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Published by Totem Press, 1959
Seller: Aeon Bookstore, New York, NY, U.S.A.
Book First Edition
Soft cover. Condition: Very Good. 1st Edition. Four volumes of the venerable literary quarterly Yugen (1958-1962), edited by LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka and then-partner Hettie Cohen. Published through Baraka's own Totem Press, the journal brought together work by figures from the Beat Generation, the Black Mountain School, the New York School, and international literary modernism. The quarterly took for its namesake the Japanese aesthetic concept translating roughly to mysterious, graceful profundity. With contributions from William Carlos Williams, Allen Ginsberg, David Meltzer, Paul Blackburn, Philip Whalen, Diane Di Prima, John Wieners, Michael McClure, Fielding Dawson, Frank O'Hara, Cesar Vallejo, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Robin Blaser, Ed Dorn, Ray Bremser, Robert Creeley, Tristan Tzara, Gary Snyder, Kenneth Koch, Baraka, Gilbert Sorrentino, John Ashbery, Charles Olson, Peter Orlovsky, and many others. All 5.5" x 8.5" softcover books, saddle-stapled in card wraps, with occasional b/w illustrations. Books from the collection of a tobacco smoker, with attendant if subtle tanning mainly to spines. Shelfwear to all rather mild: some modest rubbing to covers / mild edgewear. Bindings all sound, with crisp, quite bright unmarked pages. Each journal is now in a custom cut mylar dustjacket. Issue 4 is particularly scarce. Very handsome examples.