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Of course we know you own the new portable Plymell in luxe paperback,
but if you happen to be caught without the Kicks edition in your hip pocket,
tune in to Benzedrine Highway via Kicks Kindle editions-- gettable anywhere the
wind blows. Latch onto it here: Benzedrine Highway
e-book
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This last full moon of 2013 brings in the motherlode of Benzedrine
Highway items of interest from the hardest working small press in the business,
Kicks Books. With today's launch of the e-book version of our portable paperback
Plymell, comes a super limited box edition, two Plymell perfumes (Apocalypse
Rose for the ladies and Loser for the germs), and other framable, untamable
items for the love of Plymell. Dig it here: PLYMELL AD
INFINITUM!
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BENZEDRINE HIGHWAY includes the first ever republication of
Plymell’s long out of print first book of poetry, APOCALYPSE ROSE, his first
prose book, LAST OF THE MOCASSINS, and a new autobiographical introduction which
speeds you into the wild world of Charles Plymell where his words warp one’s
horizontal, and stand one’s vertical on its pointed little head.
Benzedrine Highway
is published by Kicks Books, Box 646 Cooper Station, NYC 10276
For further information, kindly contact Paige Turner at Kicks Books
headquarters.
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Poet/author/artist/small press publisher (legend!) Charles
Plymell roared out of Kansas with tires blazing while the Beat scene was
still in training wheels. Weaned on jump blues, true grit and Dr. Gimmy Gommy’s
Goodies, Plymell redefined the fast track with blunt force, map zap and brute
strength forged of desperation and
attitude.
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Born on the high plains in Finney County, Kansas in 1935 in a
converted chicken coop during one of the blackest dust storms of the day, he
would spend his sprouting years kicking up even more sand. His father was a
cowboy born in the Indian Territory; his mother was of Plains Indian descent.
Life on the loose held more appeal than classrooms for young Charles, who
dropped out after ninth grade. He worked at various laboring jobs throughout the
western states, then racing the highway between Los Angeles and Kansas City
during his hipster years, stoked on hillbilly howls and race music-- R&B,
blues, and jazz.
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Charles Plymell lived in San Francisco in the early 1960’s, sharing a
house with Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady. His writings from this period were
published in his first book APOCALYPSE ROSE, which appears complete in
BENZEDRINE HIGHWAY, along with his killer roadmaster autobio THE LAST OF THE
MOCASSINS.
Plymell raised a lifelong ruckus with a wild bunch that included
friends Ginsberg, Cassady, William S. Burroughs, and Jack Kerouac-- and a cast
of thousands.
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Charles Plymell eventually settled in upstate New York. He has
published, printed, and designed umpteen underground magazines and books with
his wife Pamela Beach. He put Ray Bremser and Herbert Huncke, whom he identified
with from the hipster 1950s, into print, and was influential in the underground
comix scene, establishing artists such as Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson, whom
he first published in Lawrence, Kansas. Plymell was the first printer of Robert
Crumb's Zap Comix.
Charles Plymell opposes the National Endowment for the Arts and has
criticized it in print, claiming it has become a politicized, unjust system
feeding on its own mediocrity and self-contradiction. His views were mentioned
in the New York Times in "Notes on People" and again in "Washington Talk". He
was subsequently blacklisted and has never received any funding from any
federal, state, or academic agency to pursue his
creativity.
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Also by Charles Plymell:
Apocalypse Rose, Dave
Haselwood Books, San Francisco, CA, 1966. Neon Poems, Atom Mind Publications,
Syracuse, NY, 1970; The Last of the Moccasins, City Lights Books, San Francisco,
CA, 1971; Mother Road Publications, 1996; Moccasins Ein Beat-Kaleidoskop, Europa
Verlag, Vienna, Austria, 1980; Over the Stage of Kansas, Telephone Books, NYC,
1973; The Trashing of America, Kulchur Foundation, NYC, 1975; Blue Orchid Numero
Uno, Telephone Books, 1977; Panik in Dodge City, Expanded Media Editions, Bonn,
W. Germany, 1981; Forever Wider, 1954-1984, Scarecrow Press, Metuchen, NJ, 1985;
Was Poe Afraid?, Bogg Publications, Arlington, VA, 1990; Journals From Lysidia,
synaethesia press, 1999; Hand on the Doorknob, Water Row Books, Sudbury, MA,
2000; Some Mother’s Sons, Cherry Valley Editions, Cherry Valley, NY, 2005; Choix
de Poemes, Wigwam, Rennes, France, 2007; Mindeater, Verlag Peter Engstler,
Germany, 2009; Eat Not Thy Mind, Glass Eye Books/Peace Eye Library, Northampton,
MA 2010; Animal Light, Peter Engstler Verlag, Germany, 2011; Tent Shaker Vortex
Voice , Bottle of Smoke Press, Dover, Delaware, 2012; Benzedrine Highway, Kicks
Books, 2013.
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