POETRY COMICS! [Nos. 1-7] by Morice, Dave [ed. and illus.] - 1979

Iowa City: The Happy Press, 1979. First Edition. Softcover. Very good. Morice, Dave. 1979-1980. 11 inches tall. Seven volumes, various paginations (generally 8-10 unnumbered pages of comics plus additional content and covers), photocopied on paper of several colors. Pictorial covers, side-stapled. Upper-left portion of front cover of Number 5 moderately soiled; light soiling and wear elsewhere to covers. Overall very good.

Scarce early run of Dave Morice's illustrated treatment of great poems in comic zine form. Dave Morice (b. 1946) was a founding member of the Actualist poetry movement, originally situated in Iowa City, where he moved in 1969 to attend the Iowa Writers Workshop. In the ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE NEW YORK SCHOOL POETS, Terrence Diggory mentions that although "less well known today than Language poetry, actualism was closer to the Dadaist spirit of the New York School and has in fact been dubbed by Language poet Ron Silliman as 'the New York School's western cousin.' (p. 246). Diggory refers to Morice as having become the best-known of the Actualists through POETRY COMICS, which would be published in a collected form by Simon & Schuster in 1980 and in two additional anthologies in 1994 and 2002.