UPDATE: November 2020 – Collaborations has been awarded First Place in the 2020 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards. This is the 28th year of the WD Awards (see citation below).
Collaborations is a family album of collaborative poems, a celebration of a community of poets in the East Village of Manhattan at the end of the 1970s and beginning of the 1980s.
The book gathers poems written collaboratively between Greg Masters and a number of poets: Ted Berrigan, Jim Brodey, Cliff Fyman, Allen Ginsberg, Jim Hanson, Bob Holman, Gary Lenhart, Steve Levine, Elinor Nauen, Vito Ricci, Michael Scholnick, Lorna Smedman, Nellie Villegas, Tom Weigel, Jeffrey Cyphers Wright.
In addition, the book is enhanced with a selection of photos by Monica Claire Antonie chronicling the East Village poetry scene of the era.
The collection mixes some of the more recognizable names of the poetry world (Allen Ginsberg, Ted Berrigan) with a group of poets who have been referred to as the third generation of New York School poets centered around the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church. Likely there would be denials from some who’d prefer to not align themselves with any group.
The collab book is lovely and the poems are so fresh they could have been written yesterday. Every time I open the book I find something new. The photos and bios and the poems all blend together nicely.
– Lewis Warsh, author of more than 20 books of poetry, most recently Out of the Question (Station Hill Press, 2017)
The East Village neighborhood of downtown Manhattan in the 1970s and 80s was gritty, but it attracted writers, artists, musicians, filmmakers, dancers and uncategorizable performers willing to forgo amenities for affordable rents. Collaboration was rampant among many of the locals – extending boundaries, crossing genres, reaching new audiences eager for expression and new forms that diverged from mainstream values. This new volume represents a segment of the collaborative activity, affording a peek at an artistic scene that though vibrant has been little documented.
The 140-page paperback, Collaborations (978-0-9998947-0-5), is available April 3, 2020, for $14.99 from BookBaby, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other online retailers.
Review copies, images and more info are available from Greg Masters: greg@cronybooks.net.
A video of the online book launch is available here.
To purchase a copy, visit BookBaby:
Greg Masters’ Collaborations is a historical document, a photo book, and a collection of poems unlike any other. Masters’ collaborators are a veritable who’s who of East Village poets of the ’70s and ’80s, featuring such notables as Allen Ginsberg and Ted Berrigan. The poems within are as eclectic as the participants, by turns surrealist, urbane, funny, experimental, and always surprising. Within these pages, Lauren Bacall brushes up against a soulless thin-lipped zombie, and both are mashed against the urban landscape of NYC, all mixed with a dash of be-bop. The syntax sometimes slips, ideas don’t always resolve. “I, a baboon, croon to the ever present hesitant you” ends one poem with a cheeky wink. These poems are giddy in their inventiveness, bizarre, challenging, and a whole lot of fun. Overall, the book offers a slice of life from a unique moment in literary history, and, as a writer, I was tickled to be let into the rooms where these great minds tapped out strange poems on their typewriters, swilling beer and coffee and pushing their spectacles up the bridges of their noses. The photographs were a nice complement to the text, setting a mood and aesthetic that grounded the book in the real time and place the poems emerged from. The production quality of the book is also neat and professional, and the biographical notes at the end are a helpful addition for curious contemporary readers who may not be familiar with all of the players. An inspiring and important little book that captures the creativity and spirit of a time.
– Judge, 28th Annual Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards