The Cleveland poet d.a. levy (Darryl Alfred Levey, 1942-1968) was among the most prolific publishing poets of the mimeo revolution of the 1960s, which evolved into what is now called underground or outlaw poetry: small presses independent of the Academy. Of less renown yet as fascinating as his publications are levy’s prints and the methods he used to make them.

Zygote Press explores the poet’s prints and production methods in d.a. levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland. The exhibition highlights the artist’s letterpress, pressure prints, photocollage, linocuts, and mimeograph work: how he communicated his ideas in populist formats, as well as in works of fine art like his Cleveland Prints folios.

Zygote Press Program Director Brittany Hudak curated the exhibition. She says she began the project because levy isn’t known by contemporary printmakers the way he is among poets and publishers. “With the popularity of zines in the print world, we’re seeing a resurgence of attention to these older methods of printing and publishing.”

Spotlighted pieces from the two volumes of Cleveland Prints levy made in 1964 give a sense of his sensibilities at the time. Levy collected used and crumpled condoms and other detritus from various locations around the city, then pressure printed them onto quality printmaking paper. On the verso of each print is its title in letterpress.

The works in the exhibit were loaned from Cleveland State University’s Michael Schwartz Library. Hudak stresses that support from Beth Piwkowski in Special Collections was crucial. The library’s Cleveland Memory Project (clevelandmemory.org) is comprehensive: they make all the media they hold by levy available, including iconic images Hudak considers an invaluable resource to levy scholars.

On the occasion of the exhibition, Zygote acquired a Ditto machine and a Gestetner Mimeograph, to complement its shop. The organization has long offered access and training in a full letterpress shop, several presses and a Japanese stencil duplicator called a RISO. The Riso is a favorite of twenty-first century independent publishers. “The masters are made of rice paper and the ink is made of soy,” Hudak explains, “This kind of printing is much more inexpensive than digital, but more importantly it’s sustainable.” For these reasons it is gaining popularity; small presses like Imprint Arts Collective, Outlandish Press, and Empress Editions are using RISO. “Levy was, in a way, the grandfather of this kind of subversive small press printing in Cleveland,” says Hudak, “I hope young people will be inspired by his work.”

Between 1963 and 1968, levy published 167 recorded hand-made titles. It would be impossible to compile a complete bibliography, but Kent Taylor made an astoundingly detailed spreadsheet available at the d.a. levy homepage: thing.net/~grist/l&d/dalevy/dalevy.htm. Taylor says levy first published as Renegade Press from the basement of his aunt and uncle’s house using letterpress, meaning boxes full of tiny lead letters aligned one by one to compose words and sentences. The letters are inked with a roller, and then the ink is transferred from them to the paper by pressure, one impression at a time. Later, levy’s 7 Flowers Press briefly used a ditto machine, likely the one belonging to RJ Sigmund (aka rjs, aka Captain Zero), founder of ground zero press. When they were printing the 275-page tribute to levy, ukanhavyrfuckincitibak, to help cover costs of the poet’s legal defense, levy did some of the work, but rjs and fellow publishing poet, artist, and co-conspirator Tom Kryss spent eighteen months, sixteen hours at a time, hand-producing 1000 copies. The work included six color serigraphs—high-quality, limited edition fine art prints made using a stencil and silk screen. They collated 150 pages at a time because that’s how many would fit in the workspace.

By the time he met RJ Sigmond, levy had a hand-crank mimeo. Electric ones came later but they had more kinks. Mimeo entails using a typewriter with no ribbon to punch letters into a soft plastic stencil, which is wrapped around the ink-filled drum of a mimeo machine. As a sheet passes under the revolving drum, ink passes through the stencil onto the page.

Jim Lowell, mentor to the poets, bought and sold their books and introduced them to each other through his Asphodel Book Shop, in the Arcade downtown at 401 Euclid Avenue. The East Cleveland Police thought the smut (books) levy and Lowell distributed were a front for selling weed and LSD. They became a threatening presence at readings. In response, levy went underground. Poets posted flyers with fake dates and locations to get the law off their backs. If police intruded, poets joined hands and chanted mantras.

In 1967 levy and Lowell were arrested for distributing obscenity to minors. They took levy’s printing materials and seized books from the Asphodel. The poet rjs said that when the police took levy’s mimeograph machine, its drum was full of black ink. When they put it on their desk, they had the fill plug pointing down, so it leaked all over them.

This poetry-vs-smut controversy wasn’t happening outside Cleveland at the time. It made headlines. This piqued the interest of Allen Ginsberg, as ten years earlier his own book Howl was seized in customs, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti (founder of City Lights Bookstore, which had published it) was arrested for distributing obscenity. Ginsberg, Tuli Kupferberg, and others from the national poetry stage had a benefit in Cleveland on what is now Case Western Reserve University’s campus to raise legal expenses. When levy and Lowell were acquitted, levy agreed to pay a $200 fine and no longer associate with juveniles or give them his poetry.

With the mimeo confiscated, levy switched to photo offset printing on newsprint. He laid out, typed, and photo-copied poems and prints onto large mats, had negatives of the copy made, and used those to make plates that were ultimately printed at the Call and Post, a Black Cleveland newspaper. According to rjs, the first of levy’s tabloids was the swamp erie pipe dream, which was followed by the Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle.

Levy wasted nothing, so rjs and Kryss gave him the stencils they used to make citibak. “Some of his concrete poems were inked up garbage newsprint,” rjs explains. “When running a mimeo, the stencil is soaked in ink by the time you’re through (but it still can’t be reused). Levy would lay those old stencils between sheets of garbage paper to soak up the excess ink. In pulling those stacks of inked up garbage apart, he liked the way they looked so he sent them out as concrete poems. I think most of the Tibetan Stroboscope was done that way.”

On November 24, 1968, 26-year-old levy committed suicide by shotgun and was buried in Whitehaven Cemetery in Mayfield Heights. Not long before this, levy told rjs and several others he was going to where it Is real (Israel). In his manifesto to the city, Cleveland Undercovers, levy said he had “a city to cover with lines.” His lines, both image and verse, are resilient, considering he used the cheapest available means to make his books and prints accessible to all (affordable or free). Levy’s processes are in vogue among contemporary printmakers. His body of work is a timeline of methods used by artists and small presses for the last seventy years, and it continues to resonate with artists and like-minded, independent and DIY publishers.

d.a. Levy: Subversive Printmaking in 1960s Cleveland is on view January 17–March 1, 2025 at Zygote Press, 1410 East 30th Street, Cleveland, Ohio 44114. Opening Reception 5-8 pm Friday, January 17, 2025.

Bree Bodnar is a poet, visual artist, and native Clevelander living in rural Kentucky. In 2001 she founded Green Panda Press which publishes poetry and art chapbooks, anthologies, and ephemera of the very small press.

CAPTIONS
levy_03: d.a. levy, Edgewater Park, 1964. From 5 Cleveland Prints folio. Courtesy of Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.
levy_05: d.a. levy, Cover of Comparative literature on acid: part one: proceeding with caution thru improper channels as a means of survival, made in Madison, Wisconsin, 1968. Courtesy of Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.
levy_06: d.a. levy, Cover of 6 Cleveland Prints Vol. 2, 1964, Courtesy of Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.
levy_07: d.a. levy, Landscapage 1, Old Doans Corners, from 6 Cleveland prints Vol. 2, 1964. Courtesy of Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.
levy_07a: d.a. levy, Verso of Landscapage 1, Old Doans Corners, from 6 Cleveland prints Vol. 2, 1964. Courtesy of Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University.