Persecuted Poets Series Number One.

(POETRY). (COUNTERCULTURE). rjs [Robert J. Sigmund]. Persecuted Poets Series Number One. (Cleveland: Ghost Press, 1967) [10] leaves. (178 x 140 mm.) One of 150 copies. Original black wrappers with black & white photographic portrait on upper cover, stapled as issued, stamped label on verso of first leaf. Text entirely stamped by hand. A very good copy with slight sunning to upper cover, two-inch loss to top corner of lower wrapper, offsetting from label (as usual), contents clean and bright. A rare and significant artifact of American underground publishing, produced in a very small edition just shortly before the poet's incarceration in connection to an infamous censorship case. Poet Robert J. Sigmund (who signed his work "rjs") was heavily active in Cleveland's counterculture and mimeograph publishing scene in the 1960s and '70s, working closely alongside figures such as d. a. levy, James Lowell, and Tom Kryss. The group gained national attention in 1967 when levy was arrested for producing and distributing "obscene" materials and "contributing to the delinquency of minors"; rjs was also arrested in connection with the same broader crackdown targeting the city's underground artists and writers and sentenced to six months at the county workhouse. The present work, inspired by rjs' "persecution" by the authorities, is a symbol of resiliency and innovation in the face of censorship. Forming a single phrase ("my brain is bleeding like Niagara") over several pages, the booklet was printed using ink and rubber stamps--a choice almost certainly born of necessity after levy's Ghost Press printing materials were confiscated by the police. The work ends with a note about the author's impending confinement: "rjs new address for the next six months: Workhouse Cooley Institutions 4051 Northfield Rd Warrensville, Ohio.".…