The overwhelming number of comics, little magazines, books, posters, and all sorts of poetry and radical literature that Charles Plymell has printed during the last half-century — including the first issue of my San Francisco EARTHQUAKE in 1967 — is too many to count.
All that time he was writing inspired poetry and prose of his own and having it published by a flock of small presses: Apocalypse Rose (Auerhahn Press); Neon Poems (Atom Mind Publications); The Last of the Mocassins (City Lights Books; and Mother Road Publications); The Trashing of America (Kulchur Foundation); Reefer Madness in the Age of Apostasy (Butcher Shop Press); Hand on the Doorknob (Water Row Books); In Memory of My Father (Cherry Valley Editions); Song for Neal Cassady and Bennies From Heaven (12 Gauge Press); Eat Not Thy Mind (Eye Books Ecstatic Peace Library); Animal Light and Planet Chernobyl (Engstler Verlag); Tent Shaker Vortex Voice (Bottle of Smoke Press); Benzedrine Highway (Kick Books); Incognito Ergo Sum (Ragged Lion Press); and, you gotta believe it, too many more to list.
Now in old age — he turns 89 today — having poured his thoughts into emails by the thousands (a choice selection of which was published last year, entitled Keyboard Intercourse) — Plymell is getting significantly renewed attention for his poetry with the release of Over the Stage of Kansas: New & Selected Poems 1966-2023, by Bottle of Smoke Press (edited and with a foreword by Gerard Malanga). To celebrate the book, Plymell will give a reading on May 18 in Hudson, New York. It’s bound to be a grand occasion.
