VIVISECTION
2002 Annotated Archival Edition
by Gene Fowler
Cover lithograph by Amelia Gianelli
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introductory Remark (poem)
Prologue
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
[On the back cover, under a picture]
Gene Fowler spent five years in San Quentin Prison in the nineteen-
fifties. Except for a few, very few, odd jobs, he has made his
living, his way in the world, as a working poet ever since. His
first books, Field Studies, and Shaman Songs, were
published by Dustbooks (5218 Scottwood Rd., Paradise, Calif.) and
are still in print [1971]. He was later anthologized in the best of
the small press anthologies such as Peace and Gladness
Anthology edited by Doug Palmer, and The Smith Poets
edited by Harry Smith, where Vivisection first appeared in
its complete form. A summary collection, Fires, appeared from
this press in 1971. Leave it to literary historians, long after we
are dead and gone, to put their stamp, their seal, on the great
poems of our era. But allow me to say, that for those who have a
whiff of the acrid sulphur smell of prisons in our time, this poem,
Vivisection, deals with that experience completely, in the
realm of high art; it is, purely and simply, a great poem, that
happens as well to be about prisons.
Paul Foreman
This edition of VIVISECTION is published with the permission of THE
SMITH 5 Beekman Street New York, New York 10038. VIVISECTION first
appeared in FREELANCE, and was copyrighted in THE SMITH POETS,
1971.
THORP SPRINGS PRESS
1400 Cullen Avenue
Austin, Texas 78757
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