I Heard It Through the Grapevine

Asa Benveniste (1925-1990) who founded the legendary Trigram Press in London 1965 ostensibly to publish Anglo-American cutting edge poetry influenced by Black Mountain poets the New York School of Poets and the European avant-garde was not only a self-taught one-off maverick genius as a printer typographer and book-designer but also a superbly innovative language poet whose own poetry tended to be obscured by his merits as a publisher. Throughout its duration 1965-1978 the Trigram list epitomised ultimate hipster cool as a leading independent with Benveniste's unparalleled book design extending to poets like Piero Heliczer Jim Dine Tom Raworth Nathaniel Tarn B.S. Johnson J.H. Prynne Barry MacSweeney and Louis Zukofsky. Jeremy Reed's deeply personal tribute to Asa Benveniste as his enduring poetic avatar and the encourager and publisher of his early poetry informs a book that is both an appraising memoir and a significant evaluation of Trigram Press. The book also includes a reprint of Benveniste's collection Edge (1975) as well as miscellaneous writings of his retrieved from small press publication.