails went unanswered.  I learned some time later that the director had moved on to another job and that Mr. Hamilton had died.  He had a good run, 90 years, at least 40 years of published poetry, praise from many of America's most well-recognized poets and, at the very end, a bit of satisfaction in learning a younger generation of poets appreciated his poetry.  For me, this is a memory that always brings me some measure of comfort, a little pride maybe.  At least he got to hear that his life's work was still known and admired and that the word was being spread.

In 2005 I got an email from a guy named Matt Miller, who had also decided to champion Hamilton's work.  I helped him as much as I could, turning over whatever contacts I had found as well as my little bibliography of small press appearances.  Apparently he was going to write an introduction to a collection of poems that was to be published and also expressed interest in writing a book about him.  As far as I know, this hasn't appeared yet.

In 2009 I received another email from a fourth person, Lisa Borinsky, who was trying to gather information about ASH.  We corresponded for a few months and had several long telephone conversations.  She was very determined and resourceful, visiting archives, contacting the family, finding letters he'd written, poring over microfilmed newspapers, tracking down genealogies.  True research in other words.  I was glad to help her and it was hard not to get caught up in her obvious excitement and affection for Hamilton. 

Apparently, my site had provided her with some interesting leads.  In addition to the bibliography I had also put online my correspondence with Huber, the nursing home and other people who had known ASH.  She had a lot of questions, but it soon became clear she knew way more than I did.  She was like a woman obsessed, one might say, and was generous in sharing a lot of her discoveries with me.  One thing I never really understood were her dealings with Hamilton's family, which seemed troubled; initial emails spoke of warm conversation, which later evolved into getting the cold shoulder, if not hostility to her project.  She also hinted that other people were interested in doing a Hamilton book.  I won't go into all the details, but there were hints that the book she published containing some of his letters was intended to make a bit of a splash to generate interest in a bigger project.  There was also a sense of playing things very close to the chest, to be the first one to get a book done.  She referred to Miller and others.  It all seemed so competitive, somewhat at odds with my "open source" approach to Hamilton.  Anyone who contacted me got as much information as I had.

Send This to the Immune Officer was published in 2010.  Her enthusiasm and warmth shine through, but there were aspects of the presentation that made me a bit leery.  The book was actually a magazine published under the "Weird NJ" imprint and the cover was a comic book-style caricature of puzzled cops and an intense Hamilton.  The letters reveal an eccentric, paranoid man.  I think it would be fair to say Hamilton had mental health issues to some degree, so the "weird" label is unfortunate.  Like I said, the texts are respectful and obviously heartfelt; she has a genuine admiration and empathy for the man.  But the presentation was a bit ill-conceived.

On a personal level, I was surprised to see that despite a relatively lengthy intro, essay and acknowledgments, she never mentions our conversations by email or telephone.  I also contacted some other people on her behalf, turned her on to some other potential sources.  She does quote an email I wrote, on the back cover calling her the "number one ASH researcher" at the time.  No mention of having, as she wrote me in a prior email, "been a part of this [project] from the beginning."  Let's be honest, her research extended way farther than me tracking down some of his published poems and in fact carried out what I'd hoped my site might inspire.  She sent me a copy of the book/magazine, but after that, I haven't really heard from her.

Still, my goal was to help push Hamilton research along so I'm heartened by the result -- the letter collection is a fascinating narrative.

Visiting Wikipedia recently in order to see if anyone has edited the ASH page, I learned about the Dreambox anthology. I ordered it and like it quite a bit.  Editors Ben Estes and Alan Felsenthal have done a good job.

As I mentioned before, the authors have worked with Hamilton's family. Lisa Borinsky had mentioned the family wasn't very cooperative with her.  Some of her comments to me in emails suggest the family was hoping there would be some money in this for them and indeed, this book is copyrighted to a member of Alfred's family.  Neither forward nor intro to the collection mentions Borinsky, which, given the dearth of books about the man, seems curious, especially as they mention his "heartbreaking" letters to the police, which as far as I know, Borinsky uncovered for the first time.  (The family was also totally surprised to learn, apparently via my website, about the letter by Jonathan Williams that had appeared in 1975 in the NYT).  Maybe the family were offended that Borinsky had published letters which revealed his eccentricities, perhaps even mental illness.  Or maybe they were angry she was going to use public documents to make a book that might distract from Dreambox, which was apparently a work in progress when Borinsky published.  Borinsky was definitely digging into family affairs, which suggested some skeletons in the closet.  Hence the family's resistance I suppose.  Still, neglecting to mention her publication is I think, an injustice to the reader who wants to know more about the man himself.

So, what began for me a chance encounter and a simple webpage has continued to be an interest of mine 10 [now 20!] plus years down the road.  I'm glad so many people have been interested in Hamilton and that I've been able to play a small role in getting the word out.  The real movers in this tale are those who have published his work:  Geof Hewitt, Greg Kuzma, Jonathan Williams, Lisa Borinsky, Estes and Felsenthal, and Eric Torgersen (I'd neglected him, but he published Hamilton at least twice; I'll get the bibliography up to date.

I've learned a lot about the academic and publishing world over this strange trip.  The competitiveness, the secrecy, finding the right allies.  My contribution to all this Hamilton research has been time-consuming, but not groundbreaking.  I was glad to have gotten the info I had together in one place, sad when it was taken down and now, relieved that I can get what I've found back out there.

So anyway, here are the biographical notes I originally wrote, with a bibliography to follow.  I might turn the photocopies that I have into PDFs to put up on Scribd.  I have a bit of regret about the first biographical note you will hopefully read below.  I wrote it before I knew very little about the man except the poems.  I hinted that there was something in the work and photo that raised some questions about his mental state.  I even refer to him as "slightly demonic-looking".  Ill-chosen words, but honest, I meant well.  I still think a biography would be interesting, as well as a more thorough bibliography.  I'd be happy if what I've done can help whoever makes that happen.

For the bibliography: Alfred Starr Hamilton, 2: Bibliography in Progress.

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Biographical Note 1

The first biographical blurb below was posted on LoS in 2011 as "I am immune."

Alfred Starr Hamilton is an enigma. His name is dropped at Exquisite Corpse a few times; the front page as of 11/22/01 accuses house poet Mike Topp of ripping Hamilton off. Somewhere else he is referred to as a "folk treasure." That seems a bit condescending but Hewitt substantiates. He seems uncomfortable but says Hamilton is "eccentric." Hamilton lived with his mother until she died in 1964 and left him seven grand. He then moved into a linoleum-floored room in a boarding house at 41 S. Willow St. NJ. As of 1970 he'd been living on 1000 dollars a year (much is made of his penury), visiting the local library and Salvation Army, copping butts. His photograph shows a neatly-dressed and sane-looking older gentleman. But those could be Army clothes and his nails are peculiarly long.

Speaking of the Army, the US Army, Hamilton was drafted and went AWOL after less than a year. "I got a discharge somehow," he writes in the blurb for his poems appearing in the APR in 1976.  [This might not be true, as Borinsky discovered he'd been buried with full military honors.] This [alleged AWOL affair] was during the War. Something of this cantankerous spirit survived until 1961. He refused to participate in a civil air raid drill and was fined and briefly jailed. Other than that he can drive, has a sister, drinks Four Roses and once serviced candy machines (after the war; it disgusted him). Biographical information is scant, but he claims to have hitchhiked through forty-three states. If so, Montclair has always always remained his home port: The 2000 Directory of America Poets and Fiction Writers says he's still at 41 S. Willow. That would make him 87.

His first appearance in print, Sphinx (1969), was published out of Montclair by Geof Hewitt aka Kumquat Press. In his review of Sphinx (New, No. 9), Eric Torgersen mentions that these pamphlets were free for the asking. (Online it currently lists for 25 dollars). Torgersen praises Hamilton; he says he's often inaccessible, but when he isn't, he's dead-on. Torgersen also says there are longer poems in Sphinx, which is not the case for what I've seen in print. The poems in APR and Poetry Now are short. These poems published in the mid-seventies have a tendency to catalogue, taking a phrase and repeating it, often asking a question. The tone is bemused and iconoclastic but never mean-spirited. The meanings are enigmatic. It's as if there is a code to be broken. The object of the poems is often the natural world, but rarely the world of man-made things. In the world but not of it, so to speak. Break the code and enter the Hamilton cosmos. One slightly demonic-looking man secretly manipulating the world from the center of the universe.

Needless to say, I like Hamilton. I stumbled across the Jargon book by accident at Cornell's Olin library and was immediately struck by the simplicity and strangeness of the poems. The book itself is a handsome volume and the introductory remarks by Hewitt interesting. Wanting to learn more about this character, I turned to the internet, came up with a few references. It didn't occur to me until some time later to get the articles and poems themselves. I am still waiting for a few things, which I will review here. I'm hoping to reproduce the articles online, but an annotated bibliography will do just as well, for now.

--S. Adkins November 23, 2001

Biographical Note 2

Ho ho! Seems in this lil' squib I am mistaken in some of my facts. John Latta's blog, Hotel Point, has a good summary (dated Jan 2, 2004) of Hamilton's published work and includes the text of a few poems, including "Crabapples," which appears to be his first poem in print, in Cornell University's Epoch (Fall 1962 issue aka Vol. XII, No. 3) and not in Sphinx as I wrote above. For more details I suggest reading the blog iself, which though brief, includes some interesting context and observations. Seems this extended entry refers back to his note on Dec 12, 2003: "Poking around in old bound volumes of Epoch yesterday after Ron Silliman’s mention of Alfred Starr Hamilton, a name, unforgettable enough, that’d got bruit’d around Cornell in the early ’seventies..."

--S. Adkins November 11, 2004

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Next: Alfred Starr Hamilton, 2: Bibliography in Progress

Teacup in a Tempest

Gid, who is agog, thanks Daurade and author/poet Jon Frankel for their research assistance and editorial input.

In our previous post, we exposed a long-rumored picture, possibly of Thomas Pynchon, that was hiding out in plain site (hyuk hyuk) on the Internet. 

We also dropped (an admittedly small) "bombshell": "we found a reference to another heretofore unknown photo of Pynchon!" Now we're back with follow up, as promised.

I'd like to start by framing this article in a way that's not stalker-ish: "This is a search for better perspective on events that feel pivotal to '60s student movements as well as Pynchon and Farina's artistic concerns and themes; and we actually hope to dig up juvenalia by Pynchon or Farina!" 

In fact, those previous statements *are* entirely true ... about our previous post. But the truth is, in this case, we were just plain old curious about an apparently unknown reference to an unrecognized yet allegedly publicly available photograph of Pynchon. Gid sniffed something that grabbed him, and off he went blood-hounding.

But be fair to us: As with our previous post, everything we've presented is all quite public, and we're amazed no one else has presented it yet. Furthermore, Pynchon himself once reportedly said, "Not bad. Keep trying" in response to a story postulating that he was Salinger, so what's wrong with trying to locate a public photo? Finally, we think that Pynchon has a sense of humor about this stuff; he did, after all, voice his own character on the Simpsons in a small skit that clearly poked fun at his aversion to being photographed.

"Pynchon on the Simpsons" is a tongue twister!

So...here we go.



The Source of the New Rumor

The reference we found was from from a 2010 questionnaire for Cornell alumni. The answers were, oddly, posted online. One of the responses was:

Outstanding Cornell memory: President Deane Waldo Malott was burned in effigy, and a photo of Tom Pynchon, Kirk Sale, Richard Farina and Todd Perry made the front page of the NY Daily News under the Headline “Coeds Riot for Sex.” 

This is not, as far as we know, something that has been mentioned in any rumor of Pynchon photos, much less something that has been "found" or discussed.  Given the paucity of Pynchon pics and the interest among Pynchon fans have shown in this topic over the years, this silence was too tempting to gloss over.

The recollection is from Julia Werner '61; there are numerous mentions in the Sun suggesting that she would have personally known the people she mentions. In 1958, the Sun reported that Werner won a short story competition sponsored by the Writer. The upperclassman prize went to Fariña. One year later, in 1959, the Sun reported that she was elected prose editor of the Writer. 

In January, 1960, the Sun carried her book review of an anthology of student work; it's well-written and absolutely brutal (let's hope she doesn't review this blog). One of few pieces she praises was written by Fariña. Just beneath this review is a letter by Hadley S. DuPuy, whom you may recall from our previous post. DePuy's letter is written to recruit students to join a team participating in a college bowl quiz.  Interestingly, Werner ended up joining the team.

In December, 1960, the Sun reported that Werner had three stories published in the first edition of the Trojan Horse; others in the edition included Curtis, Fariña, and Baxter Hathaway--all of whom we discussed in our last post. A review in the Sun two days later called one of Werner's inclusions, which was the lead piece, the "finest" story in the publication.

At a time when Cornell's English department was chock-full of highly talented students, including Pynchon and Fariña, these are remarkable accomplishments--and bear in mind that we only highlighted Werner's achievements that were somehow related with the people she mentioned in her recollection.


Before We Start, What's This About a "Riot for Sex"?

Starting on May 23, 1958, thousands of Cornell students protested against the school's in loco parentis policy. 

 Thousands of Cornell Students Protesting (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 1)

The protest was started by Kirk Sale, a good friend of Thomas Pynchon.  The demonstration began peacefully enough, but it soon took a nasty turn. After burning an effigy of Cornell's President, the students marched to the President's house, despite Sale's pleas for them to stay put. Students hit the President with eggs, and by some reports, a smoke bomb was tossed into his house. 

President's Effigy is Raised (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 5)

President's Effigy Hanging and Burning (The Cornell Sun, May 26, 1958, p. 7)

The story was picked up in the national news, with coverage lasting for several days. 

What were the student's concerns? Speaking about the cause of the protest, Sale stated:

We feel that the Administration, during the past eight years, has consistently hampered the rights of both the students and the faculty ... The Administration of Cornell has so often ignored the student's voice and so regularly refused to establish any effective channels of communication that a public demonstration was our only recourse.

Other articles cast the net wider, addressing issues related to fraternity vs. non-fraternity disputes; facility scholars vs. facility creative writers; and academic freedom vs. censorship pressures from the Postmaster General (that last point seems relevant to The Crying of Lot 49). See our "Annotated Bibliography of the Protest Coverage" at the bottom of this post for some recommended discussions, responses and analyses of these events, if you're interested in learning more.

This litany of student grievances was, however, mostly ignored by the press. Even The Harvard Crimson, which one would suspect of being sympathetic to the Cornell students' point of view, wrote only of the immediate events and ignored the larger context, stating, "The students were protesting a proposed ruling that co-eds no longer be permitted to attend unchaperoned parties in off-campus rooming-houses."  They focused on the last straw, and not the hay bale which preceded it.

So it's easy to leap to the conclusion that this was a riot for sex--but it still takes a salacious liberty, which newspapers, quite frankly, ought not to do.



The Hunt for the Daily News

Enough with the background; it's time to chase the New York Daily News! Unfortunately, despite its large readership, the paper has not been indexed and it's electronic archives do not go back to 1958.  Fortunately, Gid lives near a big university, so one evening he went into the university library and down into the basement where microfilms are stored. (Not to air our dirty laundry, but Daurade noted that "Cornell's Olin Library also stores microfilm in the basement--surely a practical consideration given the need for rear-projected light to read them--theaters don't have windows, after all". The Gid counters that, like Gilligan watching bicycle-powered TV, he read the Daily News' microfilmed archives on a computer screen, this being 2013, though he suspects that Daurade's correctly peeled back a layer on the palimpsest.)  [Gid, this may be 2013, but I read this in 2000 and even now they still use those back-lit machines!]

Anyhow, the Cornell protest was on May 23, 1958, and other newspapers (e.g., New York Times) stopped discussing it after a couple of days, so Gid scanned through the microfilm from May 24 - 31, 1958.

And there it was! 

Protest at President's House, President Circled (AP Photo in the Daily News)

Or maybe not. 

(Sorry, but the AP photo had a circle around President Malott. Couldn't resist yanking your chain.)

The Daily News' coverage had a different title: "Cornell Boots 4 in Egg Tossing" (May 25, 1958). The title we wanted, "Coeds Riot for Sex", sounds like it's going for yucks and offering editorial interpretation of facts. The article we found, however, sticks to facts, even if a few details were later challenged and the presentation lacked balance insofar as it seemed to down-play the concerns of the students. 

The picture is pretty blurry, but it's clear enough to see that the same picture appeared in the The Cornell Daily Sun in a "SUN Staff Photo Feature" which credits all images to Sun staff photographers (Volume LXXIV, Number 14, 26 May 1958, "Students Protest Administration", p. 7, various Sun staff photographers listed). 

Protest at President's House (Staff Photo in the Sun)

We took a pretty careful look at these photos, and we did not see anyone who looked like Pynchon or     

Fariña, although we're less sure about Sale or Perry. These are grainy photos with lots of people, though, so we may have missed something. What do you think? Did we overlook something? (By the way, President Malott is circled in this picture, too; it's just harder to tell.)


Another Clue!

Overall, something wasn't adding up. We certainly understand that 52-year-old recollections won't be impeccable; besides, Werner wasn't listing out facts for a court or newspaper; she was just reminiscing. Still, the title and tone of the article didn't feel right, and the photo didn't look right.

What next?

While poking about that May 26, 1958, edition of the Sun, Gid noticed a little article on page 3 called "Press Views on Mass Action"; this article listed several other papers' coverage of the protest, including, "Four Suspended by Cornell After 2-Day Riot Over Girls" in the New York Journal American.

Now that sounded an awful lot like Werner's recollection of a "Riot Over Sex" article!

So, Gid and Jon tried to find the New York Journal American [NYJA]. It was not, however, available at any institutions they could access. It looks like 1958 was never archived electronically. Very few places seem to have it on microfilm, and when Gid searched the catalogs of libraries with the microfilm who might be willing to offer an inter-library-loan ... he kept finding spotty coverage that missed the desired time frame (May 1958). Gid checked with a large number of librarians across the country (LIBRARIANS ROCK!!!), but at the time this post was posted, Gid was still searching for a library with the correct microfilm, waiting to hear back, for example, from the Library of Congress and the New York Public Library periodical reference services. (That's not criticism; these two institutions are still well within a reasonable window to reply.)

It was starting to feel like a Pynchonesque quest, kind of like Crying of Lot 49 or V..


There's More Than One Way To Skin a Cat

It was time for another approach. According to the Sun's "Press Views on Mass Action", the NYJA's article is from the AP, and the same AP article was run in the Binghamton Sunday Press and the Buffalo Courier-Express. With the help of a kind librarian, Gid found two articles in the Binghamton Sunday Press' coverage of the events. Both had different titles than the NYJA, but papers are allowed to change the text/title of AP articles. One of the Binghamton articles also had a picture, the first in this montage:

From left to right: Sale from Binghamton Sunday Press; Sale from the Sun; Sale showing sling (Sun); Sale from '72 sketch

This photo, however, is only of Sale. Do papers alter the photo(s) that they include with AP articles?  "Yes, Matilda, they do", sez Daurade. In other words, we still don't know what photo was in the article that Werner referenced--the reference that started this chase.

By the way, does anyone know why Sale's right arm is in a sling? It's a little tough to see in the Binghamton's copy of the image. You can see it a little better on p. 8 of the May 26, 1958 Sun and even more clearly in a different picture of Sale on the preceding page (see images 2 and 3 in our Kirk's sling montage). It is also clearly reproduced in a drawing on p. 12 of the June 1972 Cornell Alumni News (large PDF warning!) which we included as image 4 in the preceding group of photos.

We noted that this photo, like the previous photo, was credited to AP but also appeared in the Sun as credited to Sun staff photographers. The exact same picture appears in the Utica NY Observer (big PDF) credited to the AP.

Which got us to thinking...



As Planets Orbit the Sun

As far we can recall, every photo that we've found of the event also appeared in the Sun, so, Gid proposed a theory: perhaps the Sun was the only paper with photographers on hand; the Sun turned over their photos to the AP; and other newspapers got them from the AP. Was this why Pynchon praised the The Cornell Daily Sun so highly, calling it "the Sun, an observation point on high"?*

Seriously though, that would explain why the Sun credits the photos to Sun staff photographers while other sources credit the exact same photos to the AP. (By the way, May 26, 1958, Sun, p. 7, credits seven staff photographers; one of them was Bob Wegryn, who also shot the photos for the dueling article we wrote about in our previous post.)

Ironically, as the Sun didn't print on the weekend, they ended up running these photos a day or two after they had already appeared in other sources, which makes the record look wonky.

For example, the photo we included with Cornell's president circled is from the Daily News, May 24, 1958, credited to the AP -- but the same photo appeared in the Sun two days later credited to Sun staff photographers.

Our friend Jon tried to poke a hole in this theory (which is what I expect friends to do; moreover, Daurade reports that Jon has a deeply ingrained poke fetish) by asking if we'd checked the Ithaca Journal, which could have presumably gotten photographers to the scene quickly. Gid's cursory check turned up no photos of the event in the Ithaca Journal, but this is something worth a follow up by any enterprising researchers (none being found on our staff).

If Gid's theory is correct, then whatever photo is in the NYJA is one that we've already seen in the Sun, none of which appear to include Pynchon -- but we'd like to know for sure; we'd also like to see which photo prompted Werner to make the comment.

Finally, we'd like to know your thoughts on the pictures in the May 26, 1958, Cornell Sun! To the extent that all leads seem to trace back to this one edition of a small paper, we feel like we're investigating the universe in a grain of sand. It's entirely possible that we are, as a previous commentator suggested, stirring a tempest in a tea cup; hell, our previous post now comprises about 3% of the hits that this entire blog has received in the past five years, but, as Daurade has previously mentioned, "we feel there's value in looking at the little things". 


* Mason & Dixon, p. 707, but we're totally kidding. We dragged this quote completely of context; it  has nothing to do with newspapers.


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TL; DR 

Our questions are in italicized boldface. 

1. We found a reference to "a photo of Tom Pynchon, Kirk Sale, Richard Farina and Todd Perry [that] made the front page of the NY Daily News under the headline "Coeds Riot for Sex.'"

2. The Daily News didn't have an article with that headline, but it did run "Cornell Boots 4 in Egg Tossing" (May 25, 1958). We don't think that article's photo (see above, with President circled) includes Pynchon or Fariña. Do you?

3. The New York Journal American (NYJA) did have an article called "Four Suspended by Cornell After 2-Day Riot Over Girls", but we couldn't find a copy. Can you?

4. The NYJA article was from the AP. The Binghamton Sunday Press and the Buffalo Courier-Express ran the same AP article. Does this mean they included the same photo? The Binghamton Sunday Press' article has a photo, but it's only of Kirk Sale. (If you want to see it, scroll back up and rtfa.)

5. We think that the Sun was the only paper with photographers on hand; that the Sun turned over their pics to the AP; and that all photos of the event stem from the Sun. Can you prove me wrong? If we're correct, then whatever photo Werner was recalling is probably in the May 26, 1958, Sun. Do any of the pictures there look like the right one to you?


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Annotated Bibliography of the Protest Coverage

Just to be weird, this is chronological:

The Cornell Daily Sun, Volume LXXIV, Number 147, 26 May 1958. This was the first edition of the Sun to come out after the protest. Many (all?) of the key students in the protest were English Lit majors and many were involved with the Sun, so the coverage is extensive and high quality. Numerous photos. We believe the Sun staff photographers may be the sole source of photographs printed in the state and national media of the event.

Cornell Alumni News, Volume 60, Number 18, 15 June 1958, "Students Protest University Relations; President Promises Conference Group", author unknown, p. 621-623 - Strange pagination; actually starts on p. 7 of the scan. Good coverage of the protest (but a large PDF).

Cornell Alumni News, Volume LXXV, Number 141, 15 May 1959, "WEEKEND OF SIN! Halfway Down The Gorge--In SLIME and FILTH!" p. 2, by Hermione Dopkit as told to Stan Werbul (both presumably pseudonyms) - Not coverage per se, but a good example of satirical commentary by the students. As we noted in our previous post, The Cornell Daily Sun used joke articles like this to poke at the administration. This was one of the more extreme examples; others, like the dueling article we highlighted last time, took more subtle, well, jabs.

Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me, Richard Fariña, 1966. Fariña, who was eventually charged as a result of his leading role in the events, wrote an entire novel built around the protest.

Cornell Alumni News, June 1972, "Writers &; Teachers", by Geof Hewitt '66, p. 10 - 15. Large PDF! The protest coverage doesn't start until p. 13 (top of second column), but be sure to check out the drawing on p. 12.

The Cornell Daily Sun, 5 May 1978, "Hathaway Recalls Cornell Writers of the 50s", p. 31 and 38 - Unfortunately, this specific issue hadn't made it into the online archives at the time we published this article, but if you'd like a copy, drop us a note. Good coverage of the protest, especially of some of the key players. Traces sources of discontent back many years to a censorship event related to the postmaster general. Also looks at some divisions within the English department over the same time span.

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Update 1/5/14

We've had the good fortune to interview Tod Perry, one of the students suspended as a result of the "riot" of 1958, after he contacted us following our first post:  Cozy &; Loud as a Camel in the Rain: An Interview with Mr. Tod Perry.  Check it out!