Marvin Malone's Pre-Wormwood Chapbooks? (1 Viewer)

Rekrab

Usually wrong.
Okay, I've been doing some reading up on Marvin Malone, the late editor of the highly esteemed Wormwood Review (where Bukowski was often published). And someplace I read that he published 5 mimeograph chapbooks of poetry before he moved to Storrs, CT, and got involved with the fledgling magazine, The Wormwood Review. I have a copy of his letterpressed early chapbook of poems, Bucolics & cheromanics (1963), but I'd never heard of these earlier mimeo chapbooks. I did a Google Books search and found three of them listed:

One over twice equals eight. Bent Quoin Press, 1958, 8 pages.

Conversation Peece. Bent Quoin Press, 1959, 6 pages.

Two over twice equals sixteen. Bent Quoin Press, 1958, 14 pages.

Anyone know what the other two are? Anyone have copies of any of these? I know it's a long shot, but I figured maybe someone on the Forum would have information on these long lost works by the Godfather of American Poetry. Bent Quoin Press was located in Albuquerque and may have been Malone himself.
 
Nice research, David. The timing is certainly correct for his early works, but I have no idea what the other two might be. Christa would almost certainly know. And I'd love to know what may have come of these.

Great editor; great work. It'd be interesting to see what his early choices were, for sure.
 
It is also possible that these were letterpressed, not mimeo. "Quion" is a letterpress term.

Fascinating stuff, David.

Yes, Christa would be the one to ask.

Best,
Bill
 
Bill: is the letterpress term spelled "Quion" or "Quoin"? Marvin's books use the spelling "Quoin" according to Google Books (which is never wrong we now know). I read "Bent Quoin" as a pun for "Bent Coin."
 
It is quoin, and they were iron wedges that you laid along the edges of a body of type. They have teeth that hold them apart...as you twist a tool between them, they separate, putting pressure on the type, to hold it in place. Blah, blah, blah...

Heavy metal thunder, indeed. Feels good in your hands.

quoin.jpg


My first thought was the same as Bill - sounds like a letterpress. Wouldn't you call your mimeo press Dented Drum or sticky stencil? ;)
 
I misspelled it, but he almost certainly meant quoin, not coin. Of course, maybe that was the joke; that he printed them mimeo as the quoins were bent.

t.l. kryss and rjs once put out a book that was blank, except for bits of glued paper on the inside. The press was called "Broken Mimeo Press" I always assumed that the mimeo was broken, and they wanted to put out a book, so they did it without printing anything.

Bill
 
David, the Bucolics chapbook was one of the five mentioned. It was professionally printed by Hors Commerce Press. Then there were four small, self-published little booklets, all with my father's poems. (Bent Quoin was my father's self-publishing name.) I believe the booklets were mimeographed, although I'll have to dig them out to verify.
 
Christa -- thanks for clearing this up. So only one title is unknown at this point. Please do dig them up when you have time. I am always fascinated by the origins of things, and these first few books of your father's intrigue me.
 
Well, there aren't extra copies lying around of those publications. When Wormwood ended, I believe there were about 5 or 6 extra copies of Bucolics, and I sent them to Wormwood poets as a remembrance. The little booklets . . . aren't that great. My father used to tell poets that he wanted their best work. So even if I had more copies of his little booklets, I'm not sure I'd want to disseminate them.
 
I kind of figured there weren't extras of those. They probably all got distributed long ago. And if they aren't his best, I can see why you might not want to be handing them out. Although a sample of some of the better of those poems might be interesting.
 

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