levy chronology (original) (raw)
A Chronology of the
Life & Work of d.a.levy (1942-1968)
Poet, Artist, Editor & Publisher, Including Cultural and Alterntive Publishing ContextsPrepared by Larry Smith, Bottom Dog Press. PO Box 425, Huron, OH 44839 *Collaboration and corrections appreciated. Lsmithdog@aol.com Sources and credits listed at end.
Some Critical Appraisals of d.a.levy page
Some Links at bottom of page.
1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969
1942 –
General: War in Europe and Pacific; U.S. Conscientious Objectors’ Camps, Victory gardens, internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S. camps. Art: Thomas Hart Benton, Arshile Gorky; Music: Max Roach band. Film: Casablanca, Sullivan’s Travels, Road to Morocco. (80 war films are made.) Poetry: Wallace Stevens’Notes toward a Supreme Fiction; Randal Jarrell’s Blood for a Stranger; Kenneth Patchen’s The Teeth of the Lion (New Directions). Cleveland Transit System begins era of municipal operation of Cleveland's public transit system 28 April. Cleveland Bomber Plant (now I-X Center) opens at Municipal Airport 2.
October 29, Darryl Allan Levy born to Joseph and Carolyn Levy, shoe salesman and housewife living near 65th Street and Lorain Ave.…middle/working class; has a brother James.
1943 –
General: Eisenhower made Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe; women move into the workforce; food and goods are rationed in U.S. for war effort. Esquire magazine is refused in the mail, charged with being "lewd and lascivious." Race riot in Detroit. Art: Clyfford Still; Mark Tobey. Music: Dizzie Gillispie, Sarah Vaughan, jazz jive and jitterbug. Films: For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Human Comedy, Watch on the Rhine. Fiction: Douglas's The Robe, Erskine Caldwell's Georgia Boy. Nonfiction: Jean Paul-Sartre's Being and Nothingness. Poetry: T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets. Weldon Kees' The Last Man, Kenneth Fearing's Afternoon of a Pawnbroker.
1944 –
General: World War II throughout Europe and Philippines; D-Day landing of U.S. and allied troops at Normandy; United Nations is established; D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover found obscene in U.S. Films: Double Indemnity, Gaslight. Music: Swing is in vogue - Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller, Woody Herman, Tommy Dorsey Art: Edward Hopper, Clyfford Still. Poetry: Pulitzer to Karl Shapiro's V- Letter and Other Poems.
Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: West Coast: Kenneth Rexroth engineers Berkeley Renaissance with William Everson, Philip Lamantia, Robert Duncan... Circle magazine around West Coast Anarchist and Libertarian Circles around Berkeley. European Surrealists in New York City during the war meet with American artists and writers. First meeting of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs and Herbert Huncke in New York City, around Columbia University and Times Square.
1945 – General: Harry Truman takes over presidency after death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; first atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (189,000 casualties), then Nagasaki; end of WW II. Broadway: Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and He Touched Me Films:The Lost Weekend, Mildred Pierce, The Body Snatcher. Music: Be-Bop jazz evolves with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. Art: Abstract Expressionist art is thriving throughout the Beat Era with such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey, William de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Franz Kline, Jasper Johns, many of whom gathered in the Greenwich Village scene.
Cleveland Community Relations Board formed to promote racial harmony.
1946–
General: First U.N. General Assembly Meeting in London; national strikes in coal, railroad, General Electric industries. Post-War Baby Boom (birth rate in U.S. increases by 20%); Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care; advent of television, use of commercial jet airlines; popularization of Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism. German Nazi's are sentenced to death at Nuremburg trials. Broadway: O'Neil's The Iceman Cometh, Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, and Born Yesterday. Films: T_he Best Years of Our Lives_ treating dissatisfied war veterans wins Academy Award as best picture. Bogart in The Big Sleep. Fiction: Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding, Camus' The Stranger, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men. Poetry: Pulitzer to Robert Lowell's Lord Weary's Castle.
Cleveland Browns begin play in All-American Football Conference.
Levy family living at 1954 W. 61st Street, Cleveland. levy as young boy is a school Safety Patrol boy; though family is Jewish, he is brought up Christian.
1947–
General: House: Un-American Activities Committee begins hearings on Hollywood communists; college enrollment reaches all time high of 67.1 million. Broadway: Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire. Film: Gentleman's Agreement, Miracle on 34th Street. Music: Top jazz performances by Benny Goodman and Duke Ellington Band, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra Fiction: Bud Schulberg's The Harder They Fall. Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to W.H. Auden's Age of Anxiety.
Operations begin at the Cleveland’s Lakefront Airport. First successful defibrillation of a human heart by Dr. Claude S. Beck and colleagues at University Hospitals. First telecast by WEWS, Ohio's first television station.
1948–
General: Truman is elected president; Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in India; publication of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male. Broadway: Mr. Roberts, Anne of the Thousand DaysFilms: T_he Red Shoes, Key Largo, Sorry, Wrong Number._ Televison: "Douglas Edwards and the News," "Candid Camera," "Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts," "Milton Berle Show," "Studio One," "Philco Television Playhouse" Art: Andrew Wyeth, Ben Shahn, Arshile Gorky Fiction-The Plague by Albert Camus, The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer. Poetry: Books by John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, William Carlos Williams (Patterson Book Two).
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Capricorn, then Capra Press, launched by Noel Young (Santa Barbara, CA).
Cleveland Indians win World Series.
1949–
General: North Atlantic Pact is signed, NATO is created; Apartheid begins in South Africa; 500,000 steelworkers strike; minimum wage rises from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour; fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia grows. Broadway: Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller Films: Pinky, Home of the Brave, Sands of Iwo Jima. Television: "The Goldbergs," "Captain Video and the Video Rangers" "Mama" Music: "Cool Jazz" of Mile Davis, Jerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck; Billie Eckstine is popular singer Fiction: Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, George Orwell's 1984. Poetry: Books by Louis Simpson, Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Fearing; Pulitzer for Gwendolyn Brooks.
Cleveland named an All-America City for first of five times.1950 –
General: Korean Police Action involvement, UN forces to be lead by General MacArthur; Senator Joeseph McCarthy charges Communist infiltration of State Department. Broadway: Come Back, Little Sheba, The Cocktail Party Films: All about Eve, The Asphalt Jungle Sunset Boulevard. Television: "You Bet Your Life"(Groucho Marx), "Your Hit Parade" Music: Big Bands giving way to smaller groups--George Shearing, Count Basie. Fiction: Faulkner's Collected Stories, Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles Poetry: Pulitzer to Carl Sandburg's Complete Poems; books by Howard Nemerov, William Carlos Williams' Collected Later Poems
Cleveland population--914,808 (highest ever, 7th largest city in nation). Cuyahoga County population--1,389,532. Browns enter the NFL and win the title. Cleveland City Council passes a Fair Employment Practices law, the first such city law in the United States.
Alternative Presses & Magazines Launched: Inferno, ed. Leslie Woolf Hedley (S.F.)
1951 –
General: Korean War involvement; draft age lowered to 18; U.S. conducting tests of A-Bomb; suspected Russian spies the Rosenbergs are found guilty of treason and sentenced to death. Broadway: The Rose Tattoo, The Moon Is Blue Films:An American in Paris, A Place in the Sun Television: "Your Show of Shows" with Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca; Kefauver crime hearings. Music: Jazz figures: Charlie Parker, Sonny Rollins, Maynard Ferguson Fiction: J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye. Poetry: Pulitzer to Marianne Moore's Collected Poems; books by Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke.
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Ginsberg and Kerouac meet Gregory Corso in New York City; Kerouac writes initial draft of On the Road in three weeks, becomes interested in Buddhism; Burroughs accidentally shoots and kills his wife, Joan. Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Origin, ed. Cid Corman (Dorchester, MA).
Levy family moves to 2814 Tuxedo Ave, Parma, Ohio...junior high school years.
Discovers reading and libraries. Has a collection of comic books which he shares with cousins. Collects stamps, earns first class rank in Boy Scouts.
1952 –
General: Truman orders seizure of U.S. Steel mills to avert strike (later ruled as unconstitutional); Eisenhower elected president of U.S. with Richard Nixon as V.P.; subversives are barred from teaching school in U.S.; England has A-Bomb and new Queen, Elizabeth II. Broadway: The Seven Year Itch Films: High Noon, Viva Zapata!, Come Back, Little Sheba; first Cinemascope and Cinerama films. Television: "The Jackie Gleason Show," "Ernie Kovacs Show" Music: Louis Armstrong tours Europe with his All Stars Fiction: Pulitzer to Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea, Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Steinbeck's East of Eden. Poetry: Pulitzer to Archibald MacLeish's Collected Poems1917-1952; Dylan Thomas doing U.S. reading tour - NYC, San Francisco, etc.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Trace, ed. by James Boyer May (L.A.), City Lights, ed. Peter Martin (S.F.).
1953 –
General: Death of Stalin; Health, Education, and Welfare Department is created; Rosenbergs are executed as spies; Charlie Chaplin leaves U.S. complaining of persecution by "vicious propaganda"; Screen Actors Guild adopts by-law banning Communists. Broadway: The Crucible, Picnic, Camino Real Films: From Here to Eternity, The Big Heat Music: Vocalists-Ella Fitzgerald, Nat "King" Cole, Four Freshmen. Fiction: James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Saul Bellows' The Adventures of Augie March Poetry: Pulitzer to Theodore Roethke for The Waking; books by Richard Eberhart, May Sarton
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Gary Snyder working at Sourdough Mountain meets Kenneth Rexroth, then enters Berkeley as a graduate student; City Lights Bookstore founded by Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin. Burroughs' novel Junkie is published by Ace Books; Kerouac writes Maggie Cassidy and The Subterraneans in NYC where he reunites with Burroughs and Ginsberg who are editing their correspondence as The Yage Letters.
1954 –
General: Joseph McCarthy probe of the Army for Communists begins, finally results in Senate hearing disputes, Edward R. Morrow's expose of McCarthy for slander tactics on "See It Now," and Senate condemnation of McCarthy methods; Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Broadway: The Bad Seed, Witness for the Prosecution. Films: On the Waterfront, The Caine Mutiny, The Wild One. Fiction: Golding's Lord of the Flies Television: Army-McCarthy hearings, "Davey Crockett" episodes on "Disneyland" program; "I Love Lucy" Radio: Popular Cleveland disc jockey Alan Freed coins term for new music as "rock 'n' roll" Poetry: Books by E.E. Cummings, W.S. Merwin, Wendell Kees.
Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Allen Ginsberg arrives in San Francisco at North Beach bohemian scene of cafe's, bars, jazz clubs- - includes writers Jack Spicer, Richard Brautigan, Bob Kaufman, John Weiner, Bay Area Poets Coalition; Weldon Kees and Dick Martin organize first SF Poets Follies; Black Mountain College fosters projective verse through poets Charles Olson, Robert Creeley, Robert Duncan, Denise Levertov, Paul Blackburn.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: George Braziller Press launched by Braziller.
Cleveland: Last streetcars run 24 January. Marilyn Sheppard murdered in her Bay Village home. Rapid Transit begins operation.
1955–
General: Nikita Krushchev becomes Soviet Party Secretary; Martin Luther King Jr. leads Civil Rights Movement; rebel actor James Dean (24) dies in auto crash. Broadway: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Bus Stop, The Diary of Anne Frank, A View from the Bridge Films: Rebel without a Cause, The Blackboard Jungle, Marty, The Rose Tattoo. Televison: First presidential press conference is broadcast; "64,000 Question" quiz show Art: "Pop Art" of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, et al-Morris Graves, Jasper Johns, Larry Rivers Fiction: McCarthy's A Charmed Life, Mailer's The Deer Park
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Ginsberg organizes celebrated Six Gallery Reading in San Francisco garage-gallery, featuring: Rexroth as MC, poets: Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder and Ginsberg's own reading of Howl, Kerouac cheering them on (Oct. 13); Ferlinghetti launches City Lights Books with Pocket Poets Series: #1, his own Pictures of a Gone World, #2 Rexroth's 30 Spanish Poems, Patchen's Poems of Humor and Protest; Kerouac writes Mexico City Blues, befriends Gary Snyder at Berkeley and they go mountain climbing, discuss Buddhism; Kerouac returns briefly to North Carolina, writes "Jazz of the Beat Generation" for New World Writing. Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: The Village Voice is launched (NY).
1956 –
General: Salk vaccine for polio meningitis is distributed; Eisenhower wins landslide election, Richard Nixon as V.P.; marriage of Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller, Grace Kelley and Prince Ranier of Monaco. Broadway: Beckett's Waiting for Godot, Chayefsky's Middle of the Night. Films: Giant, Lust for Life, The Ten Commandments, Baby Doll, The Seventh Seal. Television: Elvis Presley's appearance on "Ed Sullivan Show" starts protest; daytime soap operas; late night Steve Allen Show; "Playhouse 90,” “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” Music: Harry Belafonte prompts interest in Calypso music; Rockabilly and Rhythm and Blues merge in Rock 'n' Roll; Art: Georgia O'Keefe and Helen Frankenthaler. Fiction: Bellow's Seize the Day, Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side, Baldwin's Giovanni's Room.
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Ginsberg's Howl and Other Poems City Lights' Pocket Poets Series #4; Kerouac living with Snyder in Marin County cabin, spends summer as lokout on Desolation Peak, Washington; Snyder leaves for Japan; Kerouac leaves for Mexico City, joined by Ginsberg, Corso, and Orlovsky; Kerouac is writing Visions of Gerard, Desolation Angels, and The Dharma Bums.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Grove Press launched by Barney Rosset (NY), later publishes Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Naked Lunch; Black Mountain Review, ed. Robert Creeley (Black Mountain, NC).
1956 -1960 Daryl Levy attends James Ford Rhodes High School, living at 1705 West Schaaf Road, Cleveland West Side.
1957 –
General: Eisenhower proposes two year test ban of nuclear weapons; Russia launches "Sputnik," first space satellite. Broadway: The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Compulsion, Look Back in Anger Films: The Bridge on the River Kwai, Twelve Angry Men, Peyton Place, A Face in the Crowd. Televison: Mike Wallace Interviews, "Maverick," "American Bandstand," "Gunsmoke" Music: "Third Stream" combination of Jazz with classical European music as in Modern Jazz Quartet; in reaction Charlie Mingus fosters open and improvisational forms Art: Picasso exhibit in NY, Chicago, Philadelphia Fiction: Malamud's The Assistant, Morris's Love among the Cannibals; Durrell's Justine; James Agee's A Death in the Family (Pulitzer) Poetry: books by James Wright, Denise Levertov, Nellie Sachs.
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: U.S. Customs seizes Howl in San Francisco; Ferlinghetti and Shig Murao stand trial; Ginsberg is in Europe at the time; Kerouac's On the Road is published by Viking through help of Malcolm Cowley, receives strong NY Times review, becomes a best seller; Norman Mailer writes "The White Negro" essay on hipsters and Beats; Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency poems published by Grove Press; Poetry-and-Jazz scene begins in San Francisco with Rexroth and Ferlinghetti and Kenneth Patchen performing.
Alternative Presses & Magazines Launched: Evergreen Review eds. by Barney Rossett and Donald Allen (NY); Hearse, ed. by E. V. Griffith (Eureka, CA); Measure ed. by John Wiener (Boston).1958 –
General: Strategic Air Command is formed; U.S. and USSR begin cultural exchanges; V.P. Nixon is stoned in Caracas while on Goodwill tour; Russian Sputnik III orbits Earth, brings on U.S. study of "Crisis in Education" in U.S.; Fidel Castro rebels seize capital in Cuba; John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society portrays materialism and conformity of U.S., argues for fair distribution of wealth to end poverty. Beat Generation art and lifestyle has cultural impact. Broadway: MacLeish's J.B., O'Neil's A Touch of the Poet, Films: The Defiant Ones, Some Came Running, The Young Lions Televison: "Naked City," "Peter Gunn," "The Rifleman"; David Susskind's "Open End" Music: Kingston Trio help launch new Folk Music; first Monterey Jazz Festival; Duke Elington plays Carnegie Hall; Fiction: Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, Barth's The End of the Road Poetry: Pulitzer to Stanley Kunitz' Selected Poems, 1928-1958;books by Muriel Rukeyser, William Meredith, W.C. Williams' Patterson, Book V
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Lenny Bruce is performing at S.F. Hungry I; Neal Cassady serves two year jail term in San Quentin for possession and sale of marijuana; Kerouac moves to Long Island, publishes The Subterraneans and The Dharma Bums, begins work on Lonesome Traveler; Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind (New Directions); Corso's broadside "Bomb" and book Gasoline (City Lights); Snyder's "Cold Mountain Poems" of Han-Shan published in Evergreen Review; Alan Watts' essay "Beat Zen, Square Zen, and Zen" appears in Chicago Review.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: LeRoi and Hettie Jones begin to publish Yugen magazine and Totem Press (NY); Naked Ear, ed. Judson Crews (Taos, NM); Chelsea, ed. Robert Kelly (NY).
1959 –
General: Castro takes Havanna, Batista flees; Pope John calls for Ecumenical Council; Khrushchev threatens U.S. with military superiority; Ike's call for on-site missile inspection is rejected; Laos asks for U.S. aid against North Vietnam; Ike and Khrushchev meet at Camp David. Broadway: Loraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun; Gibson's The Miracle Worker, Paddy Chayefsky's The Tenth Man Films: Room at the Top, Suddenly, Last Summer, On the Beach. Television: Top Quiz Shows exposed as pretense; "The Many Loves of Dobey Gillis" includes Beatnik Maynard G. Krebs; "The Twilight Zone," "The Late Show" Music: Ornette Coleman's The Shape of Jazz to Come, Miles Davis and John Coltrane create "free jazz"; Rock 'n' Roll receives wide acceptance despite some protests of its moral corruption Fiction: Roth's Goodbye Columbus,Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s The Sirens of Titan, Leon Uris' Exodus; Allen Drury's Advise and Consent wins Pulitzer; Poetry: Pulitzer to William Snodgrass' Heart's Needle; books by Robert Duncan, James Wright, Robert Lowell.
The Beat Story & Alternative Press Movement: Beat film Pull My Daisy is produced and directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, with Kerouac's narration, Beats as characters; New Cinema follows Beat parallels of spontaneity and realism, example John Cassavetes' Shadows; Kerouac's Dr. Sax, Maggie Cassady _a_nd Mexico City Blues are published; Ginsberg records his Howl for Fantasy Records and is writing Kaddish. Articles on "The Beats" begin to appear in Time, Life, and in Lawrence Lipton's critical The Holy Barbarians; McClure directs production of his play The Feast! using beastial language and performed by Bay area poets and artists; Philip Lamantia's Ekstasis & Narcotica (Auerhahn). Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Beatitude magazine edited by Bob Kaufmann, Ferlinghetti, et al; after Chicago Review is censored, Big Table, ed. Irving Rosenthal and Paul Carroll, publishes Burroughs' "Ten Episodes from Naked Lunch"; then book Naked Lunch is published by Olympia Press of Paris, finally by Grove Press of NY; Poems from the Floating World, ed. Jerome Rothenberg (NY).
General: Blacks sit-in at Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter; Russians and Fidel Castro sign economic agreement; Kennedy wins narrow election victory as president; Democrats sweep Congress. New York Circuit Court of Appeals rules that D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover is not obscene. Broadway: Lillian Hellman's Toys in the Attic; Jean Anouilh's Becket; An Evening with Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Film: The Apartment, Psycho, Never on a Sunday, Spartacus Television: “Route 66,” “The Flintstones,” “Face the Nation,” “The Bob Newhart Show.” Music: Dave Brubeck's Time Out, John Coltrane's Meditations, vocalists, Peggy Lee, Nina Simone. Fiction: William Styron's Set this House on Fire, John Updike's Rabbit, Run, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird Poetry: books by James Dickey, Kenneth Koch, W.S. Merwin, Anne Sexton, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov. The Beat Movement & Alternative Presses: Donald Allen publishes New American Poets anthology featuring many of the Beats; Ginsberg in South America, at Harvard takes LSD with Timothy Leary; proliferation of Beat writings: Snyder's Riprap and Myths and Tests (Totem/Corinth); Gregory Corso's The Happy Birthday of Death (New Directions); Philip Whalen's Like I Say (Totem/Corinth); Elias Wilentz's The Beat Scene (Corinth); Thomas Parkinson prepares A Casebook on the Beat (Crowell); Seymour Krim's The Beats (Fawcett). Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Kulchur, (NY).Cleveland population--876,050 (8th largest city in nation). Cuyahoga County population--1,647,895. Final issue of the Cleveland News published 23 January. French film The Lovers (1958) by Louis Malle is censored in U.S. as obscene, including Cleveland, where Jasper Wood leads campaign against obscenity charges (later chairs levy's and Lowell's Defense Fund). June 1960 d.a.levy living at 1705 W. Schaff Road, Cleveland, near railroad tracks; graduates with a “B” average, had collected stamps, nickname “Hey, You.” As typical Ohio high school student during Sputnik generation, he would have studied math and science, and read Julius Caeser, Our Town, MacBeth.
Later writes: “Unable to find competent leaders or teachers, unable to discover intelligent persons in places of authority, unable to find anything other than pseudo-christian bigotry and ignorance—I decided to commit suicide at 17. Changed my mind at the last minute and started to read everything and wrote poems."
[Graduation photo, 1960, with note to classmate Don Sabo]
Later in 1960, family follows Czaban family to Bay Village, Ohio...living side by side in new suburban houses 620 (levys) and 618 Cahoon Road. Levy is 5’ 7”, 117 lbs., wears Levi jacket and old jeans, motorcycle boots; begins hitch hiking to Cleveland, spending nights there; mother threatens to call police on him and does. Juvenile Court judge calls him "incorrigible" and tells him to choose military branch or spend time in jail. He chooses Navy, enlists is sent to San Diego, works in medic crew, upsets officers by sitting meditation on his bunk, eventually refuses to participate, and is discharged as having "manic-depressive tendencies."
1961 –
General: John F. Kennedy at inauguration calls for “Grand, Global Alliance for Progress,” creates Peace Corps. U.S. severs relations with Cuba; then anti-Castro Cubans fail in assault on Bay of Pigs. Freedom Riders are attacked by mobs in Birmingham, Alabama. Minimum wage raised from 1.00to1.00 to 1.00to1.25/hr. Broadway: The Night of the Iguana; A Man for All Seasons. Films: West Side Story, The Hustler, One-Eyed Jacks, A Raisin in the Sun. Television: “The Mike Douglas Show” (from Cleveland), “Ben Casey,” “The Defenders.” Music: Billie Holiday, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra; Motown, The Supremes; Bob Dylan singing folksongs in Greenwich Village. Fiction: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. Poetry: Charles Olsen’s The Distances: Poems, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, and Other Poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Starting from San Francisco.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Olympia Press, ed. Maurice Gironias (Paris); Floating Bear, eds. LeRoi Jones and Diane DiPrima (NY); Journal for the Protection of All Beings, eds. Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Ferlinghetti, et. al. (S.F.); Outsider, ed. John Edgar Webb (New Orleans; Tucson); Renaissance, ed. John Bryan (S.F.)Jan. 1961 levy is released from U.S. Navy in San Diego, goes to Mexico, travels the states, then back to Cleveland. Unable to move back into parents' home, me moves in with Czaban family now living at 3146 W. 90th Street, Cleveland, sleeps in sleeping bag on dining room floor. Heavy reading and early writing period . Playing mentor role, he gives Joanie and Lester Czaban, gives list of great books to read.
1962 –
General: U.S. Embargo of Cuba, John Glenn orbits earth, Mississippi governor bars Black James Meredith from Univ. of Mississippi; Kennedy sends in federal troops. Art: Andy Warhol’s pop art. Broadway: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Films: The Miracle Worker, Birdman of Alcatraz, To Kill a Mockingbird, Lolita, Freud. Television: “Combat,” “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Music: Miles Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” Kingston Trio and Peter, Paul, and Mary folk groups. Fiction: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur. Nonfiction: Theatre of the Absurd by Martin Esslin, Silent Spring, Rachel Carson against insecticides in U.S.. Poetry: Sylvia Plath_, The Colossus and Other Poems_, William Stafford’s Traveling through the Dark.
Altrenative Presses and Magazines Launched: Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts, ed. Ed Sanders (NY).Four Young Lady Poets: Carol Bergé, Barbara Moraff, Rochelle Owens, Diane Wakoski (Totem Press).Cleveland: Cleveland mayor Ralph S. Locher (1962-1967, becomes Common Pleas Judge in 1968).
levy is active in Fenn College Poetry Forum with faculty members Dave French, Lewis Turco and Alberta Turner; he meets Russell Salamon there and they become friends, share walks and talks around Cleveland. Salamon keeps feeding levy books to read.
General: Blacks riot in Birmingham, Alabama after headquarters are bombed, Kennedy sends in troops. Astronaut Gordon Cooper orbits the Earth twice. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas; Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested; Lyndon Johnson takes office as President. Nation mourns death of John F. Kennedy. Music: The Beatles, Joan Baez. Broadway: Ballad of the Sad Café. Films_:_ 8 ½, Hud, The Birds, The Ugly American. Television: “The Fugitive,” “The Lucy Show.” Fiction: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Nonfiction: Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time. Poetry: James Wright’s The Bough Will Not Break.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Change, eds. Ron Loewensohn and Richard Brautigan (S.F.); C, ed. Ted Berrigan (NY); The Poet's Press, ed. Diane DiPrima (NY); City Lights Journal, ed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti (S.F.); Open Space, ed. Stan Persky (S.F.); Rivoli Review, ed. Richard Duerden (S.F.); Renegade Press and Silver Cesspool, ed. d.a. levy (Cleveland).Feb. 1963 levy buys used letterhead hand press, which his brother Jim finds for him, and prints from it at his aunt and uncle’s place in Cleveland; cousins Joan and Lester Czaban (Cuz), and Kent Taylor help run the press. Begins publishing letterpress books from his Renegade Press. February, Books by levy: Fragments of a Shattered Mirror, Variations on Flip, More Withdrawed or Less ; March-May does books by George Robert Beck, Richard Allen Morris, Russell Atkins. May 1963, launches magazine, Silver Cesspool , includes poems by D. r. Wagner, Kent Taylor, Adelaide Simon, Rene Schramm, Russell Atkins, Russell Salamon, Ted Berrigan, Lewis Turco, Kirby Congdon, Wil Inman, Judson Crews. Later publishes Charles Bukowski, Margaret Randall, Ed Sanders, Carole Bergé, Allen Katzman. Renegade Press publishes Selected Poems of Kent Taylor and Cornponetonepome by Carl Heckman.
March, Jim Lowell opens Asphodel Book Store in Old Arcade, 465 Euclid Ave., Cleveland.
June, Levy travels west with Kent Taylor and Alex Poulas…levy says in one poem “in June 1963 (in Mexico) I became a poet…a man stopped hating me because I was an American and listened to me because I was a poet—it left me awed to receive for a few moments the respect my country had denied me.” levy stays 2 weeks in L.A. then hitches home to Cleveland; the other two stay on travel to San Francisco’s North Beach. In August Taylor returns to Cleveland and works at Western Reserve University.
August 1963-May 1964 levy lives with Kent Taylor and Joanie (Czaban) Taylor near University Circle at 10912 Carnegie Ave.
[Russell Salamon and Kent Taylor watching d.a.levy set type for his renegade press books, 1964]
First Kent Taylor, then d.a.levy appear on Cleveland radio show "Poetry Seminar" with host Jaru Billera (Sept.). levy moves in with Kent and Joan Taylor for a couple months, has rage incident where he smashes his painting and collage with a guitar.
1964 –
General: President Johnson calls for a “War on Poverty” and an end to racial discrimination. Blacks riot in Harlem and Brooklyn. Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King, Jr. U.S. bombs North Vietnam. New York World’s Fair motto “Peace through Understanding.” Mass demonstrations against the Vietnam war. LBJ and Barry Goldwater contend for presidency. Hell’s Angels motorcycle groups receive national attention. Beatlemania. Marshall McCluen’s “the medium is the message” theory of art is extolled. Music: Charlie Mingus, Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention introduce jazz to rock music, bossa nova music. Film: Dr. Strangelove, A Hard Day’s Night, Luv Television: “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” Fiction: John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. Nonfiction: Eric Berne’s Games People Play. Poetry:Books by Ted Berrigan, James Dickey, Robert Lowell.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Coyote’s Journal, ed. James Kolled, et. al, (Eugene, OR); Magazine, ed. Kirby Congdon (NY); Notes from Underground, ed. John Bryan (S.F.); Marrahwannah Quarterly, ed. d. a. levy (Cleveland).Cleveland State University established 18 December.
[Apartment, shared with Salamon, top left window. View from window.]
Meets with Adelaide Simon and Russell Atkins, part of Free Lance magazine writers group that meets in Simon’s home at 14112 Becket Rd., Shaker Heights; sleeps on their couch and prints from their basement. He helps edit Free Lance magazine.
Moves in with Russell Salamon on West Side in “grungy garret,” (Descent into Cleveland ) West 22nd Place, near West Side Market above Cleveland Flats and Cuyahoga River. Salamon is working in at Jones and Laughlin Steel Corp. on a work-study program at Fenn College and provides levy with a rent free living space if he will continue to create. “d.a. lived in poverty, partially self-imposed, until his death,” Kent Taylor (zen concrete & etc ). Salamon in relationship with poet and Hiram College student, Grace Butcher; levy in relationship with “Angela” (See Salamon’s Descent into Cleveland). Underground Thought Patrol: levy and friends, D .r. Wagner, Kent Taylor, John Cornilion, John Scott, Geoffrey Cook, Steve Ferguson, Franklin Osinski, T. L. Kryss. levy in deep correspondence with fellow writers and Beat figures, writes Douglas Blazek, “I’m taking methedrine” to keep up with pace of writing and publishing. levy is working on “Cleveland Undercovers” poem. levy keeps 22 rifle on the wall and threatens to kill himself if he begins to write bad poems. Salamon keeps buying levy requested books to keep him going. levy travels to New York City, meets Ed Sanders, and stays with Carol Berg é . They take him to Les Deus M é gots Coffeehouse, 64 East 7th Street,(later at Cafe Le Metro) where levy hear poets read (Paul Blackburn, Dan Saxon, Jack Micheline, William S. Burroughs, et. al). levy gets idea of doing open readings back home in Cleveland. His Renegade Press publishes books by Carol Bergé, Judson Crews, Les Czaban, Allen Katzman, Russell Salamon, Margaret Randall, Dave Rasey, Irene Schramm, Kent Taylor. Silver Cesspool ceases publication, “Marrahwannah Newsletter” evolves into Marrahwannah Quarterly. Levy books published: You Murderers with Your Indifference, 5 Cleveland Prints, Farewell the Floating Cunt. He is included in The Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry (Asphodel Press).
1965 –
General: Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem; 250,000 march in Washington, D.C. against the war. Watts Ghetto riots (34 die). U.S. combat troops land in Vietnam. Ginsberg coins term, “Flower Power” for hippie movement and era. Broadway: Inadmissible Evidence, revival of The Zoo Story. Film: The Pawnbroker, Darling, Dr. Zhivago, Help!, The Agony and the Ecstasy. Music_:_ John Coltrane, Maynard Ferguson, Herb Alpert. Nonfiction: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Reader, Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed on auto industry_._ Poetry: Leroi Jones’ The Dead Lecturer.
Alternative Presses and Magazines Launched: Black Sparrow Press ed. John Martin (Santa Barbara, CA); East Village Other, ed. Allen Katzman (NY); Poet Frank O'Hara is killed in motor accident on Fire Island. WVIZ, Cleveland public television station, begins operation 7 February. F riend Russell Salamon is drafted into military, does alternative service in New Jersey, then New York. Nov. levy with Adelaide Simon, and Kent Taylor do early reading at The Gate in basement of Trinity Cathedral basement, (22nd St. and Euclid). He publishes D.r. Wagner of Niagara Falls, NY…starts correspondence with him, brings him to town to read at The Gate. levy in correspondence with Four Horsemen poet editors of Coach House Press in Toronto, Canada. levy meets Robert Sigmund (rjs) who is running a coffeehouse at Cleveland State University. levy publishes North American Book of the Dead Parts 1 and 2 (Free Lance Press) and Cleveland Undercovers . Levy writing poems and editorials about the city corruption, giving copies of all his works to North Branch of Cleveland Public Library . levy attends readings at "The Cellar" in Kent, Ohio. Renegade Press, now 7 Flowers Press (mimeograph) publishes books by Russell Atkins, Geoffrey Cook, Erik Albercht, Kent Taylor, Russell Salamon, Edwin Morgan, Dom Pierre, Sam Dogin, Susan Cornillon, Allen Katzman, Carl Larsen, Ed Sanders, Thom Sxuter, bpNichol, dagmaR, Carol Bergé, Marguerite Harris. Levy books published: Sleep and 50 Seconds to Blastoff under name Alan Denis; fortuITOns MotHerfucer, Chalchihuitlicue, Aleatory Attempts at Money Making, Got Butter on It.
1966 –
General: Stokley Carmichael elected head of Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. U.S. troops killed in Vietnam 6,358; Vietnamese dead, 77,115. Black Power Movement, Ken Kesey’s San Francisco Trips Festival, National Association of Broadcasters attempts to ban all records containing drug or obscene messages. Jimi Hendrix Experience, electric guitar. Art: Alexander Calder’s Totems. Film: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Georgy Girl, Closely Watched Trains, Blow-up. Fiction: Malamud’s The Fixer. Nonfiction: Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, Truman Capote’s nonfiction-novel, In Cold Blood. Poetry: Books by Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery. Music: The Beatles’ Revolver Album, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Big Brother and the Holding Company, the Grateful Dead, and the whole Psychedelic San Francisco Music scene.
Ed Sanders' Peace Eye Bookstore, E. 10th Ave. C, NY, is busted by the police in a raid for obscenity in his magazine Fuck You / A Magazine of the Arts. ACLU defends Sanders who is proven not guilty courts in "summer of love," 1967.
levy with others organize the “Poets at the Gate ”open reading series at Trinity Cathedral. levy and friends hang out on Euclid Ave. and 115th St. corner: The Well Coffeehouse (11501 Euclid), Continental Theatre (art and foreign films), Adele’s Bar, Stan Heilbrun’s headshop, Mr. Donut, Luxemburg Motel, Scott’s Hardware, Sam Dogan’s Bookspot . July 1, “ Poets at the Gate” reading #3. [d.a.levy reading at the Gate]“Reality Is, / Mister Donut - Luxemburg Motel / Tujaques Bar - Scotts Hardware / Glass & mirror Co. (My friend / still in jail - i dont know how to get him out - thats called / "poets power" - thats how America keeps her poets in line) / Sinclair, Atlantic, Sunoco Gas Stations / more gas stations than restaurants” (from levy's Suburban Monastery Death Poem , 1968) 18-24 July. Hough Race Riots in Cleveland’s Hough area bordering Euclid Ave. and E. 105th St. --fires, arrests, shootings, martial law declared. Oct. levy working part-time at Book Spot to pay for removal of abscessed teeth. He is reading Rimbaud, Camus, Cocteau, Lorca, Artaud, Watts. Suzuki, Paul Reps, Milarepa, studying yoga and telepathy. Levy interviewed on Allen Douglas Exchange radio show KYCA along with friends Rob Eagan, Tod Roy, Jonathan Dworkin (lawyer). Jim Lowell and Aspodel Bookshop moved to 306 Superior Ave., carries levy’s publications and other underground and small press work and first edition modern and contemporary poetry books. (Later Lowell moves to Miles Ave. on Cleveland’s East Side, shares space with wife Tessa’s beauty shop; finally moves out of Cleveland to rural Burton, Ohio.) The Harbor Inn in the Flats becomes gathering place. levy makes trip to New York City and stays with Carol Berge and Allen Katzman. Levy living with common law wife DagmaR (Mara) Ferek (Latvian, graduate of Cleveland Heights High School, "working-class madonna") at 13814 Strathmore Ave. and on Savannah Ave., East Cleveland… just off Euclid Ave. They have Siamese cat, Chen. He often walks down Savannah to Allegheny to Northfield to Euclid Ave. She is working as a waitress, and often does cover art for his publications. Moves with DagmaR to nearby 1744 Wymore St. off of Euclid Ave., nicer apartment in East Cleveland. Nov. 28, secret indictment by the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury, for “publishing and distributing obscene literature.” levy and Kent Taylor and Joan Czsban put on “Midnight Hour” psychedelic dance club ball.
Dec. 1 Cleveland Police seize copies and mimeograph machine; levy moves into apartment with John Scott in Collinwood.["Fugitive Levy" photo credit for this photo in Cleveland
Plain Dealer , 1967]
The Mimeograph Revolution… Levy printing from 7 Flowers press, mimeo editions, uses A.B. Dick mimeograph machine, publishes
Poets at the Gate series and Marrahwannah Quarterly . levy and R. Crumb meet, Crumb then working for American Greeting Cards in Cleveland, begins doing underground comics. levy and D. r. Wagner work together on Tibetan Stroboscope ; 7 Flower Press publishes books by: Kent Taylor, D. r. Wagner, Doug Blazek, Steve Richmond, Joe Nickell, Erik Albrecht, Russell Atkins, Grace Butcher, Joe Walker, Jacob Leed, Roger Sauls, Paul Blackburn, Thom Szuter, Charles Bukowski, George Montgomery, Kay Wood, Matt Schulman levy books published: Plastic Saxophone Found in an Egyptian Tomb, White Light, Cleveland Undercovers, The Great Tibetan Train Robbery Mystery Plan in Color: A Mandala Hernia Word Game, Robert Motherwell, The Puking Pigeon, Great Man Sleeping in a Closet, The North American Book of the Dead Parts 1-5, The Eqyptian Stroboscope (with d. r. wagner), Black Hat at the End of the Bar (with Mara and D. R. Wagner), Cleveland: The Rectal Eye Visions ( Wagner’s press: today: niagara).
1967 –
General: Three astronauts perish in fire in Apollo space craft, Thurgood Marshall is first Black appointed to Supreme Court, War escalates as do protests. Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara resigns. First “Be-In” at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. Art: sculpture of George Segal and Claes Oldenburg. Broadway: The Homecoming and The Birthday Party by Harold Pinter, Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Music: Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heartclub Band, Film: In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, In Cold Blood, Elvira Madigan. Fiction: William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner. Nonfiction: Mailer’s Armies of the Night (on war demonstrations). Poetry: books by Denise Levertov, W. S. Merwin, Anthony Hecht.
Cleveland mayor Carl B. Stokes, first Black American elected to mayor of a major city (1967-1971). First successful coronary artery bypass operation performed at the Cleveland Clinic by Dr. Rene Favaloro. Cuyahoga Community College opens its Metro Campus.
levy and Dagmar living at 14525 Savannah Ave, East Cleveland, near RTA tracks.
Jan. indictment of levy is made pubic and levy and patron book dealer. James Lowell are arrested. levy surrenders in Criminal Court, pleads not guilty. Judge Frank Celebrezze insults levy as poet, asks how much he makes a day; levy answers, “I sell poetry for 89 cents a day.” Judge sets bail at $2500, declares, “Maybe you should charge more than 89 cents.” NY physicist Jack Ullman, art dealer Jasper Woods sets up legal defence fund to pay bails…Levy’s lawyer is Jonathan Dworkin. levy and Taylor do recording for Douglas Blazek to use on Chicago radio. "Levy and Lowell Defence Fund Reading" in Cleveland with Russell Atkins, R.L.Carothers, Jacob Leed, Robert Wallace, Alez Gildzen. Nationally, CIA efforts to infiltrate peace groups and underground presses is exposed in RAMPARTS Feb. 14, 1967. J. Edgar Hoover's list of groups for FBI to investigate is exposed. Oct. 21, 1967, levy friend Ed Sanders and others organize "October '67 Exorcism and March on the Pentagon." Attorney General Ramsey Clark launches IDIU (Interdivisional Information Unit) for surveillance of radical groups and underground presses.[levy and DagmaR and friends outside the Cuyahoga County Courthouse.]
March 28th Levy is arrested again for contributing to the delinquency of 2 minors by reading and distributing literature. Lawyer is Gerald Gold; assistant prosecuting attorney is George Moscarino, John T. Corrigan County Prosecutor. levy is in county jail, 6th floor (mimeograph machine and many of Lowell’s books from Asphodel Book Shop are held). Also arrested are rjs(18) and John Scott (24). Western Reserve University law professors and students conduct picket at Criminal Court Building to free levy; he is to appear the next day (March 30) in Juvenile Court ” March 30, Dick Feagler in
Cleveland Press writes positive article on levy. rjs and T. L. Kryss edit levy’s work and print off 1000 copies on mimeograph machine. “levy had become a hero of underground literature. Our Lenny Bruce. Our Che Guevera” -Blazek (ZC 205). “legalize levy” protest signs. April, Stan Heilbrun (headshop) charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor. May 14, Mother’s Day, Benefit Reading for levy and Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and The Fug, including Ed Sanders and Tuli Fulkenberg. It is moved from Masonic Temple on Euclid to Strosacker Hall on Case Tech’s Campus, because Temple had thought it was for a war veteran. Fellow poets send in money to support levy and Lowell. June 1, after city sanitation charges, The Well Coffeehouse closes down. July 23-28 -- “Glenville Shootout” Cleveland police and Ohio National Guard have shootout with Black Militant group in Cleveland…7 dead, many businesses burned. “Summer of Love,” teenagers move into Euclid Ave. corner, just east of 115th Street.
Sept. 4 - Plain Dealer writes article attacking levy and Kent Taylor as “psychedelic assassinators.” October --poetry sponsor and friend Adelaide Simon dies of cancer. levy continues to publish The Marrahwannah Quaterl y ; launches The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle . Also publishes under Grass Coin Publishing Co. name. 7 Flower Press publishes books by Matt Shulman, W. E. Wyatt, D.r. Wagner, Denis Saint-Eden, Richard Krech, Gene Fowler. Books by levy: Light on, The Old ‘Test, Kibbutz in the Sky Book I and Book II, The Box Lunch Travel-of of Fremont Gulch, James R. Lowell Defense Fund, Lil Blew Book, Vol. I and Vol. II, Poem for Julie, Poetry Survival Fund Booklet (with D.R. Wagner and Grace Butcher), Three Poems by Cleveland Poets (with Kent Taylor and Carl Woideck), Swamp Erie Pipe Dream. Poems and Letter to Allen Katzman (find-us-if-u-can press), Tantric Strobe, Parts 1 & 2 (Ghost Press), Unmailed Letters to Ed Pederson and (The Mysterious) Ann Burgers (Fleye Press), Tombstone As a Lonely Charm Part 1 (Runcible Spoon). .
1968 –
General: Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive in January; Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy each announce candidacy for president. Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis; riots in 100 cities. Civil Rights Act passes; Robert Kennedy is assassinated in California.Yippie Movement is launched by Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Ed Sanders is launched; they lead major resistance at Democratic Convention in Chicago that results in riots; Hubert Humphrey is nominated. Nixon is elected by small margin. Vietnam: U.S. dead at 30,857; Vietnamese at 422,979. Feb. 4, Beat figure Neal Cassady dies of exposure on railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende. Robert Bly uses National Book Award to criticize U.S. intervention in Viet Nam, gives funds to the Resistance, to encourage conscientious objection to war.
Broadway : _The Great White Hope, We Bombed in New Haven, Hair._Music: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, The Fugs, Filmore East and Filmore West rock ballrooms. Film: Faces, Barbarella, Yellow Submarine, Planet of the Apes. Fiction: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Poetry: books by Diane Wakoski, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Richard Brautigan, Ginsberg’s Planet News.
Jan. levy teaches "composition" class at Kent State University. Feb. 20, levy pleads “no contest” on charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors, in exchange for probation, dropping the obscenity charges, and pays $200 fine. U.S. Supreme Court obscenity rulings forced Common Pleas Judge Francis J. Talty to dismiss the charges on levy and Lowell, based on recommendation of assistant prosecutor George Moscarino.Feb. 26, John Scott is sentenced to two years in Cuyahoga County Workhouse for 2 counts of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. August 1968 levy writes and publishes “Suburban Monastery Death Poem” October, levy travels to Madison, Wisconsin to talk with students in Free School, invited by David Wagner and Morris Edelson, writes Madison Poems with collage. R eturns to Cleveland and splits up with common-law wife DagmaR. Ed Sanders tries to convince levy to come to Democratic Convention in Chicago. levy continues to publish The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle and T he Marrahwannah Quarterly.
[d.a.levy 1968]Books by levy:
The Tibetan Stroboscope. Tombstone As a Lonely Charm Part 2 and Part 3 (Runcible Spoon), T he Beginning of a Sunny Dawn: A Short Story (Ghostflower Press), Poem For Beverly (Cold Mountain Publishing), Suburban Monastery Death Poem (Zero Editions), Letter from an Invisible Greek (Quixote Press), Poems (Quixote Press), Zen Concrete (Blewonintmentpress), Prose: On Poetry in the Wholesale Education & Culture System (Gunrunner Press). November 24, after erratic behavior of giving away most belongings and burning copies of his publications; alone in apartment at 1744 Wymore St., levy takes his life, shooting himself in the head with a .22 -calibre ri fle. levy's note to Jim Sorcic of Gunrunner Press: “if you don’t hear from me for a while its ok since time is nonexistent (that’s what my angels tell me when I get impatient. till dec. 1, only—maybe”(sic).
[1744 Wymore St., East Cleveland, where levy and DagmaR lived, and where he shot himself, Nov. 24, 1968]
November 25th body found by friends rjs and Steve Ferguson. Death certificate lists occupation as “Poet.” He had published more than 55 books and 33 issues of magazines. Parents do sentimental interview for Plain Dealer_._
T. L. Kryss and rjs compile a major anthology of levy’s works and letters written in his support and print off 1000 copies on mimeograph machine; this anthology is titled ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak: d. a. levy: a tribute to the man (Ghost Press)
Grave marker of d.a.levy at Whitehaven Cemetery Mayfield Heights, OH
1969 –Cleveland: The Palace Theater, last operating movie house on Playhouse Square, closes 20 July. A burning oil slick on the Cuyahoga River attracts national attention, 22 June. Euclid Beach Amusement Park closes 28 September. Cleveland American Indian Center founded. The Woodstock Festival and Concert (Woodstock, NY). Death of Jack Kerouac.
Books by levy published: The Madison Poems (Quixote Press), Songs for Dead Children (Black Rabbit Press), Red Lady (Para-Shakti Press), Postcard (Ganglia Press), The Beginning of Sunny Dawn: A Short Story (Open Skull Press). Gary Snyder does reading at Kent State University, becomes aware of levy's writings through Alez Gildzen.
1971 -- Serif magazine, Kent State University, Special Collections, ed. by Alex Gildzen, prints essay responses by James Lowell and Gary Snyder.
1972 -- Stone Sarcophagus (Radical America)held at Cleveland’s University Circle … Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland Cinemateque, Cleveland Institute of Art, Barking Spider Tavern, Pentagon Gallery, Coventry Reader_…included film “if i scratch, if i write” by Kon Petrochuk, workshops, recollections and performances by Ed Sanders, Tony Walsh, Steve Ferguson, Ken Warren._
1989 -- March, brother James Levey (changed name spelling) dies.
1991 – Zen Concrete & Etc. ed. Ingrid Swanberg (Madison: Wisconsin, Ghost Pony Press).
1992 – August 31- October 3, Colorado University Art Galleries exhibit, “American Renegades Kenneth Patchen, d.a.levy, D. r. Wagner.”
Journal of Artist's Books, Freeman. Brad, Johanna Drucker, et al., editors. Journal of Artists’ Books #10. JAB, 1998. Offset. On d.a. levy and others.
1999 – The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: The Selected Poetry and Art of d. a. levy. edited by Mike Golden. (NY: Seven Stories Press).
2002 – “Levy Lives: Birthday Bash and Poetry Reading” celebration for d. a. levy, Cleveland, Ohio, coordinated by Mark Kuhar, Cleveland, of deepcleveland.com. 2005 -- Levyfest in Cleveland sponsored by Bottom Dog Press and deepcleveland.com, supported by Cleveland State University Special Collections, Cleveland State University Poetry Center, and Mac's Backs Books with a grant from the Ohio Humanities Council
SOURCES & CREDITS:
Louis Gordon and Alan Gordon. America Chronicle: Six Decades of American Life 1920-1980. NY: Atheneum, 1987.
Mike Golden, ed. The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: The Art and Poetry of d. a. levy, with an investigative essay “Portrait of a Young Man Trying to Eat the Sun.” NY: Seven Stories Press, 1999.
Ingrid Swanberg, ed. zen concrete & etc. by d. a. levy. Madison, WI: Ghost Pony Press, 1991.
“A Cultural Chronology of Early Beat Generation Literature,” by Larry Smith. http://members.aol.com/lsmithdog/bottomdog/EarlyBeatGenerationLiterature1.htm
d.a. levy PUBLICATIONS, Bibliography compiled by Kent Taylor and Alan Horvath
http://www.thing.net/\~grist/ld/dalevy/lev-b-p.htm
Thanks for support from Cleveland State University’s Special Collections division.
Thanks for input on this goes to: Mark Kuhar, Marcus Williamson, Russell Salamon, Joanne Cornelius, Tom Kryss, Ingrid Swanberg, rjs, Grace Butcher, Joanie (Czaban) Kinney...
Lsmithdog@aol.com To make additions and/or corrections.
Some Links to Levy and Mimeograph Revolution
d.a.levy homepage
deepcleveland - Junkmail Oracle -
d.a.levy link to checklist of works
Bottom Dog Press homepage
Tracing the Places of d.a. levy.
(photos and text).
Cleveland State University d.a.levy Collection