Beschreibung
Theresa Stern was the visionary child of Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell, born out of late night conversation and urgent invention attributable to what Hell describes as 'what we did instead of watch TV (we didn't own one) when we were talked out and not wrapped up in reading.' The character they chose to create was far more interesting than anything television had to offer---and Theresa was born, their decision: on October 27,1949 to a German Jewish father and a Puerto Rican mother in Hoboken, NJ. She'd later be published in Buffalo Stamps and Shot Books, but the first poem that Stern wrote was "Ode to Mr. Sackin", arriving out of a multiplicity in interests for the artists, a harmonic convergence of influence that the two seized---Warhol's factory and character environs, free jazz, literature and urban decay, the New York Dolls. The poetry itself was influenced by French/Argentine Isidore Ducasse and the surrealist modernity of Bill Knott, in whom both poets saw as actively crafting the perceptible, unfiltered landscape in which the androgynous Stern could flourish. Even Stern herself was a composite of both artists, according to Hell, 'I arranged for a friend I'd met at an office job, Charlotte Deutsch, to take pictures for the author's headshot. I got her to put identical makeup on Tom and me, we took turns wearing a big black wig, and she shot us each from exactly the same distance and angle so I could superimpose the negatives for the portrait. Thersa looked a bit hard but unashamed.' The resulting book Wanna Go Out? completed Stern's identity and the last words on the book completed the mystery, 'Like myself, my poetry is so alive it stinks.' The publisher, Dot Books, was Hell's venture as well, craving a medium akin to City Lights pocket poets series, seeking to make poetry exciting like rock 'n' roll, glamorous and fast, easy to try, with a telegraphic style. The style was all Andrew Wylie whose idea it was 'to model the book's appearance on mass market paperbacks. We printed the book at that standard size and with a glossy cover and other signifiers indicating it belonged on a rack in a drug store or an airport, rather than in a literary bookstore where it'd be hidden in the back with the other small-press consignments. . Perfect-bound in pictorial paper wrappers, 4 1/8" x 6 7/8", 32 pp. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 2551
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