Poems by Gerard Legro

Poetry. Edited, annotated, and with an introduction by Alessandro Porco. In the spring and summer of 1949, Jerrold Levy and Richard Negro—two teenage pranksters with the right mix of bad attitude and artistic ingenuity—composed, circulated, and performed a collection of poems on the campus of Black Mountain College, an experimental school located just outside Asheville, North Carolina. Now, BookThug brings this previously unpublished work to light for the first time in POEMS BY GERARD LEGRO, edited with annotations by noted Canadian poet and scholar Alessandro Porco.

Porco's insightful work (including a critical introduction, explanatory notes, and rare photographs sourced from archival documents and historical materials) offers an enlightening exploration of a side of the Black Mountain College canon that's rarely seen. Rich with aleatory compositional methods and found materials, and replete with scatological puns, doggerel rhymes, and surreal imagery, POEMS BY GERARD LEGRO was meant to be a critique of the 'obscurity' of modernist poetry from two disaffected teens in post-war America who were desperate to fight back against aesthetic and moral codes of maturity, propriety, and sophistication.

"Beautiful Gerard Legro is alive. At Black Mountain College two students rebelled against their teachers, Josef Albers and Charles Olson, to create a mythic figure-part hoax, part avatar of disenchanted youth-who is entirely their own... These poems are a vital addition to the history of the extraordinary educational experiment that was Black Mountain."—Kaplan Harris

"The literary history of Black Mountain College has received a useful amplification and illumination in the form of POEMS BY GERARD LEGRO... Through his detailed and insightful introduction, and in his careful annotation of both the poems and the circumstances of their composition and (non-)dissemination, Alessandro Porco equips the contemporary reader not just to get the joke(s), but also to appreciate the significance of a fascinating project, equal parts homage and satire, that has too long languished in archival storage. A valuable recovery."—Steve Evans

"Alessandro Porco has rescued a collaborative work of poetry that is emblematic of the efficacy of the teaching methods at Black Mountain College. For it was at Black Mountain in 1949 that Jerrold Levy and Richard Negro, two undergrads, in the best transgressive prankster tradition, combined to become Gerard Legro. Despite their worst intentions, they created real poetry—'Or in Summer's subways lifting / The subtle subterfuge of ladies skirts'—if only they'd been able to follow it. Their Albers poem is actually beautiful in its limitation. Porco's impeccable scholarship allows readers finally to appreciate Legro's steps and missteps."—Vincent Katz More