Hawks over the City.

San Francisco: The author, 1972. First edition. Limited to a very few copies. Tall octavo. 46 pp. Publisher's ;ight brown stiff wrappers with printed paper cover label. Minor foxing to front cover otherwlse very clean and tidy copy of this scarce item."After the war, during which he produced few poems, Reid decided to become a printer and to use his skills to print his own books of poetry. Following some trade school training, he went to work at the Ward Ritchie Press in Los Angeles, known for high quality printing. By then he had married. For his wife's health they moved to the Arizona desert and eventually to San Francisco, where they had found a doctor who seemed to be able to help her. While he was still in Los Angeles his first book of poetry, "Cris et Mots", was privately printed, and his second book, "Sixty-four Poems", was produced at the press of Grant Dahlstrom... n San Francisco Fred Reid worked as a typographer, mainly in advertising, and was employed by Price Typography, a division of Mackenzie & Harris, until he retired. He associated with prominent figures in the San Francisco literary scene, such as William Everson and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He was also friendly with people in the fine printing world, notably Adrian Wilson. I became acquainted with Fred Reid and his poetry during my partnership in Grabhorn-Hoyem (1966-73), well before Arion Press sublet space from Mackenzie & Harris in 1985. There Reid was a fixture, the scholarly typesetter and proofreader in a smock with composing stick in hand. [...]We were also recipients of copies of a book of poems printed by offset in 1976, the printing plates made from pages he wrote out with a broad pen in his handsome calligraphy. It was entitled "A Swell of Poems", the poems, one to a page, increasing in lines to the middle of the book, then receding, like a wave. In 1972 he set a poem of some 3,500 lines, entitled "Hawks over the City", on a Linotype machine and printed it as a tall narrow book on a proofing press for private distribution. Collectors and libraries will have the challenge of finding copies of his earlier publications and of the single poems he sent to friends annually." (Andrew Hoyem)