d. a. levy - As poet, artist and publisher, Levy was an important literary and underground figure in Cleveland's emerging poetry and small/alternative press scene in the 1960s. Levy documented his love-hate relationship with the city and the politics of the day through his poetry and art

 

www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dalevy.htm

Famous Poems by D A Levy

d. a. levy, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: The Art and Poetry of d. a. levy. Seven Stories Press, 1999.

The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle collects d.a. levy's poetry, his collages--in both color and black-and-white--and other examples of his art, in a splendid large-format celebration of levy's unique contribution.
A visual artist, and an important figure in the concrete poetry movement, levy was also an activist and mystic who either committed suicide or was murdered at the age of twenty-six in East Cleveland. This occurred after two and a half years of intense media coverage, police harassment and court trials, and just as he was starting to be recognized as one of the most important geniuses of his generation.
Edited, with an investigative essay on Levy's life and mysterious death, by Mike Golden.

d. a. levy, ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak. Ghost Press, 2007.

2013 reprint of the Russell Salamon's 2007 edition, which itself was a reprint (with added glossary and other notes) of the original 1967 edition collected and edited by rjs and published by T.L. Kryss' Ghost Press in Cleveland. Paperback, 8 1/2x11" hand-assembled, with black tape on spine (approx. 275 unnumbered pages). This famous anthology gathers an essential and extensive collection of levy's poetry, Concrete poetry, picture-poems, prose, poetic manifestos and editorials, plus letters from poets and writers world-wide, written in support of levy after his indictment and arrest, and newspaper accounts of same. levy's long poem The North American Book of the Dead, Parts I-III (1966-67) is included.

d. a. levy, D. A. Levy and the Mimeograph Revolution, Bottom Dog Press, 2007.

Chronology of d.a.levy's life and work,
Biographical essays & photographs, Interviews, profiles, statements, art work, poems;Critical appreciations of his writing, "Cleveland Prints" full color,
Includes 2006 dvd of Kon Petrochuk's film "if i scratch, if i write"
Contributors:  Ed Sanders, T.L. Kryss, rjs, Karl Young, Allen Frost, Joel Lipman, Kent Taylor, Mark Kuhar, Ingrid Swanberg, Larry Smith, Russell Salamon, John Jacob, Douglas Manson, Michael Basinski, Jim Lang, and others

Philip Metres reviews d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution 

d. a. levy, Zen Concrete & Etc. Ghost Pony Press, 1991.

This is the definitive collection of the works of d.a.levy, poet of major importance to American poetry and the mid-century avant-garde. The collection focuses on levy's visual, experimental and lyrical poems, and presents a basic selection of his poetic works. Includes a radio interview with levy, and articles by his contemporaries D.R. Wagner, Kent Taylor and Douglas Blazek. In addition to a substantial selection of levy's free verse, this book presents facsimile reproductions of his visual poems and collages, including the Concrete poem sequence "Zen Concrete" and excerpts from "The Tibetan Stroboscope", as well as the mimeo edition of the long poem "Cleveland Undercovers."

After becoming familiar with the work of d.a.levy, you'll probably realize that just about anything you can say about him will immediately call up its oposite, leading to mazes of seeming contradictions. For many people, particularly those who didn't know him or who read him superficially, he appears as an outlaw wild-man, hurling imprecations at the universe, and getting himself martyred in the process. Despite the element of truth in this, he was also deeply committed to a community of friends, and the author of some of the most beatific spiritual poetry of the time. You could see him as a warrior against repression and conformity, but perhaps other roles can strike deeper chords: his curses find parallels in the Book of Job, as his lyrics reprise The Psalms and The Song of Solomon, and his Jeremiads recall the prophet from whom the term derives. You could see him as a quietist scribe, patiently producing a Tantric Bible. You could also see him as a man who urgently needed to read his poetry to an attentive and engaged audience - in addition to such venues as coffee houses, he read to passers-by on the street, whether they wanted to listen or not. You could see him as a parapatetic monk, grimly following a weird and inescapable Dharma, and you could see him as a wise-ass looking for trouble. He could make grandiose claims, and at the same time claim that neither he nor anyone else had anything to say worth hearing. You could see him as a nihilist, seeking oblivion, or a mystic seeking a void which produces endless miracles, which in turn fit quite plainly into the flow of daily life. You could see him as a classic Beat, seeking adventure; brooding, phreaking, musing on boredom, cracking raunchy jokes, content when he had sufficient grass and sex. He found revelations in the larger-than-life social and political movements of the 1960s and in scraps of old newspapers, cheap cartoons, and the echoes of canonized poets and traditions. He could also see revelations as nothing more than cons. He listened carefully to the voices of the street; he also received messages through telepathy, from the spirit world, and through forms of altered consciousness. You could see him as a light philosopher, related to those of the Middle East and Medieval Europe, but one who extended dualism into hyperspace. He was the Patron Saint and Martyr of the American alternative press movement, and like all real saints, was not recognized as such, even by the many people who followed in his footprints. There are a lot of ways you could see him as a poet. But if you see him solely as any one of these, you haven't seen him at all. We feel that our job at this site is to give you as much access to the work as possible, in all its diversity, so that you can see past the stereotypes that obscured his work during the last year and a half of his life and those that have grown since his death.

Formally, you could see levy as a book artist - a poet who worked primarily with books in mind, which he usually produced himself. As a low-tech book worker, he remains unsurpassed in the second half of the 20th century. You could as easily see him as a lyricist, whose vocal intensity exfoliated into visual manifestations. Aside from the wonderful and exciting visual and aural dimensions of his poetry, this creates problems in presentation on the web and in print. Works such as The Tibetan Stroboscope can only be seen as visual poetry. With other works, this becomes less certain: levy worked deliberately with inexpensive and "liberated" papers, often exploring the aesthetic of rough mimeo and crude letterpress production, and this can be seen as inherent to the work. This makes our division somewhat arbitrary. But it's also both practical and provisional. In some of the "lexical" work, the lyric seems to take precedence over any visual concerns, and these seem appropriate to presentation in plain html format. As we go along, we may present some of these works in both html and graphics forms.

As much as levy has been disgracefully ignored since his death, he has had his torch-bearers. Ingrid Swanberg has been one of the most important of them, producing the only easily available print edition of his work in over a decade. In doing so, she carefully and deliberately worked with a book design best suited to library and popular sales to keep key works in circulation, although this has drawn criticism from some purists. It seems unlikely that some Micenas will come forward with the funds for a state of the art Swiss or French collotype edition that only collectors could afford. Outside that range of facsimile, Swanberg's edition remains a model in its own genre. You can order her edition through Ghost Pony Press: you'll find a link to the press at the bottom of this page.

Although this project has been in the works for two years and some of the poetry has been at this site for that long, this page went on-line, with total irony intended, on July 4, 1998, in anticipation of an independence day that would include people like d.a.levy. - Karl Young

VISUAL POETRY AND BOOK ART
Miniatures The Tibetan Stroboscope
Paintings
(Previously unpublished)
posters advertising nothing
(Previously unpublished)
from The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle
Comments on the Acid Landscape

LEXICAL POEMS

Short Poems: the bells of the Cherokee ponies
roses that
sitting on a bench near TSQuare
Two Love poems from Grist
Jaywalking Blues
to jim lowell's goldfish
Longer Workings:
Selections from North American Book of the Dead
Suburban Monastery Death Poem
Cleveland: The Rectal Eye Visions
Essays and Commentary
by Gary Snyder, Karl Young, Ingrid Swanberg,
Alan Horvath, and D. r. Wagner

20008 d.a.levy satellite
Spokes in the Wheel of d.a.levy Karma

Commentary begun in considerations of two major levy publications in 2007: reprints of UNKANHAVYRFUCKINCITI BAK and Kirpan Press's (Spontaneous) Random Sightings and Under Dog Press's d.a.levy and the mimeograph revolution. Essays and appreciations, the best collection of them assembled to date, go considerably beyond these three books. Contributions by Ingrid Swanberg, T.L. Kryss, Karl Young, Joel Lipman, Dan Waber, Joshua Gage, jon beacham, Geoffrey Cook, Richard Krech, John Oliver Simon, and Charles Potts. Produced in collaboration with Big Bridge magazine.  

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Poems For,To, and After
by t.l.kryss, Grace Butcher, bill bissett, will inman, D.R. Wagner,
rjs, Douglas Blazek, Kent Taylor, Ingrid Swanberg, Karl Young,
Russell Salamon, Johnathan Moore, and Luther Jett

d.a.levy bibliography
Compiled by Kent Taylor and Alan Horvath
Although the compilers tend to be modest, this bibliography
borders on the miraculous, given the dificulties presented by
a poet/publisher whose life was short and much of whose
publications were ephemeral. An aid in locating work written
and or published by levy, this bibliography should give
readers a sense of the range of levy's work and interestes.
The bibliography remains an ongoing and probably incompletable
effort.

Ghost Pony Press
Source for available work by d.a.levy in print form 

SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM by d.a.levy  

As poet, artist and publisher, d.a. levy was an important literary and underground figure in Cleveland's emerging poetry and small/alternative press scene in the early 1960s and continued to be until his untimely death in 1968. levy documented his love-hate relationship with the city and the politics of the day through his poetry and art which today provides a unique political and social perspective of 1960s Cleveland. Considered a visionary by many of his contemporaries, levy transcended the geographical boundaries of the city as well, with his work acknowledged by such nationally renowned poets as Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder.

As the self-publishing and mimeograph revolution of the 1960s era unfolded, levy, using a second-hand letterpress, published the works of many Cleveland poets including Russell Salmon, Kent Taylor, Russell Atkins and Grace Butcher through his Renegade Press and later Seven Flowers Press publications. He created and published some of Cleveland's original alternative press publications; the Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle and Marrahwana Quarterly at times distributing them on the streets of Cleveland for free. He became a local symbol for Freedom of Speech after he was arrested and charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor in 1966 at a poetry reading in which he allowed juveniles to read work that was deemed obscene by city officials. It was shortly after pleading no contest to a similar charge in another case later in 1968 that levy tragically took his own life at the age of 26.
Although levy created large amounts of textual and concrete poetry and art in his young life, few of his original materials are in circulation today. Sadly before his death, he destroyed much of his remaining pieces and gave the rest away to friends.

d. a. levy at County Courthouse in 1967,

charged with contributing to the delinquency
of a minor & publishing obscene literature.View image.

Dr. Wagner, a fellow poet and friend of levy's, wrote that levy "carries Cleveland around in his shirt pocket like some small clawed animal. And he loves it." Too often, though, that love was not returned.
In levy's own words:

. . . i spend my days in
amazement - wondering at your
callousness & your wide-open
hypocrisy -
cleveland, i gave you
the poems that no one ever
wrote about you
and you gave me
NOTHING

In the same poem, levy also said "cleveland - there are parts of me/you will not understand/for centuries." In some ways the world of 1968 seems centuries removed from the world we now inhabit. Perhaps it is not too soon to hope that the understanding can begin today.
The Michael Schwartz Library at Cleveland State University has made a concerted effort to bring Clevelander d.a. levy's work home by locating and acquiring what it can for archival preservation and public access purposes. With the advent of the internet, there’s no reason it need only be confined to archival boxes in the backroom of the library any longer. We can now "cover the world" with his lines via the web, and most importantly, reduce further deterioration of the print originals.
This website was designed to serve as a portal to information on and about d.a. levy. In addition to levy’s poetry and art on display in digital format, photographs, newspaper accounts of his arrests, multimedia, additional references and links to other levy collections and materials, as well as bibliographies of his work created by fellow poets and friends are included on the site as well.
Users are now able to browse levy’s work freely, page by page, from anywhere in the world. - www.clevelandmemory.org/levy/index.html

The Epic of d.a.levy
Neglected poets 2 — d.a. levy
d.a.levy | suburban monastery death poem
d.a. levy Reading His Poetry: May 14, 1967 (video)



Websites relating to d.a.levy:

The d.a.levy homepage, hosted by The Light & Dust Anthology of Poetry, is the definitive levy website, presenting levy's poetry, visual poetry, collage, and painting as wells as essays and commentary by Alan Horvath, Ingrid Swanberg, Karl Young, and D.R. Wagner. There is also a section offering poetry dedicated to levy by bill bissett, Douglas Blazek, Grace Butcher, Alan Horvath, will inman, t.l.kryss, Jonathan Moore, Russell Salamon, rjs, Ingrid Swanberg, Kent Taylor, D.R. Wagner, and Karl Young. The homepage includes a bibliography of works by and about d.a.levy compiled by Kent Taylor and Alan Horvath.

Curators: Ingrid Swanberg, Karl Young, and Karl Kempton:

http://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dalevy.htm

The d.a.levy homepage includes Gary Snyderʼs famous essay “The Dharma Eye of d.a.levy”:
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/dalevy/daesa-gs.htm

The d.a.levy collection of the Cleveland Memory Project catalogs Cleveland State Universityʼs levy holdings, and presents a digital collection of levyʼs poetry, artwork, periodicals and related ephemera, including manuscripts, photographs, and links to other sites:

http://www.clevelandmemory.org/levy/

Cleveland bookseller Jim Lowellʼs historic first bibliography of d.a.levyʼs work, “A Preliminary Checklist of the Writings of d.a.levy (1942-1968),” published in The Serif: Kent State University Library Quarterly; viii, no. 4, December, 1971. Includes an introductory address to levy by Lowell. Presented online by Luther Jett at Litkicks:

http://www.litkicks.com/Lists/LevyWorks.html

The d.a.levy archive at Kent State University:

http://speccoll.library.kent.edu/literature/poetry/levy.html

A unique and very comprehensive d.a.levy bibliography by Jason Davis of Verdant Press (includes Kirpan Press editions otherwise not readily found online):

http://www.verdantpress.com/levy.html

“a d.a. levy satellite,” special issue of Michael Rothenbergʼs Big Bridge, featuring essays and articles on levy by his contemporaries and others (edited by Ingrid Swanberg and Karl Young):

http://www.bigbridge.org/levy.htm

The d.a.levy center of the online magazine Deep Cleveland, edited by mark s. kuhar:

http://deepcleveland.com/levycenter.html

levyʼs Suburban Monastery Death Poem, presented by Crisis Chronicles Online Library, edited by John Burroughs:

http://library.crisischronicles.com/2009/03/25/suburban-monastery-death-poem-by-da-levy.aspx

A landmark translation into the French of d.a.levyʼs Suburban Monastery Death Poem, translation by Lucien Suel & Henry Meyer, Silo Academie 23, 28 Avril 2006:

http://academie23.blogspot.com/2006/04/da-levy-1942-1968-pome-sur-la-mort-dun.html