Behind the State Capitol: or Cincinnati Pike

First Edition, 1975. 203 pages. 

Book measures 5.75 x 8.75 inches. Gold cloth with silver gilt lettering to spine and cover. No dust jacket as issued. “Cinema decoupages; verses, abbreviated prose insights.” One of John Wieners’s scarcest titles, as most remaining copies of the book were destroyed in the arson fire of Fag Rag / Good Gay Poets offices in 1982. Behind the State Capitol is probably Wieners’s most interesting and complicated book, which at times seems to weave in and out of coherence. The use of collage and found imagery interspersed throughout the poems gives this book a deeper sense of Wieners’s state of mind at this point in time, and express the impact of his experiences dealing with poverty, drug addiction, and mental illness.

This copy is SIGNED by Wieners on page 91, at the bottom of the poem Five Hundred Stars, and is additionally annotated by Wieners on the copyright page where he writes, “in gratitude for press labor.” Already a scarce book, especially in the limited hardcover edition, this copy is quite unique with Wieners’s signature and note.

Near Fine in tight binding. A very nice copy.