Charles Plymell

Last updated
Charles Plymell
Charles Plymell by Andrew Roberts.jpg
Plymell, 2017
BornCharley Plymell
(1935-04-26) April 26, 1935 (age 89)
Holcomb, Kansas, United States
Occupationpoet, publisher, author
Literary movement Postmodernism, Underground Comix

Charles Plymell (born April 26, 1935, in Holcomb, Kansas) is a poet, novelist, and small press publisher. Plymell has been published widely, collaborated with, and published many poets, writers, and artists, including principals of the Beat Generation.

Contents

He has published, printed, and designed many underground magazines and books with his wife Pamela Beach, a namesake in avant-garde publishing. He published former prisoner Ray Bremser and Herbert Huncke, whom he identified with from the hipster 1950s. He was influential in the underground comix scene, first printing Zap Comix artists such as Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson, whom he first published in Lawrence, Kansas.

Plymell received a citation for being a distinguished poet by Governor Joan Finney of Kansas and was cited in the 1976 World Book Encyclopedia as a most promising poet.

Biography

Early life

Charley Douglass Plymell was born in Finney County, Kansas during the worst dust storms of that time. He was born in a converted chicken coop near Holcomb. His grandfather, Charley Plymell, was deeded a homestead in Apache Palo lands by President Grover Cleveland. The stage line began in Plymell, a few miles south of Garden City where now stands the Plymell Union Church and Pierceville-Plymell Elementary School. Like many, his face was covered by wet rags as his mother went out to shoot jackrabbits and gather cacti for meals.[ citation needed ]

His father and mother were later divorced, and his father bought a home for Charles and his sisters so they could attend school in Wichita while his father traveled. In Wichita in the 1950s Plymell dropped out of his first year at Wichita North High School, lied about his age, traveled the western states in a new car his father bought him, working on pipelines, dams, factories and riding bareback broncs and Brahma bulls in rodeos.

Returning to Wichita he became a hipster, taking peyote, marijuana, and benzedrine, the drugs of the day. He listened to jazz, R&B, and “Race music” across the tracks in Wichita. He worked at factories and took courses at Wichita State University. Allen Ginsberg credited him with creating the "Wichita Vortex." [1] Plymell's Vortex in his own words does not relate to Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" but took place west of Wichita near the center of the U.S. at Space Needle Crossing in the Chalk Pyramids. His Vortex is spiritual/mythical and based on when he heard the Voice of the Game Lord, which he later authenticated through his mentor and influence, Loren Eiseley. His other influences included Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, Robert Ronnie Branaman, and Samuel Coleridge. He did not meet the Beats until 1963 when associated with Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. His Vortex is written about in his Tent Shaker Vortex Voice. Before that he considered himself a hipster and outsider.

Career

Plymell moved to a quiet Russian neighborhood in 1962 at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. [2] After the neighborhood filled with hippies and was taken over, Plymell moved to a famous flat, 1403 Gough Street. It was there at Plymell's LSD party that the Beats met the Hippies. Promptly Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady moved in with him where Plymell played Bob Dylan to Ginsberg for the first time. [3] It was during that time Plymell made two films that were shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and his collages, which opened at the "Batman Gallery" where fellow Wichitans Bob Branaman and Bruce Conner had shown. Plymell's show sold out except for a few pieces that ended up in Australia. Billy "Batman" Jahrmarkt gave Plymell his classic 1951 MGTD. [4] His work Robert Ronnie Branaman, published in 1964, is credited with being an early example of underground comix. [5]

Recently Plymell's book Benzedrine Highway was published by Norton Records/Kicks Books. He has been writing poems used as songs by Andrea Schroeder (Berlin); Mike Watt & Sam Dook (U.K.) They recently[ when? ] featured one of his songs on their CUZ tour. He has also written songs for Clubberlanggang, and is working on a book with his poems for Neal Cassady and Bob Branaman put to rockabilly by Bloodshot Bill of Norton Records.

Plymell holds an M.A. Degree in Arts and Sciences from Johns Hopkins University. [6]

Books

Discography

Anthologies

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Allen Ginsberg</span> American poet and writer (1926–1997)

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with Lucien Carr, William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Generation. He vigorously opposed militarism, economic materialism, and sexual repression, and he embodied various aspects of this counterculture with his views on drugs, sex, multiculturalism, hostility to bureaucracy, and openness to Eastern religions.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Kerouac</span> American writer (1922–1969)

Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac, known as Jack Kerouac, was an American novelist and poet who, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, was a pioneer of the Beat Generation.

Pull My Daisy is a 1959 American short film directed by Robert Frank and Alfred Leslie, and adapted by Jack Kerouac from the third act of his play, Beat Generation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Beat Generation</span> Literary movement

The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-World War II era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generationers in the 1950s, better known as Beatniks. The central elements of Beat culture are the rejection of standard narrative values, making a spiritual quest, the exploration of American and Eastern religions, the rejection of economic materialism, explicit portrayals of the human condition, experimentation with psychedelic drugs, and sexual liberation and exploration.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Cassady</span> American writer (1926–1968)

Neal Leon Cassady was a major figure of the Beat Generation of the 1950s and the psychedelic and counterculture movements of the 1960s.

<i>Visions of Cody</i> 1972 novel by Jack Kerouac

Visions of Cody is an experimental novel by Jack Kerouac. It was written in 1951–1952, and though not published in its entirety until 1972, it had by then achieved an underground reputation. Since its first printing, Visions of Cody has been published with an introduction by Beat poet Allen Ginsberg titled "The Visions of the Great Rememberer."

<i>Hydrogen Jukebox</i> Chamber opera by Philip Glass and Allen Ginsberg

Hydrogen Jukebox is a 1990 chamber opera featuring the music of Philip Glass and the work of beat poet Allen Ginsberg. Its name is taken from a phrase coined by Ginsberg, from his 1955 poem Howl.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Clellon Holmes</span> American novelist

John Clellon Holmes was an American author, poet and professor, best known for his 1952 novel Go. Considered the first "Beat" novel, Go depicted events in his life with his friends Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and Allen Ginsberg. He was often referred to as the "quiet Beat" and was one of Kerouac's closest friends. Holmes also wrote what is considered the definitive jazz novel of the Beat Generation, The Horn.

<i>Desolation Angels</i> (novel) 1965 novel by Jack Kerouac

Desolation Angels is a semi-autobiographical novel written by Beat Generation author Jack Kerouac, which makes up part of his Duluoz Legend. It was published in 1965, but was written years earlier, around the time On the Road was in the process of publication. The events described in the novel take place from 1956-1957. Much of the psychological struggle which the novel's protagonist, Jack Duluoz, undergoes in the novel reflects Kerouac's own increasing disenchantment with the Buddhist philosophy. Throughout the novel, Kerouac discusses his disenchantment with fame, and complicated feelings towards the Beat Generation. He also discusses his relationship with his mother and his friends such as Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, Lucienn Carr and William S. Burroughs. The novel is also notable for being a relatively positive portrayal of homosexuality and homosexual characters, despite its use of words that were at the time considered homophobic slurs.

Carolyn Elizabeth Robinson Cassady was an American writer and associated with the Beat Generation through her marriage to Neal Cassady and her friendships with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and other prominent Beat figures. She became a frequent character in the works of Jack Kerouac.

<i>Wholl Stop the Rain</i> 1978 film by Karel Reisz

Who'll Stop the Rain is a 1978 American crime war film directed by Karel Reisz and starring Nick Nolte, Tuesday Weld, Michael Moriarty, and Anthony Zerbe. It was released by United Artists and produced by Herb Jaffe and Gabriel Katzka with Sheldon Schrager and Roger Spottiswoode as executive producers. The screenplay was by Judith Rascoe and Robert Stone, based on Stone's novel Dog Soldiers (1974), the music score by Laurence Rosenthal, and the cinematography by Richard H. Kline. The movie was entered in the 1978 Cannes Film Festival.

<i>The Fall of America: Poems of These States</i> 1973 poetry collection by Allen Ginsberg

The Fall of America: Poems of These States, 1965–1971 is a collection of poetry by Allen Ginsberg, published by City Lights Bookstore in 1973, for which Ginsberg shared the annual U.S. National Book Award for Poetry. It is characterized by a prophetic tone inspired by William Blake and Walt Whitman, as well as an objective view characterized by William Carlos Williams. The content is more overtly political than most of his previous poetry with many of the poems about Ginsberg's condemnation of America's actions in Vietnam. Current events such as the Moon Landing and the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the death of Che Guevara, and personal events such as the death of Ginsberg's friend and former lover Neal Cassady are also topics. Many of the poems were initially composed on an Uher Tape recorder, purchased by Ginsberg with the help of Bob Dylan.

Richard William McBride was an American beat poet, playwright and novelist. He worked at City Lights Booksellers & Publishers from 1954 to 1969.

"Wichita Vortex Sutra" is an anti-war poem by Allen Ginsberg, written in 1966. It appears in his collection Planet News and has also been published in Collected Poems 1947-1995 and Collected Poems 1947-1980. The poem presents Ginsberg as speaker, focusing on his condemnation of the Vietnam War. It features imagery of the war and America's Heartland interspersed with news reports and cultural references. It is also written in Ginsberg's distinctive Whitman-like long-prose style.

Justin W. Brierly was an American educator and lawyer. Born to a Colorado pioneer family and educated at Columbia and the University of Denver Law School, he was noted in his work in secondary education for his efforts to place students into prominent universities, and as a patron of the performing arts in Colorado. He is also remembered for his association with Beat Generation icons Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac.

The Last Times was a tabloid underground newspaper published in San Francisco in 1967 by beatnik poet and printer Charles Plymell. It lasted only two issues, but included work by William Burroughs, Claude Pelieu, Allen Ginsberg, and Charles Bukowski.

<i>Move Under Ground</i> 2004 novel by Nick Mamatas

Move Under Ground is a horror novel mashup by American writer Nick Mamatas, which combines the Beat style of Jack Kerouac with the cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. It is available as a free download via a Creative Commons license, CC BY-NC-ND 2.5 according to the License information in the CC version of the book.

Claude Pélieu was a French poet, translator and artist. He lived in France until 1963, when he moved to the United States, where he spent most of the rest on his life.

Al Hinkle was a childhood friend of Beat Generation icon Neal Cassady who was the inspiration for the character of Ed Dunkel in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road. In December 1948 Hinkle contributed $100 to the down payment on the 1949 Hudson automobile that Cassady drove across the United States, the journey memorialized in Kerouac’s novel. He was also the real life inspiration for characters in two other Kerouac books: Slim Buckle in Visions of Cody and Ed Buckle in Book of Dreams.

Haldon Chase, often referred to as "Hal Chase", was a Denver-born archaeologist, who was known for his archaeological research on several rock art sites at Colorado. Outside the field of archaeology, he was best known as part of the earliest Beat circle.

References

  1. Ginsberg, Allen. Introduction to Apocalypse Rose by Charles Plymell (Auerhahn Press, 1966): "Plymell and his friends inventing the Wichita Vortex contribute to a tradition stretching back....”
  2. Holder, Doug (June 8, 2008). "Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene: YOU ARE COMMONLY KNOWN AS A BEAT POET. IS THIS A FAIR CHARACTERIZATION?: INTERVIEW WITH CHARLES PLYMELL". Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene. Archived from the original on November 22, 2023. Retrieved August 7, 2024.
  3. Ginsberg quote from the Martin Scorsese documentary film about Dylan, No Direction Home.
  4. Plymell, Charles. Kansa, Land of the Wind People.
  5. Kennedy, Jay. The Official Underground and Newave Comix Price Guide. Boatner Norton Press, 1982.
  6. Philadelphia Area Archives. Charles Plymell manuscripts. Philadelphia Area Archives, 1970-79.

Interviews