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Nine Poems by Lewis Warsh

 

In a box looking for something else, I found a stapled mimeographed magazine called UNITED ARTISTS FIVE that was edited and published by Lewis Warsh and Bernadette Mayer in 1978 when they worked together as United Artists living in Lenox, Massachusetts.

In this particular magazine, as you can see below, Bob Rosenthal, Steve Carey, Alice Notley, Jack Collum, Ted Berrigan, and Clark Coolidge are all published, and that is quite a crew. It got me thinking about Mayer and Warsh’s generosity in the poetry world beginning in the 1960s through workshops, parties, and publishing. Lewis’s love and advocacy for the New York poet, Bill Kushner, for example—Lewis published Bill’s Head—I have always admired.

 

 

As I was reading through United Artists Five, I remembered that I had filmed Lewis Warsh reading at KGB a few years ago, and I searched through my externals until I found—I thought it had been lost—that exact reading which happened on a Sunday afternoon, Mother’s Day 2015. At the time, I was moved by Lewis’s simple reading of his fluid work, and I find as I edited it together, that I still am. Enjoy.

 

 

For the fun of it, what follows are Lewis’s “Nine Poems” in United Artists Five, December 1978.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And, by the way, you can check out Lewis Warsh’s latest, Out of the Question, Selected Poems (1963 – 2003), published by Station Hill Press, here:

http://www.stationhill.org/authors/lewis-warsh/

 

 

 

Bernadette Mayer & Lewis Warsh with their children, Sophia, Max & Marie

 

 

 

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