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“I beg.”

“I beg” . . . answers d.a. levy to a caller’s question on the Alan Douglas show in 1968, asking “What does he do for a living?” 

“I beg,” and Douglas adds, “His teeth showed, his incisors came out and he looked fierce for a moment, but that’s the answer:”

“I beg.”

Reborn as a poet in an industrial society,¹ Darryl Allen Levy was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on October 29, 1942 to Caroline and Joseph Levy, a shoemaker who settled in Cleveland after moving from England.² Though his mother was Christian and his father Jewish, levy’s cousin Joan Czaban Kinney explains that he refused to be bar mitzvahed because “his father was paying dues to retain his seat at each synagogue service.”³ With this discovery at twelve years old, levy became a “book-climber,” and began learning about other religious traditions, particularly Mahayana Buddhism and Egyptian ritual. He also took on an interest in international literature and U.S. history, with a keen interest in the local history of Ohio and Cleveland. Critical of both of his parents’ traditions, levy addresses his father as he recounts his true religious education:

I don’t think he knew who i was

perhaps even asking if i was really his son

that was 1948  –  it is now 1968 and i know

he is watching a football game on television

in another city  –  his grey hair

  his sad eyes

and he is probably still wondering if i

am really his son

what father wants to admit that his 

son really is a ‘poet’ . . . 

my father and i 

went to visit a temple to hear

the services 

      sat down in time 

      to hear that haunting

      language just for a moment 

when someone told us we had to stand in the

back  –  we had chosen ‘reserved seats’

seats that had been paid for 

we left & it was thus i completed 

my external jewish education

my father was right

we never visited another temple

& now i wonder how many jews are

destroyed in this country each year

my father with his lonely eyes

trying to return home

only to have the american god of money

slapped in his face

when we left it was as if

he passed the message on to me  –

‘there are no jews left in this place’

and i spent years 

trying to fill that

hungry space denied me⁴

From his birth to his high school years, levy’s family moved frequently across the West Side of Cleveland, from the Detroit Shoreway, to Parma, Old Brooklyn, and Bay Village. In 1960, levy graduated from James Ford Rhodes High School with average to poor grades. This year his family moved from Cleveland’s Old Brooklyn to Bay Village, where for a short time they were neighbors with the Czabans. levy began spending nights in Cleveland and hitchhiking.⁵ Brought to Juvenile Court when his mother involved the police, levy was forced to either spend time in jail or join the military. Enlisting in the Navy as a medic beginning in the summer of 1960, levy spent seven months based in San Diego at the San Diego Naval Training Center, until he was discharged in January 1961 for “manic depressive tendencies” and failure to participate in drills.⁶ Russell Salamon explains that, inspired by the author Alfred Jarry who deserted the French military, levy performed episodes to ensure his discharge. He would never return to military service or further attend school. When asked by a college student why he did not further his education, levy replied: “… they didn’t have the courses I wanted . . . I told him I wanted to study angels.”⁷ On the subject of his schooling, levy dedicates a poem to his future mentor, publisher, and painter Richard Allen Morris, GREAT MAN SLEEPING IN A CLOSET:

1. 

the first time i met my 

teacher . . we talked about zen

neither of us knew anything . . 

it was good.

2. 

one day i took a drawing to 

my teacher & asked him if it

was any good. He said “I 

don’t know, is it good?”

3. 

when i asked my teacher

how to become a great poet

or a great painter, he replied

“Paint & Write.”

4. 

when my teacher told me to

go to school & study . . . . . I 

went to the same school he

did. 

when someone asks to see my diploma . . i point to the sky⁸

Being compelled by the court to join the Navy was not his first legal excursion and neither would it be his last. In THE PRAPS I SERIES, levy describes his early experimentation with drugs, smoking English Ovals at the age of nine, drinking everything he could including absinthe, and . . . poetry, in which he found the same brain-eating green high. He first writes of the decision to take his life:

. . . like a virus  –  poetry

a noble death / as long

as we all agree on death

as the last bodily

experience)

decided to commit suicide

at the age of 17  since i

had experienced everything

of note that was legal

Here, levy also recounts his time in high school and career as an “apprentice shoplifter preparing for a life in the real world.” Already before graduation, before his experiences in the Navy, and before all the resistance he would face as a publisher, he was world-wearied enough, or as his mentor Russell Atkins would write World’d Too Much. levy’s cousin Joan recalls how he asked her to choose a tree to grow with, fatefully relating that the tree he chose was soon after struck by lightning.⁹ And yet he maintained his faith in life, poetry acting both as his severance and thread to life. He writes of his fatal decision after a judge barred him from civil society: “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.” He continues in “praps i (three)” both asking of us and making a demand:

try to steal love

in a shopping center

its like trying 

to be 

         a poet ‘with yr

own style’ so sumone

will notice you

the schools were wrong

i tried to tell them

you cant teach people

how to be human beings

idealists 

& then

toss them out into

the real world of dogs

the thing is whether

to correct the mistake 

in education/ 

         or correct

the real world 

they will of course

fail again & change 

the education system¹⁰

The result is just as disastrous in seeking to become a poet through education, any education other than life itself. During his time in the Navy and travels from late 1959 to 1962, levy began mailing typed poems in his letters to close friend Carol Jedlinsky.¹¹ However, rather than returning home from San Diego, he crossed the border into Mexico. He only definitively returned to live in Cleveland by June 1963. During the intervening years, levy stayed with his parents and cousins infrequently, traveling both alone and with friends to California, Chicago, Washington, Pittsburgh, New York City, and beyond. In a preface to Cleveland undercovers, which he began writing in 1964, he explains: “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…the respect my country had denied me.”¹² During this time, levy began correspondence with Richard Allen Morris, whom he had met in San Diego at Balboa Park and with whom his early printmaking and painting share a great resemblance. levy explains his early publishing motivations and the Cleveland literary scene in his periodical Marrahwannah Quarterly:

     the art patrons went to Europe and New York to buy their paintings . . . they let the poets die . . . they killed their own artists with indifference & apathy & sick laughter. anyone worth anything left or went under. 

     Before . . . this form of slow death . . . could kill me i planned to change it. it was feb. 63 when i had enough money to buy a 6 x 9 letterhead hand press & type. spent almost a year at my aunt & uncle’s printing, sometimes 8 to 16 hours a day for days and days (playing “The Man with the Golden Arm” & some old 78’s; Peggy Lee, Jack Teagarden, Dexter Gordon over & over while i worked). some of the hippy high school kids who think i’m hip don’t realize i’ve worked my ass off for the past 3 years to change the literary reputation of Cleveland.¹³ 

Recalling levy’s first three books with that small Washington letterpress under the name Renegade Press—More Withdrawn or Less, Variation on Flip, and Fragments of a Shattered Mirror¹⁴—Russell Salamon remembers that he destroyed most copies.¹⁵ levy was often dissatisfied with much of his own work, perhaps dedicating a greater share of his energies to publishing others, though he did print his own poetry. Bookseller Jeff Maser explains that “levy led an itinerant life…stay[ing] with friends and family members for short periods of time” or hitchhiking to California, Wisconsin, and New York, “but to Cleveland he always returned.”¹⁶ In his essay “d.a.levy’s Parables of Local Necessity and Universal Decentralization,” publisher and poet Karl Young notes that levy defined his era by this “repeated insistence on staying in Cleveland.”¹⁷ Poet and editor of Bottom Dog Press Larry Smith further emphasizes how his commitment to Cleveland was relentless and his work remains irrevocably bound to the city and its people to this day. 

levy’s return was formative for the aims of his writing, and he quickly made connections to the greater Cleveland literary scene. From 1963 to 1964, he frequently participated in the FreeLance magazine workshops alongside the Fenn College Poetry Forum, meeting poets Adelaide Simon, Russell Atkins, Kent Taylor, Alberta Turner, Lewis Turco, Russell Salamon, and others.¹⁸ In April 1963, James Lowell opened the Asphodel Book Shop, first housed in Cleveland’s Old Arcade across from the main branch of the Cleveland Public Library, though over the decades it would be continually displaced. Named after William Carlos Williams’ poem of the same name, the store was located on no less than the fourth floor of the Arcade and its address (465 Euclid Ave.) became the title of levy’s first anthology of local poets.¹⁹ In his essay “Cleveland Concrete,” poet and scholar karl kempton illustrates how “the Atkins and Simon Free Lance Salon, The Asphodel Bookstore, levy and Taylor and the younger poets they mentored, all gave birth to the unpredictable Cleveland Renaissance. Its roots may be traced to librarian Helen Collins who founded The Free Lance Poetry and Prose Workshop in 1942. Russell Atkins was a charter member . . . with Adelaide Simon as co-editor. It was one of the more important Black avant-garde publications in the country. Independent, it was not beholden to any school of literature.”²⁰ With cross-generational participation in FreeLance and the opening of the Asphodel, Cleveland had an environment conducive to not only reading and discussion, but also for literary production and distribution.

The Asphodel carried perhaps the most diverse collection of new publications in all of North America, connecting levy and other Clevelanders to publishers and their editors across North America and worldwide. Developing a close relationship, Lowell began to sell levy’s publications as well as other Cleveland poetry and periodicals, such as Loring and Alice Crane Williams’ American Weave. Cleveland publishers, however, existed among a greater constellation of North American publishers, many  circling the Great Lakes, such as Douglas Blazek’s Ole & Open Skull (Chicago), Morris Edelson’s Quixote Press (Madison), James Sorcic’s Kaleidoscope (Milwaukee), Ed Burton and Sorcic’s Gunrunner (Milwaukee), D. R. Wagner’s niagara : press : now (Niagara, later Runcible Spoon in Sacramento), Harvey Brown’s Frontier Press (Buffalo), and many others. Internationally there were those such as bpNichol’s Gr0nk (Toronto, Canada) and bill bissett’sblewointment (Vancouver, Canada).²¹ From these publications levy and others formed a network of correspondents and contributors for their own publications. As Kent Taylor comments: “The role of the Asphodel was of paramount importance to our emergence as writers. The availability of small press publications enabled us to better determine which magazines were most suitable for our manuscript submissions. Jim’s frequent catalogues with their listings of our books and local periodicals helped to spread the word that something exciting was happening in Cleveland. Visiting authors invariably dropped by the Asphodel, often making a stop in the city solely to see Jim and his shop. He opened the door to the outside world for us.” Cleveland’s publishers were now linked into a worldwide network of correspondence through the Asphodel, but for levy and many of his friends, the daily realities of Cleveland remained the focus of their work.

Reminiscing about Cleveland’s literary scene, Taylor expresses how Lowell’s Asphodel Book Shop was the “nerve center — a literary conduit” for Cleveland poets in addition to the Fenn College Poetry Forum and the Free Lance Workshops—but levy as a publisher and poet acted as an incomparable and immaterial catalyst. A significant periodical of the time was the Grove Press Evergreen Review, where levy and his friends were introduced to work in translation, like Pataphysician and playwright Alfred Jarry. Through these channels, levy formed a sense of the local Cleveland and Ohio literary tradition with writers, such as Kenneth Patchen, Hart Crane, Sherwood Anderson, and Langston Hughes. He also gained a vision of international literature and began building relationships with bookstores and other publishers. In Cleveland undercovers, levy names Lowell “his majesty/of poetry in cleveland/..the most honorable James Lowell King of Small Flowers.” While the availability of small press publications at the Asphodel “introduced [poets] to each other and encouraged…creative endeavors,” Taylor emphasizes the necessity of how levy urgently published and publicized local writers.²² 

Over the next few years the book shop shifted further and further from the city center, management at the Arcade first forcing the shop to move because of “undesirable customers,” then from a storefront in a cooperative art gallery near Public Square, the shop took refuge beside wife Tessa Lowell’s beauty parlor on Miles Avenue, and, finally, the Asphodel took its final flowering in the couple’s home twenty miles east of Cleveland.²³ Through all of its transformations James Lowell championed levy’s work and that of all Cleveland publishers. After all, it was at the Asphodel that levy edited and Lowell himself printed THE CLEVELAND MANIFESTO OF POETRY, which gathered “principles behind the writings of 6 Cleveland poets,” including Atkins, Salamon, Simon, Jau Billera, Taylor, and levy himself. While he would later write at a greater intensity in the collaborative PARA-CONCRETE MANIFESTO, here levy contributes three aims that would continue to guide his writing and publishing throughout his life:

(1) To write surface poems with the appearance of artificial flowers in order to communicate with persons by forcing them to resort to instinctive methods of understanding . . . 

(2) To return poetry to humanity by removing it from the world of the academic historian, and the world of the machine and the world of the academic historian machine . . . 

(3) To create new myths, madness and mass from the contemporary waste of intellectual energy . . .²⁴

And with this energy levy pressed on with a focus on local authors and periodicals. Taylor explains: “The actual printing, laborious and time-consuming, was sometimes a group effort. We set type, printed—laid in each page by hand, pulled the handle, removed the page—collated, and even carved “woodcuts” using linoleum. Excitement crackled in the air as book after book emerged, handmade works of love. We often relaxed over pots of tea in Chinese restaurants, conversing intensely. levy worked amazing hours in a surge of energy, frequently all night and well into the next day.” levy’s first major act of publication would seem to mirror that of Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard’s with the simultaneous publication of three books; Kierkegaard began his career as an author by polemically reviewing Hans Christian Andersen’s Only a Fiddler, and, as noted by Taylor, levy began as a publisher by printing business cards for his uncle, Mr. Czaban. Every author and printmaker, unassumedly, takes a leap into public life.

Leaving his aunt’s in 1963 on the condition he continued to create, levy began to live itinerantly among friends. First, he lived with Adelaide and Martin Simon at their home in Shaker Heights (14112 Becket Rd.) where he helped as Arts Editor for the FreeLance, while also doing print work of his own such as the Cleveland Prints, Polluted Lake Series, and the Ohio City Series. While the Simons gave him all the space and materials he needed, and levy collaborated with Adelaide on her book Permit Me Voyage, husband and cellist of the Cleveland Orchestra Martin Simon would not permit levy to keep his rifle in their home. As unsettling as his instruments are in their urgent simplicity, Martin emphasizes how levy kept two cherished possessions throughout his life: a rifle and a printing press.²⁵ His working relationship between the rifle and the printing press characterizes best what Russell Atkins describes as levy’s violent fluctuations between helplessness and independence. Although the letterpress may have never moved on, by September levy had moved in with his cousin Joan and Taylor at the couple’s apartment in the University Circle area. This arrangement, however, would only last until spring 1964 when Taylor and Joan moved, and after levy had taken “furious baseball swings” with his guitar, destroying one of his own large paintings (“Storm”) and tearing holes in their wall—though he later restored and inscribed the painting as restitution to Taylor.²⁶ This destructive act and his insistence on keeping a firearm could be used to characterize levy as unstable, but this may speak more to his relationship with art, that tenuous thread between birth and death, that venturous edge between aim and expression along which every act of creation requires its own overcoming. 

levy then began living with Salamon until late 1965 near the West Side Market. While the building was nearly condemned and perfuse with the smell of neglected cats from a tenant below,²⁷ Salamon’s apartment overlooked the Cuyahoga river and the Flats, perhaps providing levy with the opening scenery of Cleveland undercovers.²⁸ Salamon illustrates one of his and levy’s walks together: “He showed me Cleveland, the actual Cleveland. The Flats were a microcosm of the universe. He imagined frescoes were painted under the bridges . . . He showed me lost places, pools of stopped time where . . . Cleveland fell out of the gloomy steel mill smog of daily bread and suffering into some other stream of jewels, something lovely and familiarly strange, the rips in the excursion boat up the polluted Cuyahoga were ascents to an Acropolis of daylight, a fine fire of playful minds; not just dirty isness, but what could be and probably is, beyond the struggle of problems to keep bodies fed and children growing in a culture of receding wisdom.”²⁹ Although he made less than $400 a year, Salamon illustrates how levy would constantly be busy reading and printing in the living room—sometimes eighteen hours a day. 

Here, levy began publishing a periodical of haiku and prints The Silver Cesspool as well as early issues of The Marrahwannah Quarterly, and notably some of the first books published by authors, such as Ed Sanders’ KING LORD/QUEEN FREAK, Charles Bukowski’s Genius of the Crowd, and Margaret Randall’s Poems of the Glass.³⁰ In addition to publishing others, levy also began drafting his first two book-length poems of his own, Cleveland undercovers as well as early sections of THE NORTH AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD.³¹ 

Often providing him with books, Salamon notes that one day levy said he only had six more books to read (“2,897 so far”) before he would commit suicide in the lotus position with a rifle.³² Whether he traded reading with writing as the basis of his fatal pact or never finished those six books, levy devoted himself more fully to publishing his periodicals. Although he continued to do visual work in many mediums, levy’s painting and prints gave way primarily to poetry reading and writing in addition to his innovative approaches to printmaking and collaging. In the introduction to her collection of poems Permit Me Voyage which levy illustrated with ink drawings, Adelaide Simon notes how his painting had appeared at Import House, Art Colony, Wood Trader Gallery, and Forsythe Gallery, though they are now only accessible in Special Collection Libraries. Concluding her introduction Simon wishes levy “all the fame, without the fate, of Modigliani”—the Italian modernist painter of Jewish heritage who, dying of tuberculosis, indulged in druguse. levy was as critical of his own early work as Modigliani. Atkins explains how his taking up of causes “in some way—too subtle to explain—helped change the political climate of Cleveland. Finally, by 1966, he had achieved a following of his own in poetic circles but with the acceleration of a kind of fatal precipitance.” A precipice that the young writer climbed as much as he fell.

During this period, Douglas Blazek recalls that beyond publishing new material, levy not only read widely but also reprinted authors, often in translation, such as John Woodruff, Arthur Rimbaud, Philip Kapleau, W.Y. Evans-Wentz, Paul Reps, Jean Cocteau, Federico García Lorca, and Jetsun Milarepa.³³ Republished in Ingrid Swanberg’s anthology zen concrete & etc., levy notes some of his readings in a spontaneous bibliography, including Kenneth Patchen’s The Journal of Albion Midnight, Henry Miller’s The Red Notebook, and Guillaume Apollinaire’s Alcools.³⁴ Despite this range of influences, speaking on his limited access to literature, in his SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM levy recalls looking for books at the Cleveland Public Libraries on Tantra, Dada, Buddhism, Egypt, and contemporary poetry, yet finding only “American Propaganda.”³⁵ Though there may be overstatements regarding levy’s autodidact interests and religious education, his study of Buddhist traditions began early,³⁶ developed through discussion with friends, membership in organizations such as Diamond Sangha, support of translation efforts,³⁷ and persisted in his publishing and writing projects. 

In October 1965, levy began working the only job he ever held, a part-time position at Sam Dogan’s Bookspotin University Circle (E. 115th and Euclid), which allowed him to cover the cost of removing abscessed teeth.³⁸ Yet, after covering medical costs, he quit, insistent on making a living with publishing. A pedestrian during the death of the streetcars and reshaping of the city’s face, levy covered what remained of Cleveland, but not alone. Although he lived for a short time with friends and poets Erik (EKA) and Judy Albrecht in East Cleveland, in the late summer of 1966 levy soon began a shared life with Dagmar Ferek, a young Latvian woman whom he met at Bookspot and playfully refers to in his poetry as “Mara.”³⁹ Living together first in Windermere (13814 Strathmore Ave.), Dagmar worked as a waitress at the Crystal-Bar-B-Q (E. 115th & Euclid). Despite levy’s increased efforts with his newspaper, Dagmar’s waitressing provided the couple with their only consistent though consistently short income. Taylor comments: “d.a. lived in poverty, partially self-imposed, until his death. He worked for a while at a used bookstore on the East Side; he received minuscule sums from poetry and his publications; and dagmaR, his common law wife for several years, supported them working as a waitress. Attempting to raise money, he once naively placed a classified ad in one of the Cleveland newspapers seeking a patron.” Taylor adds that “in spite of his chronic poverty, levy was always neat. His only sartorial eccentricity was wearing a long-sleeved shirt and a jacket, even in summer.”⁴⁰ Renting a “$75-a-month apartment,” the couple lived simply, accompanied by levy’s Siamese cats Chenraze and Qua, furnishing their apartment with rugs and a mattress, the only appliances appropriately being an ancient stove and the mimeograph.⁴¹ Although Blazek notes how the couple met at the Bookspot, levy otherwise writes of meeting Dagmar at a church dance:

i just write these

prose? poems? & tell myself 

like i told her when i was

in Milwaukee & our own minds

touched again 

(NO SPACE NO DISTANCE)

maybe it will be better

for the next generation lady

your son 

can read the poems & find out

how we were murdered

for 5,000 years 

let him know 

there was no space for us

except moving or becoming 

invisible 

you can watch the ones who

didn’t move fast enough

they are dying 

& they are called     Poets

people used to be afraid of poets

now they don’t listen anymore

no one even noticed 

you slipped into the anemic church

even more dangerous than the

angel of death  –⁴²

Perhaps more pessimistic than James Baldwin in his concern with the inability of society to produce poets, levy considers the proliferation of poetry throughout society in the dead and unheard forms of the academic historian account and uncritical personal testament.⁴³ While he stopped printing the periodical Silver Cesspool, levy quickly transitioned into nearly monthly issues of The Marrahwannah Quarterly, which would also appear as the infrequent editorial The Marrahwannah Newsletter.⁴⁴ After only three issues of the new magazine with the same letterpress, levy was gifted a mimeograph “and things were never the same again.”⁴⁵ The machine was an A.B. Dick mimeograph and, due to its size, was colloquially known as a ‘belt-buckle’ mimeograph. levy began printing under 7 Flowers Press, though he would often return to print under Renegade Press and other imprints, including Grass Coin, Ayizan, and 400 Rabbit Press, all the while increasing his efforts to publish fellow poets and interrogate his community. While he was able to print beautiful and often quite ornamental editions with his limited access to type on letterpress, levy’s sensibilities as both a writer and publisher were seamlessly met with the mimeograph. Instead of assembling each book page by page, he could now punch stencils directly from his own typewriter and immediately begin printing. 

Karl Young explains how levy explored the unique properties of the mimeograph, such as using reversed stencils, over-inking, and then reprinting over mimeographed pages to achieve text alteration and abstract graphics.⁴⁶ Though he would continue to occasionally print with letterpress, editor of Ghost Pony Press and scholar Ingrid Swanberg notes how the mimeograph suited his style, limited resources, and his “immense energy and sense of immediacy.”⁴⁷ As Blazek exclaims: “Here is a poet who used everything that he laid hands on to help further creativity, poetry, poets & to help make a better world. He used scraps of paper as he would the whole galaxy.”⁴⁸ Already contacting writers personally for material and actively discouraging submissions, with the mimeograph levy could publish material within days, and sometimes within hours. As such, encouraging local authors and drawing from his global peers, levy’s newspapers and press publications cultivated not only a certain style or subject matter, but gave direction to the milieu of small press publishing itself—a direction and an aim which the small press is still attempting to achieve today. Taylor notes: “An inveterate pamphleteer and proselytizer, levy could be sardonically amusing. In August 1963, he printed 18th anniversary Happy Hiroshima Day cards and later he produced stickers reading FUCK SMUT, which we posted throughout Cleveland.” The Marrahwannah Quarterly would last fourteen issues until it would transform into the collaged landscapes of The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle, which developed out of his visual text and concrete works, such as the collaborative project with D.R. Wagner The Egyptian Stroboscope (1966), ZEN CONCRETE (1968), and The Tibetan Stroboscope (1968).⁴⁹ 

Though now firmly rooted to Cleveland, levy hitchhiked to New York City to attend readings at Le Metro, formerly Les Deux Megots, which produced periodicals from the reading materials. Although he may not have performed at these readings, levy met Ed Sanders and Carol Bergé, and may have heard Armand Schwerner, Paul Blackburn, Jerome Rothenberg and others.⁵⁰ In the vein of Le Metro, levy along with rjs and others began organizing poetry readings at The Gate Coffeehouse, a cafe in the basement of Trinity Cathedral (E. 22nd and Euclid) organized by the Cleveland State University Christian Movement with Reverend Ray Micklethun.⁵¹ Micklethun acting as liaison to the church, rjs and J.A. Kosewick acted as a planning committee while levy promoted and moderated the events. At a 1966 Poets at the Gate reading where he introduced levy as competing for Beatnik leadership of Cleveland, rjs vividly remembers his hissing whisper: “you can have your fucking city back,” which later became the title of rjs and Tom Kryss’ anthology of levy’s poetry: UKANHAVYRFUCKINCITIBAK: D.A. LEVY: A TRIBUTE TO THE MAN AN ANTHOLOGY OF HIS POETRY—the only collection of his work that levy helped compile himself.⁵² Following early readings, levy printed issues of POETS AT THE GATE, compiling material from the readings. The first flyer for the readings reads:

This is not intended to be & won’t be a poetry sewing circle. It is both a challenge & a chance to meet the poets of greater Cleveland, Hiram, Youngstown, Oberlin, Akron etc. & those who think they are poets. . . . . Editors of Cleveland Poetry Mags will be there & also the most difficult of audiences—the poets themselves. EVERYONE SEZ IT CANT HAPPEN IN CLEVELAND—well, this is it you apathetic maggots—haul your ass to the Gate for a night of flowers & assassinations.

By late 1966, levy had gathered a fragmentary group of writers and artists locally and internationally around his publishing efforts. While those whom levy published and Lowell distributed did not comprise the entirety of Cleveland’s literary scene, outside the academy, the poets involved between the Asphodel, FreeLance, and levy’s presses were certainly the most actively involved in the community. And from these members an idiosyncratic group of those interested in telepathy also formed: The Underground Thought Patrol or U.T.P. As named by John Scott referring to Frank Zappa’s song “Who Are the Brain Police?,” the group was founded in February 1967 as a means of intercepting and disrupting police activities by way of telepathy. At the Gate, a photograph was taken of the group at the second reading on July 1st, 1966, including members levy, rjs, Wagner, Taylor, John Cornillion, Walter R. Keller, and Carl Woideck. In an interview with Fifth Estate, levy further explains: “The U.T.P. removes people from the scene of an arrest 10 minutes before the arrest is to occur; it’s done through precognition. Every time police are coming I get sick. The U.T.P. does other things, like psychically disorienting police or other fascist aggressors. They forget where they are going or who they were going to arrest. Makes them feel guilty about arresting people. I’ve also been trying to get through to Mayor Locher, but I’m having trouble. He must have someone guarding his mind.” In this ferment from late 1965 throughout 1966, beyond periodicals levy published major books of his own throughout these years, such as Cleveland undercovers, visualized prayers & hymn for the american $god$, Cleveland: The Rectal Eye Visions, and a reprint of THE NORTH AMERICAN BOOK OF THE DEAD.⁵³ 

In the early months of 1967, police conducted raids at Cleveland and Shaker Heights high schools, arresting more than two dozen students for drug charges. levy’s friend John Scott later recalls how he and others were asked for incriminating information on levy. On February 18th, four of the students admitted to their charges, including two who had attended readings at The Gate Coffeehouse, and one of whom co-edited the mimeo-magazine The Weed, from which levy had read and perhaps printed. Erick Trickey reports: “In Fall 1966, soon after a Plain Dealer story on The Gate, six plainclothes narcotics cops came to a reading there. That November—either at the same reading or the next—levy read a poem by Joel Friedman, a 17-year-old from Shaker Heights who was too shy to read it himself.” The poem in question, published in levy’s Cleveland anthology 465, was given also to a 15-year-old Cleveland Heights student Julie Weisberg. In his critical poem A Death in the Life of Julie, levy interrogates how she was compelled to collaborate with the police.⁵⁴

Continuing to publish periodicals and books more fervently than ever, on November 28th, 1967, a Cuyahoga County Grand Jury secretly indicted levy for “publishing and distributing obscene literature.”⁵⁵ This indictment was preceded by testimony from James L. Goddard on September 3rd to Congress that levy and Taylor were members of the Neo-American Church. Taylor explains: “On Labor Day, 1967, while reading the morning paper, I received a shock. A wire service article quoted testimony given by Dr. James L. Goddard, Commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, before the House subcommittee probing the federal effort against crime, Goddard had testified on June 27th that levy and I were advocates of “psychedelic assassinations.” (The testimony was kept secret until September 3rd, when the House Committee on Governmental Operations released it.) The basis of the accusation went back to 1965 when I gave levy two dollars for a membership in the Neo-American Church that named me as “boo hoo of Lakewood” (levy was “boo hoo of Cleveland”).” While Taylor corrected the Plain Dealer, he notes that “levy never bothered to set the record straight . . . wearied from his constant struggle with the bureaucracy.” This testimony sparked federal concern over levy’s activities as a publisher, which Taylor locates with Cleveland’s ‘Subversive Squad’—a term of endearment for local FBI divisions, which in the 1950s began investigating and prosecuting communists and others under the Smith Act, an “anti-subversion” law.⁵⁶ levy addresses the Cleveland Division in KIBBUTZ IN THE SKY  –  BOOK I ( PART 2):

christmas greetings from

the subversive squad in the form of

a secret indictment 

or a social worker with a 

loaf of wonderbread under his arm

(a universal panacea)

all these & more 

the walking deaths 

of a great city 

denied⁵⁷

On December 1st the Cleveland Police raided the Asphodel, arresting Lowell for possession and distribution of obscene literature. They raided levy and Dagmar’s new apartment (14525 Savannah Ave.), seizing his mimeograph and crates of poetry, including books by Atkins, Taylor, Sanders, levy himself, and many others.⁵⁸ While levy was charged with “a fine of $200 to $2,000 or one to seven years in prison or both” and to be held in county jail on a $2,500 bond, Lowell was to be held on a $10,000 bond.⁵⁹ And as the year turned, on January 5th an arrest warrant for levy was issued. Less than a week later, on January 9th, the indictment was made public. Two months after the November indictment, however, levy could not be found by the Cleveland police. After the fourth Gate reading around the time of the indictment, police had followed rjs home to ask about levy’s whereabouts. Misdirecting them, rjs immediately put levy on notice, and he was welcomed at the parents home of his friend John Scott in Collinwood. In KIBBUTZ IN THE SKY  –  BOOK II (PART-TIME EXODUS TO COLLINWOOD) levy describes his departure:

later copies 

of the Kibbutz 

were strategically 

placed on Police Cars

& one rented car

of the Narcops

buttons printed LEVY LIVES

(they were wrong) i died

    the night i 

    left my home

    like a refugee

    my siamese kitten

    under my coat

    his heart beating 

    like a 78 RPM record⁶⁰

Meanwhile, in a room full of televisions on Mandalay Avenue, levy evaded the police and continued to write and publish books, including his PRAPS I SERIES, early sections of TOMBSTONE AS A LONELY CHARM, and KIBBUTZ IN THE SKY, a polemical series of books dedicated to the Cleveland Police Department.⁶¹ He also increasingly collaborated and experimented in publications with Wagner, Kryss, and others. In a preface to Kibbutz in the Sky shared with Lowell levy considers how “HANDS OFF LEVY & LEGALIZE POETRY stickers were printed” and newspaper articles appeared, yet he “was trying to discover who this levy kid was.”⁶² Although the county tried him for obscenity, and the students protested his harassment in favor of free speech, levy, meanwhile, affirmed that his “greatest crime of course, is being poor.” Once he had written and published his reply and those projects he had already planned, levy nonetheless surrendered to his indictment: 

to protect the politzei from any

further embarrassment, i have

decided to turn myself in⁶³

On January 16th, 1968, “wearing his usual denim jacket, levis and motorcycle boots, levy—thin, pale face with long, black, curly hair at only 117 lbs. 5’7’’—was taken by a crowd of cops.”⁶⁴ In an infamous dialogue at trial, Cleveland Municipal Court Judge Frank D. Celebrezze, the older brother of former Cleveland Mayor Anthony Celebrezze, asked levy, “You write poetry…do you sell it?” levy replied, “About 89 cents worth a day,” to which Celebrezze proclaimed: “Bail of $2,500 is not excessive for a great poet; maybe he should charge more than 89 cents a day.”⁶⁵ levy interjected: “I make less than 89 cents a day, but I brag a bit.”⁶⁶ Although Personal Bond Administrator Ray F. McCool notes that he should not have been eligible for personal bond because he didn’t have a job or address, levy was taken to county jail.⁶⁷ After only a few hours, however, Jack Ullman, a New York physicist, paid his bond, commenting that he had met levy at the Bookspot, was impressed with him, and didn’t “like seeing people pushed around.”⁶⁸ Responding to his arrest in the Marrahwannah Quarterly, levy writes that “poets don’t really mind not making money, what they do hate is being treated as complete outcasts because they don’t make money.”⁶⁹ Despite his arrest and harassment by the police, levy persisted to publish editions of The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle and shared recent work with small presses such as D. R. Wagner’s Runcible Spoon Press, Morris Edelson’s Quixote Press, bill bissett’s blewointment press, and others—though much of this work would not be published until 1968 or later. Still awaiting his trial and under continued pressure, levy was interviewed by the Fifth Estate: 

L.B.: If you were arrested in February and March, what is the delay on your trial?

Levy: They’re trying to bring me out into the open so they can catch me for drugs. Then they’d really have a case. So in the meantime they’re detaining my trial. 

L.B.: On what basis will you fight your case? 

Levy: On the grounds that I didn’t know I lived in Ohio. I was under the delusion that I lived in a free country. I didn’t realize Cleveland’s laws were similar to those in the South. 

L.B.: What do you think the judge will have to say about your defense?

Levy: He’s a good solid Catholic; I’m sure he will understand.

L.B.: What have you been doing while you await trial?

Levy: Putting out the Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle, and trying to raise money for its postage and printing costs.

L.B.: Do you really think there’s any hope for Cleveland? 

Levy: Cleveland has been occupied territory for 20 years—occupied by Catholics. Actually my charge was inter-religious sodomy. They’re checking with the Pope to see if they can throw me in jail. 

L.B.: What kind of growth has been taking place in Cleveland? 

Levy: Two or three people talking.⁷⁰ 

levy’s indictment and arrest for obscenity were not the end of his harassment. In April 1968, he was charged with contributing to the indecency of minors. The origins of these new charges were publishing a 17-year-old boy’s obscene poem as well as reading the poem to a 15-year-old girl among an audience of over one hundred at Trinity Cathedral. For this, levy was to be held on penalty of a $5,000 fine and five years in prison with bond set at $2,500 by Judge Albert A. Woldman. Justifying his charge, Woldman explains that he had the right to “protect kids from…filth for the sake of filth.”⁷¹ 

In his kitchen among friends including rjs, John Scott, Dagmar, and Cousin Lester Czaban on March 28th, levy was arrested a second time, along with rjs and Scott when it was discovered that they had outstanding warrants. On the kitchen table rjs recalls the manuscript that would become ukanhavyrfuckincitibak, which was then given to Tom Kryss. rjs further relates how, intricately handcuffed to one another in the back of the police cruiser, Scott picked the locks and, when exiting the vehicle, handed their cuffs to the officers and told them: “We won’t be needing these.” That same day Judge Woldman upheld a fine on levy for $200 and suspended his six-month term in the Workhouse on the condition the fine was paid within the week. Friend and founder of the Free Clinic Jeanne Sonville covered the fine and final court fees. In response to his second charge, levy explained: “i write poetry with the intention of keeping people from smashing other people’s heads. so they put me in a place with people who smash heads.”⁷² 

Also pursued among levy’s friends was Stan Heilbrun, co-owner, along with his wife, of Cleveland’s first “head shop” The Headquarters, musician, and, for a time, manager at the infamous venue La Cave. While both levy and rjs were released on the final day of March, Scott was sentenced to two years in the County Workhouse for contributing to the delinquency of minors, and rjs was soon after sentenced to six months in the county workhouse for the same charge, though related to different incidents—Scott, for painting the body of a 17-year-old girl and rjs for allowing homeless youth to stay at his apartment. Blazek argues that the charges acted perhaps as a pretext to stop rjs from maintaining the levy-Lowell Defense Fund, which friend and art dealer Jasper Wood helped arrange, or, as levy preferred, the “offense fund.”⁷³ Discussing his second arrest in the context of a detective telling him to burn himself in public square if he was “really a buddhist,” levy writes:

at my apt. that rainy afternoon

the police seized one package of incense 

one mimeo & a foto that sed FUCK HATE

in the background . . . 

we sat in jail

rjs, rev. scott & myself 

someone sent the narks 

roses 

  the mimeo leaked

  ink on their desk 

This ink still stains and covers the city of Cleveland. In 1967, Cleveland formed an Arts Council “to encourage and promote the community’s cultural assets” and, as noted by Wood, none of its officers or trustees commented on levy or Lowell’s charges.⁷⁴ Despite his disregard for aspects of Christian tradition, rather than arts organizations, levy found some of his greatest support from community pastors and religious organizations. On February 10th, 1967, at the Mills Science Center, the “Levy and Lowell Defense Fund Reading” featured material from the forming Ghost Press collections and found support from The University Christian Movement, University Teaching Committee, and readers participated, including Atkins, Robert Carothers, Jacob Leed, Robert Wallace, and Gildzen. 

Finding as little support among the Arts as with the city of Cleveland, the Public Sanitation Department attempted to close The Well, a church-supported community coffeehouse organized by Reverend Dewey Fagerburg that provided a place of conversation on the East Side. A convenient location for levy to distribute his newspapers, George Fitzpatrick’s Continental Art Theatre, which showed erotic, art, and foreign films, was adjoined to the same building as The Well (13931 Euclid Ave.). In its first newsletter, without a name but its very price 15¢, Susan and John Cornillon advertise a reading at Ralph Delaney’s home and ask “Is there any longer a real interaction between religion and the arts?” levy’s own contribution, “Suburban Prophets,” interrogates how easy it is to forget the sufferings of others once your own living conditions have improved. Jeanne Sonville helped organize the coffeehouses of Cleveland, including The Coffeehouse, The Outpost, The Gate Coffeehouse, and The Well. Recalling levy’s harassment after his Gate reading in an unpublished memoir, Sonville explains her amazement with him: “I can’t imagine…here is this little guy…i think he weighed 126 pounds…who painted and wrote poetry, but he lived on less than a dollar a day…who was a threat to all of Cleveland and East Cleveland.” The coffeehouses were also considered a threat. 

Foreclosures of The Coffeehouse run by Wade Farrell began in April of 1967, including a raid the evening before the Mother’s Day Benefit Reading of 1968. The openings and closures were only resolved after the property burned down and was condemned by the city on March 14th of 1968.⁷⁵ Adjoined to The Coffeehousewas also the popular bar Adele’sand the Heilbruns’ Headquarters. Both suffered from the city harassment of The Coffeehouse, and when the Headquarters was searched, pot was found on the premises, perhaps planted or left by the careless students that flooded Adele’s. Facing the charge of dealing pot and contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Stan Heilbrun fled to California. levy addresses Heilbruns’ departure in his book For Stanley Heilbrun, Who Fled from Freedom.⁷⁶ In his essay, “Who Burned Cleveland Ohio?” Daniel Kerr locates these proceedings within a larger effort from the city and real estate interests in redeveloping property.⁷⁷ levy argues in the March/April issue of the Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle that their harassment and the closures were motivated by the University Circle Land Development Foundation, Case Western Reserve University, and University Hospitals. 

Returning from the workhouse later that year, rjs with the help of Kryss collected money for the levy-Lowell defense fund by publishing the 300-page anthology of levy’s poetry ukanhavyrfuckincitibak, managing to complete “1,000 copies on a cantankerous Sears mimeograph.”⁷⁸ Additionally, they published a collection of poems and responses for Lowell in A TRIBUTE TO JIM LOWELL.⁷⁹ Beyond the work of rjs and Kryss, hundreds of poets around the world contributed to the defense fund and wrote poems for them, some of which are still available on the d.a.levy homepage.⁸⁰ Collecting numerous newspaper articles and essays, the tributes are invaluable documents in contextualizing both Lowell and levy’s efforts in Cleveland.

Nearing levy’s trial at the end of March 1968, Case Western Reserve professors and students protested around the Criminal Court Building and on Public Square. The Cleveland Plain Dealer published “Plans to Rescue Poet Levy” with Allen Ginsberg, who Blazek satirizes as “the knight in shining blue denim.”⁸¹ Planning another benefit poetry reading and concert at Case Western Reserve’s Auditorium on Mother’s Day, Ginsberg invited Ed Sanders who recently had his own obscenity charges dismissed for his periodical Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. Although the reading was originally scheduled at the Masonic Auditorium, the Masons cancelled the event having assumed it was to be held for a veteran, but the reading was promptly rescheduled at Case Western Reserve Strosacker Auditorium. Following the reading, with Ginsberg at The Well levy describes how the Cleveland police “rushed in and lined everyone up against the walls, guns pulled — even sticking “a rifle in Ginsberg’s stomach.”⁸² 

After dropping his first lawyer Jonathan Dworkin, who wanted to challenge the obscenity laws, on February 20th with the counsel of Bernard Berkman and Gerald S. Gold, levy pleaded “no contest” on charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors. In exchange, he received probation and had his obscenity charges dropped, which carried a longer sentence and larger fine. Shortly after, U.S. Supreme Court obscenity rulings (Redrup v. New York, 386 U.S. 767) forced Common Pleas Judge Francis J. Talty to dismiss the charges on levy and Lowell based on recommendation of assistant prosecutor George Moscarino.⁸³ Looking back on the trial, Gold explains that he regrets encouraging levy to take the prosecution’s deal.⁸⁴ Although he received probation from his sentence in the Warrensville workhouse, the Cleveland Plain Dealer still printed the story as “Hippie Leader Levy Gets 6 Months in Jail.”⁸⁵ Following his trials, levy would go on to write two overlooked erotic stories, The Beginning of Sunny Dawn and Red Lady, the long poetic sequence SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM, and PROSE: ON POETRY IN THE WHOLESALE CULTURE & EDUCATION SYSTEM. 

The publication of PROSE coincided with levy’s travels to teach in residency, but he first met with Gunrunner editor Jim Sorcic in Milwaukee to put together an issue of Kaleidoscope dedicated to his work. Additionally, at the invitation of David Wagner and Morris Edelson, levy visited the University of Wisconsin at Madison “for a one-month stint as poet-in-residence” where he taught a class on telepathy.⁸⁶ Though popular among the students, levy never attended the class, and it was assumed he taught the class by way of telepathic communication. In Madison, levy continued to write, producing what would later be published as The Madison Poems.⁸⁷ Editor of Quixote and director of the New Playwrights’ Theater, Edelson explains that levy “was a lovable guy and he didn’t claim to be the revolution or the greatest, as did some young poets he knew . . . but the revolution was on his mind, the state of the nation was his concern, his poetry had big topics and had a large, honest way of looking at things . . . politically, he was valuable because he put it better than others (no claim that he was in control of everything or above it or outside it) and because he was involved in trying to attack the oppression that threatens everyone . . . his poems were terse and muscular and specific. He didn’t play word or symbol games nor did he prattle about his integrity. His Madison work interested me because it not only described oppression and showed a desire for love as did his other work, but it commented on the efforts groups here were making in an attempt to change society.”⁸⁸ Returning to Cleveland in November 1968, Blazek shares levy’s final letter to him:

i spent 30 days in madison wisc & it was OK for me — now i’m begging cash to print tlk’s book…& i’m collecting stamps so i can pretend i’m still somewhat of a dadaist at heart — & it’s getting cold here, john scott still in jail & i wonder if i should go to california or stay here & take my changes & chances & disappear — i want to drink & sleep & pray for the revolution to miss my apartment or pray for the revolution to hit my apartment⁸⁹

levy returned from his residency to Cleveland as restless as ever. Dagmar and he now lived in an apartment building with several friends at 1744 Wymore, but John Scott remained in jail, and levy had already begun laying out final issues of his newspaper. In the last week of November 1968, Blazek illustrates that levy acted strangely, yet Steve Ferguson emphasizes his actions as organized:⁹⁰ levy gave friend John Rose #17 issue of The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle for him to edit;⁹¹ burned his remaining poetry;⁹² gave belongings to friends; visited old friends “to shake hands one last time;” called his parents; mailed letters to friends across the country; started a quarrel with Dagmar and threw her out; and asked Taylor to bring him a suitcase that read: “I’m leaving Cleveland; I’m leaving the world.”⁹³ And although they may not have inscribed this for him, Taylor recalls that he traveled across town with levy’s brother Jim and cousin Lester to loan him the suitcase and return a book on November 24th. 

The night before, levy had visited his ‘tantric grandmother’ Jeanne Sonville.⁹⁴ Stating that she felt he “face[d] the seriousness of social conditions in America”—or “all the horseshit everybody else was sweeping under the rug”—she recalls that levy said he was leaving Cleveland, offered her his Siamese cat, gave her advertisement checks from The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle to publish a friend’s book, and asked her to “take care of Dagmar.”⁹⁵ 

The following day, levy committed suicide. He left no final note, only the remaining issues of the newspaper, collage material he had mailed to friends that would arrive later that week, and manuscripts still in the process of being published. On November 24th, the very day Taylor and his brother and cousin had made their visit, friends rjs and Steve Ferguson discovered levy on a mattress on the floor of his apartment, dead from a gunshot wound through his “third eye” and a .22 caliber rifle by his body.⁹⁶ levy opens PROSE: ON POETRY IN THE WHOLESALE CULTURE & EDUCATION SYSTEM:

you see its something

like this

you become sensitive

& listen

& you get sick discovering 

so many unhappy people

& so you think

if i had money

i could print poems 

& people might slow down

& read them

& so you send a telepathic?

will power?     prayer?

for money

& the angels say “fuck you”⁹⁷

Continuing for months after his death, students in levy’s class would continue to try to communicate with him. And many still speakwith levy, writing books dedicated to him, and continuing to republish his work. The memorial service was conducted by Reverend Dewey Fagerburg and held on November 26th at East Cleveland Congregational Church, with those in attendance being his parents, brother James, the Czabans, extended family, and friends, including the Lowells, the Simons, Atkins, Taylor, Cook, and many youthful faces. Alex Gildzen notes that Reverend Fagerburg read from both the Old and New Testament, reciting also a passage from SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM. Friend and attorney Tony Walsh spoke on levy’s cremation that morning and how the entire city now acted as his gravestone. Interrupted with a plea to chant a mantra for levy, Cook intoned a long Om, in which some of those in attendance joined. Poems dedicated to levy were read. Before the service concluded, someone shouted, “levy lives” and there was speculation on whether he had been reborn.⁹⁸

You may visit levy’s tombstone in Whitehaven Memorial Park (Wilson Mills Rd., Mayfield Heights), Section B, by the lichen tree. The small bronze marker reads singularly “Son” under the backdrop of a mountain range and evergreens. Half of levy’s ashes are buried here, and half were given to Tony Walsh, who covered the expenses for the funeral. In if i scratch, if i write, Walsh contemplates making an ink with the ashes to be used in the printing of levy’s own poetry. Although there have been calls for a memorial akin to Hart Crane Park, in an interview with poet and editor Larry Smith, Tom Kryss affirms that his memorial in Cleveland “should just be the sunlight on the grass.”⁹⁹ Over the last half century levy’s work has been made as diffuse as the grass, but as singular as the sun of a becoming city. When recounting his walks to the North Branch Library to study religion and art, yet finding only disappointment, levy explains how . . .

instead i sat away the summers 

trying to become as soft as the trees

trying to understand where they

got their faith in life

growing  –  growing patiently 

leaping toward the sun 

Considered by his contemporaries as one of the foundational members of the “mimeograph revolution,” levy left behind a litany of poetry in his short yet frenetic stay in Cleveland. As Blazek emphasizes, he published nearly thirty issues of periodicals and more than sixty books throughout the 1960s—not to mention under the pressure of two arrests, seizure of his mimeograph and books, police harassment, imprisonment of friends, and all under conditions of poverty.¹⁰⁰ Still, his bibliography, previously compiled by James Lowell and extended by Alan Horvath, Kent Taylor, and others, indicates that levy published nearly 200 books, periodicals, and collections in less than six years.¹⁰¹ Although much of the material is now being resold exorbitantly, levy and his friends donated extensively to public libraries, and university librarians have amassed dedicated collections.

Collaborating with an extensive network of local poets and artists including Kent Taylor, Russell Salamon, rjs, Adelaide Simon, Russell Atkins, dom thomas, D. R. Wagner, Thom Szuter, Grace Butcher, and others too numerous to list, levy published a diverse selection of writers in Cleveland.¹⁰² Beyond local authors, levy published one of Diane DiPrima’s first Revolutionary Poems and, elsewhere, the early works of Judson Crews, Carol Bergé, bpNichol, Dom Sylvester Houedard, Charles Bukowski, and many others.¹⁰³ To this point Karl Young notes: “By 1964, his publication list included a large number of the poets who read at the bars and coffee houses in lower Manhattan. If he was simply picking up scraps and tokens from Gotham [Book Mart], he would have been repeating a traditional model of centralism [in publishing]. This is precisely what he was not doing. Instead of picking up their scraps, he was publishing their important work before it appeared in New York.”¹⁰⁴ From his early typewriter poems, letterpress books, and periodical The Silver Cesspool, to his mimeograph books and periodical The Marrahwannah Quarterly, and with his concrete books and newsprint periodical The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle—in a span of only six years—levy wrote through countless poetic forms and innovated many printing methods. Concluding his extensive poem Cleveland undercovers with one eye in the past and one hopeful eye to the future of the city, eating and being eaten by the dawn, levy writes:

asphodels on the hills

are linked by cloud bridges 

in the coffeehouse

it is not a cathouse of the rising

sun    or the deathwagon of the beat

generation , but a bridge of clouds

to a new culture

and the grass at last is conquering 

the ashes of the necropolis . . . 

Here levy expresses the potential for Cleveland to socially transform, that is, both politically and economically. If the relations of our work have not changed, society remains the same. This is the uncomfortable resemblance levy notes between the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and the United States. The basis of our societies all lies in our exploitation for the accumulation of private profit. Although levy “advocates nothing,” he actively participated in establishing a political culture that interrogated that basis. His was a long-term revolutionary strategy through enduring dedication to social freedom and understanding. In his introduction to Cleveland undercovers, levy addresses the future of the city:

cleveland ohio . . to my knowledge this poem is the first poem of any length to be written about cleveland in 150 years, it is a tourists guide to 150 yrs of absurd history, the poem exists  simultaneously in the past, the present & with one hopeful eye to the future . . . WHAT FUTURE? Will Ungvarys Stormtroopers arrest everyone attempting to bring changes to cleveland? Will the right wing conservatives corrupt enough college students with their anti-communist fanaticism to keep the city in its medieval shrouds? or will enough lines of communication open to force clevelanders to acknowledge their responsibilities as an energy force in a changing world?

Cleveland’s history remains an artifact of the turn of the 20th century, but levy forces the question of the city’s role in the future of a world that not only could change but mustchange. Speaking to levy’s literary influences, D.R. Wagner explains: “I don’t think he had any literary heroes. I think it was the poets who had lived in Cleveland who impressed him the most. Hart Crane, Kenneth Patchen, Robert Blossom (who was a playwright), Russell Salamon . . . and I think it was because they were from Cleveland [and Northeast Ohio]. That was the thing that impressed him the most: that they were there, and they worked there. They tried to write from there.” When asked by Andrew Curry about the literary tradition of Cleveland, levy replies: “I’ve been trying to work with poets, getting them organized, giving them a little encouragement rather than getting them out of Cleveland.” And when asked about the role of the poet, he continues: “I think I am a poet without kissing ass, whatever a poet it . . . to be an artist you don’t have to suffer. You’ve got to have money. Lots of money and lots of love. And a Siamese cat” (emphasis added).¹⁰⁵

How does one create a free society? With the free act. But what are the conditions of a free act? Control and equality of our work. The future may not be any less necessary than the past, but the past is often just as opaque as the future. levy’s work and life remain for us an invitation to cross those cloud bridges to a future of our necessary freedom and collective understanding. 

I. Endnotes 

1.  levy, illustrated by Barb O’ Connelly, SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM, (Zero Edition, 1968). SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM can also be found in Ingrid Swanberg’s collection zen concrete & etc. This collection focuses on levy’s visual work: ZEN CONCRETE: Translations & a new interpretation of Buddhist Doctrines (blewointment, 1967), The Tibetan Stroboscope (Ayizan Press, 1968), and his collages. However, it also republishes a majority of levy’s major lexical poems. Additionally, Cleveland Memory, a project of The Michael Schwartz Library at Cleveland State University contains a significant selection of levy’s poetry, periodicals, artwork, manuscripts, news articles, and photography. https://www.clevelandmemory.org/levy/  lastly, the d.a.levy homepage is another repository of levy’s work. https://www.thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/levy-l1.htm ↩︎
2. d.a.levy collections. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. As levy’s older brother, James, and his family retain the surname, “Levey,” the name d.a.levy published under (lowercase, initialized, and shortened to “levy”) may suggest he changed the spelling of his parent’s surname. However, his parents changed the original spelling of their surname from “Levey” to “Levy” in the 1940s. ↩︎
3. karl kempton, “Cleveland Concrete,” (Synapse International, January 1, 2022). https://synaptry.blogspot.com/2021/12/synapse-essay-eleventh-cleveland.html Just like many of levy’s friends and contemporaries, kempton writes his name in lowercase. ↩︎
4. levy, NEW YEAR. (DAVKA, Vol. 1, No. 1, December 19th, 1970) ↩︎
5. Kon Petrochuk (Kon Pet Moon), if i scratch, if i write, (Thursday Eleven Production, 1985). ↩︎
6. Larry Smith, A Chronology of the Life & Work of d.a.levy (1942-1968) Poet, Artist, Editor & Publisher Including General Cultural and Alternative Publishing Contexts. Compiled by Larry Smith and Ingrid Swanberg, with collaboration and corrections provided by: rjs, T.L. Kryss, Alex Gildzen, Mark Kuhar, Marcus Williamson, Russell Salamon, Joanne Cornelius, Grace Butcher, Joan (Czaban) Kinney, Kent Taylor, John Scott, Allen Frost, and Jim Divoky. https://smithdocs.net/APARTIAL.html A Chronology of d.a.levy can also be found in d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution. Additionally, a shorter chronology of levy’s life is embedded within a history of Cleveland and Northeast Ohio’s poetry scenes. Larry Smith, Mary E. Weems, and Nina Freelander Giban’s Cleveland Poetry Scenes: A Panorama & Anthology. All draw heavily from materials at Cleveland State Special Collections. The d.a. levy Collection, compiled by Joanne Cornelius, with help from special collection librarian William Barrow and assistant Vern Morrison. (Online at the Cleveland Memory Project: clevelandmemory.org/levy) Extraneous details of levy’s life without quotation are primarily sourced from the chronology edited by Smith. ↩︎
7. Derek VanPelt, “Death of a Poet: D.A. Levy left no suicide note. Except his poems.” (Cleveland Magazine, 1974) ↩︎
8. Larry Smith and Ingrid Swanberg, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, (Bottom Dog Press, 2007), 19. ↩︎
9. d ↩︎
10.  levy, “THE PRAPS I SERIES” (ukanhavyrfuckincitibak, 1968) ↩︎
11. d.a.levy collection of Carol Jedlinsky.  Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives.  https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/d-levy-collection-carol-jedlinsky ↩︎
12. Douglas Blazek, “untitled essay,” 208, republished in Ingrid Swanberg, zen concrete & etc. ↩︎
13. Douglas Blazek, “untitled essay,” 207. ↩︎
14. d.a.levy collections. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. With over 250 manuscripts written by d.a. levy across three collections— many of which are not held in other collections—Kent State maintains poems, prose, and plays that levy shared with his close friend Carol Jedlinsky, letters, collages, and painting, and ephemera his brother James Levey gathered from his apartment, and early biographical material his parents kept — all united by levy’s niece Sandy. Jeff Master was not only a bookseller, but also helped to catalogue levy’s archives at Kent State. University. https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/d-levy-and-family-archive  https://www.library.kent.edu/d-levy-papers  https://www.library.kent.edu/special-collections-and-archives/d-levy-collection-carol-jedlinsky  ↩︎
15. Karl Young, “At the Corner of Euclid Ave. and Blvd. St. Germain: d.a.levy’s Parables of Local Necessity and Universal Decentralization,” 165, published in d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, 157-167. ↩︎
16. Fenn College is now Cleveland State University. levy acted as an editor for a year with Free Lance and made frequent contributions of both poems and visual art. https://www.csuohio.edu/sites/default/files/media/board_of_trustees/documents/description.pdf ↩︎
17. Smith and Swanberg, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, 21. Further illustrating his close relationship with Lowell, levy set his mailing address at the Asphodel Book Shop. ↩︎
18. levy’s first three books were More Withdrawed or Less, fragments of a shattered mirror, and Variations on a Flip. levy’s first three books can be found on Cleveland Memory. https://www.clevelandmemory.org/levy/ ↩︎
19. 465, edited by levy. ↩︎
20. kempton, “Cleveland Concrete.” (SYNAPSE INTERNATIONAL, January 1, 2022) ↩︎
21. Russell Salamon, Remembering d.a.levy: A Reading from levyfest 2005, published with d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution. Details of the event can be found on Mark Kuhar’s Deep Cleveland. levy printed second revised editions of his first three books. http://www.deepcleveland.com/levyfest.html 
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22. Douglas Blazek, “untitled essay.” ↩︎
23. Taylor, 227. ↩︎
24. levy, THE CLEVELAND MANIFESTO OF POETRY. (Asphodel Press, June, 1964) ↩︎
25.  Derek VanPelt, “Death of a Poet: D.A. Levy left no suicide note. Except his poems,” (Cleveland Magazine, 1974), 75-82. The conditions of Salamon’s apartment are unverified elsewhere. ↩︎
26. Taylor, “THE CLEVELAND UNDERGROUND POETRY SCENE,” 226. ↩︎
27. levy, The Silver Cesspool. Renegade Press, Vol. 1-5, 1963-1964. ↩︎
28. levy’s manuscript drafts can be found at Kent State University’s collection and are republished by Alan Horvath’s Kirpan Press. ↩︎
29. Salamon, The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle: The Art and Poetry of d.a. levy, edited with investigative essay “Portrait of a Young Man Trying to Eat the Sun” by Mike Golden, 36. (Seven Stories Press, 1999) ↩︎
30. Salamon, Remembering d.a.levy: A Reading from levyfest 2005.
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31. Petrochuk, if i scratch, if i write. ↩︎
32. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 209. ↩︎
33. Swanberg, zen concrete & etc., “spontaneous bibliography.” ↩︎
34. levy, SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM. ↩︎
35. levy, More Withdrawed or Less, (Renegade Press, 1963). Among references to Sappho, Egyptian mythology, and Greek mythology, levy references the Diamond Sutra. Additionally, throughout the collection, levy dwells on the entanglement of loneliness and love. ↩︎
36. For further information, see the section “d.a.levy’s Buddhist Textual Sources.” ↩︎
37.  Blazek, “untitled essay,” 209. ↩︎
38.  Blazek, “untitled essay,” 209. ↩︎
39.  Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
40. Taylor, “THE CLEVELAND UNDERGROUND POETRY SCENE,” 226. ↩︎
41. Although Blazek notes levy changed the title of The Marrahwannah Newsletter to The Marrahwannah Quarterly, Alan Horvath’s Bibliography indicates the reverse, and observation indicates that each publication served different purposes—the Newsletter acting as an editorial for levy and the Quarterly more so as a periodical of poetry, Dharma translations, and republished articles. https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/dalevy/lev-b-p.htm ↩︎
42.  levy, SUBURBAN MONASTERY DEATH POEM. (ZERO EDITION, 1968) ↩︎
43. James Baldwin, “The Artist’s Struggle for Integrity” (1962) ↩︎
44. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 209. ↩︎
45. Karl Young, “At the Corner of Euclid Ave. and Blvd. St. Germain: d.a.levy’s Parables of Local Necessity and Universal Decentralization,” 164. ↩︎
46. Swanberg, zen concrete & etc, “Preface.” ↩︎
47. Blazek, “A Collage of Critical Appraisals,” 151-153, published in d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution. This quote originally appears in the serif, 23. ↩︎
48. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 209. ↩︎
49. levy, visualized prayers & hymn for the american $god$, (Renegade Press, 1966). ↩︎
50. Ed Sanders, d.a.levy Rebel Poet Interview with Ed Sanders, published with d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution and accompanied with the interviews from levy’s friends in Remembering d.a.levy: A Reading from levyfest 2005. Ed Sanders places levy within the tradition of mimeograph poetry magazines, particularly those who were anti-war. Submitting his early poetry to levy, Sanders recalls that levy wrote back to him, saying “the wilder the poems the more I enjoy printing them.” When he visited New York City, he further relates that levy absorbed the coffeehouse movement of reading poetry in public, comparing Cleveland’s The Well and The Gate Coffeehouse to New York City’s Le Metro. In “d.a. levy’s Parables of Local Necessity” Karl Young introduces context to levy’s relationship to NYC poets. d.a. levy & the mimeograph revolution, 155-167. ↩︎
51. Petrochuk, if i scratch, if i write. Commenting on the coffeehouse, Minister Cleo Malone explains it was a needed space for the Cleveland poetry, art, and publishing scene. The film if i scratch, if i write was released by Bottom Dog Press alongside d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, but was originally screened far earlier at New York’s Museum of Modern Art in 1985 — 17 years following levy’s passing. ↩︎
52. Smith and Swanberg, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, 25. ↩︎
53. Kent Taylor, “THE CLEVELAND UNDERGROUND POETRY SCENE: A Personal Reminiscence,” 229-230, published in Ingrid Swanberg, zen concrete & etc. ↩︎
54. Erick Trickey, “The Epic of d. a. levy,” (Cleveland Magazine, OCT. 19, 2007) https://clevelandmagazine.com/in-the-cle/the-read/articles/the-epic-of-d-a-levy ↩︎
55. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
56. “Field Office Histories: Cleveland Division” (FBI) https://www.fbi.gov/history/field-office-histories/cleveland ↩︎
57. levy, KIBBUTZ IN THE SKY. (7 flowers press, 1967) ↩︎
58. Petrochuk, if i scratch, if i write. ↩︎
59. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
60. levy, KIBBUTZ IN THE SKY. (7 flowers press, 1967) ↩︎
61.  levy, PRAPS I SERIES. Although absent from Alan Horvath’s bibliography as a separate collection, these series of poems were republished within ukanhavyrfuckincitibak. Ghost Press, 1968, and reprinted in 1977 by Mostly broken scabs press. https://clevelandmemory.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/general/id/7245/rec/1 ↩︎
62. levy, Kibbutz in the Sky (Book II), (7 Flowers Press, 1967). d.a.levy papers. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. ↩︎
63. levy, Kibbutz in the Sky. One of the few moments where levy’s high school German appears in his poetry, “politzei” is a slight misspelling of the German word for police (“polizei” ). Elsewhere in Kibbutz in the Sky, levy titles a section “CLEVELAND UBER ALLES.” ↩︎
64. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
65. levy, Kibbutz in the Sky. SAMISDAT, Volume XVII, #4, 67th release. This republication is available on CSU’s Cleveland Memory. ↩︎
66. Mark S. Kuhar, “50 years after d.a. levy’s death, the legend of Cleveland’s visionary poet and provocateur lives on.” (Cleveland.com, Nov. 14, 2018). https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2018/11/50-years-after-da-levys-death-the-legend-of-clevelands-visionary-poet-and-provocateur-lives-on.html ↩︎
67. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 204. ↩︎
68. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 204. ↩︎
69. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
70. Linda Britton, “Cleveland Poet D.A. Levy Talks About his Arrests,” (Fifth Estate # 39, October 1-15, 1967). ↩︎
71. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 204. ↩︎
72. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 204. ↩︎
73. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 205. ↩︎
74.  A TRIBUTE TO JIM LOWELL, (Ghost Press, 1968).. ↩︎
75.  “The Well.” d.a.levy papers. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. Taking its name from Jacob’s well and run by volunteers, The Well’s menu explains that it “is [a] place of refreshment” for all people to have a place for dialogue. To have dialogue, it suggests that (1) we accept what is said in good faith, (2) seek to understand each other, not win an argument, (3) accept responsibility for our strengths and weaknesses, and (4) accept our differences. The unpublished memoir referenced here is “JEANNE SONVILLE’S STORY” (September 6, 1994), which was donated by Alan Guncik and provided courtesy of Cleveland State University Special Collections. ↩︎
76. levy, For Stanley Heilbrun, Who Fled from Freedom. (Cleveland: Absolute Zero Press, 1968) ↩︎
77. Kerr, “Who Burned Cleveland Ohio? The Forgotten Fires of the 1970s” from Flammable Cities: Fire, Urban Environment, and Culture in History. (2012) ↩︎
78.  Blazek, “untitled essay,” 205. ↩︎
79.  A TRIBUTE TO JIM LOWELL. ↩︎
80.  d.a.levy homepage. “poems for, to, and after d.a.levy.” https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/dalevy/4-to-da.htm ↩︎
81. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 205. Commenting on levy’s charges, Ginsberg explains “I’ll give him a grant from my foundation if necessary.” “He stands alone in his effort to lift Cleveland.” ↩︎
82. Linda Britton, “Cleveland Poet D.A. Levy Talks About his Arrests,” (Fifth Estate # 39, October 1-15, 1967). https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/39-october-1-15-1967/cleveland-poet-d-a-levy-talks-about-his-arrests/ ↩︎
83. “A Chronology of the Life & Work of d.a.levy.” https://smithdocs.net/APARTIAL.html ↩︎
84. Petrochuk, if i scratch, if i write. ↩︎
85. W. James Ven Vliet, “Hippie Leader Levy Gets 6 Months in Jail,” (The Cleveland Plain Dealer, February 21, 1968). d.a.levy papers. Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives. Other titles include, “84-Cent-a-Day Poet Raps Filth Charge,” “Beatnik Leader Wants Marijuana Legalized in U.S.,” “Poet Denies Ties With LSD Cult,” and, my favorite “2 Area Poets Tagged as Psychedelic Churchmen.” ↩︎
86.  Golden, 75. ↩︎
87. levy, The Madison Poems, (Quixote Press, 1969). ↩︎
88. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 212. Full quotation sourced from Quixote Vol. 8 (2), 1972. ↩︎
89. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 213. ↩︎
90. Petrochuk, if i scratch, if i write. ↩︎
91. Although levy gave the periodical to Rose, Steve Ferguson and rjs would continue editing and printing it until the final issue in January 1970. Although the paper was distributed throughout East Cleveland, at the end of the issue, r.j.s. and Ferguson note they were unable to keep printing the paper without increasing subscriptions or advertisements. Ferguson would continue the Oracle as Burning River News. ↩︎
92. Here, Blazek refers to 300 copies of The Tibetan Stroboscope, while poet Frank Osinksi recalls levy burned 3,000 copies as well as unpublished manuscripts (if i scratch, if i write). ↩︎
93.  Blazek, “untitled essay,” 213. ↩︎
94.  Encyclopedia of Cleveland. “CIRCLE HEALTH SERVICES, INC.” Case Western Reserve University. One of the nation’s oldest free clinics, The Free Medical Clinic of Greater Cleveland became Circle Health in 1970 and continues to operate. ↩︎
95. Derek VanPelt, “Death of a Poet: D.A. Levy left no suicide note. Except his poems.” (Cleveland Magazine, 1974) ↩︎
96. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 213. ↩︎
97. levy, PROSE: on poetry in the wholesale culture & education system. (Gunrunner Press, 1968) ↩︎
98. the serif, edited by Alex Gildzen. (Kent State University’s Library Quarterly, Vol. viii, No. 4, December, 1971) The earliest scholarly work naturally took place at the home of levy’s main archives at Kent State University. This issue was edited by Alex Gildzen, who also published levy in his periodical Toucan. Contributors to the serif include friends, poets, publishers, and scholars Eric Mottram, James Lowell, Gary Snyder, Russell Atkins, Carol Bergé, Douglas Blazek, Charles Bukowski, Hugh Fox, Alex Gildzen, Jacob Leed, Robert Lowry, and Steve Osterlund. ↩︎
99. Smith and Swanberg, d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, 111. ↩︎
100. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 211. ↩︎
101. Alan Horvath, Kent Taylor, and James Lowell, “The d.a.levy Bibliography.” https://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/dalevy/lev-b-p.htm ↩︎
102. bpNichol, #4  CYCLES ETC. (7 Flowers Press, 1965) ↩︎
103. Blazek, “untitled essay,” 206. ↩︎
104. Young, “d.a.levy’s Parables of Local Necessity and Universal Decentralization,” d.a.levy & the mimeograph revolution, 157-167. ↩︎
105. “Raging Against the Dying of the Light/Interview with d.a. Levy,” interview by Andrew Curry, June 1967, from d.a. levy & the mimeograph revolution, 90-103. (Dust 12, d.a. levy issue, Spring 1969) ↩︎