#Nanos Valaoritis

[majestativa]

Back into the abyss of consciousness.

— Nanos Valaoritis, Hired Hieroglyphs: Poems and Collages, (1971)

[surrealistnyc]

Recently published: The Nicolas Calas & Nanos Valaoritis Correspondence, 1958-1967

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

A quick tug is all it takes and I am out What an amazing purity of consciousness What an experience to see the world Without the self's enveloping atmosphere

from Birds of Hazard and Prey by Nanos Valaoritis collected in Mark In Time: Portraits & Poetry / San Francisco

[familiarquotation]

And autumn, which bars and bolts its doors, Swooped like a hawk to eat our hearts,

Nanos Valaoritis, Homecoming

[literaturha]

... our branches only mingle with the nearby trees, even if we communicate with the whole forest in blindness, as it shudders with the rushing winds or shakes with the tremors of the earth.

Nanos Valaoritis, Problems of an Empire

[plebeienoblige]

Nanos Valaoritis

[forsoothsayer]

Shaman by Nanos Valaoritis

Rain had eaten the Parthenon silly All its teeth gaping in front Mexican grenadiers paused To admire the view from the balcony  

The sky was stormier then  Dancers from the Bolshoi Theatre And the sea was rougher by far Than a Roller Derby Marathon  

And no one knew what to do next As the halls of Washington DC Echoed with the cry of the KKK And black choruses from the deep South  

Youth revolt spread like a brush fire Contraceptives virgined new Saviours Experts hacked their brains into cubes Trying to puzzle this one out  

In the valley some carrion was eaten While ravens flew up in the sun A calico kitten miaoed in the desert Of ruined human relations  

The heavens quite soon became laden And pregnant with fruits of grey clouds The Indians emerged from their cavern Under the worlds’ greatest mountain  

And they knew how to read and to write And they knew how to hunt and to fight  And they held from their fabulous birth The gift of clear sight  

[citylightsbooks]

A Women’s History of City Lights: Interview with Nancy J. Peters

We'll be celebrating Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s 102nd birthday on March 24, and what better way to remember his legacy AND to mark Women’s History Month, than to honor Nancy J. Peters, Lawrence’s business partner, friend, and longtime comrade at City Lights Books. While Ferlinghetti certainly deserves all of the accolades he’s received, the fact of the matter is there would literally be no City Lights without Nancy Peters. Beyond shepherding City Lights through various fiscal crises and providing the steady anchor that allowed Ferlinghetti to travel the world as a poet and activist, Nancy's vision as an editor and acumen as a publisher were a vital key to the success and longevity of City Lights Publishers.

 ***

City Lights: How did you come to know what City Lights was? How did you meet Lawrence Ferlinghetti?

Nancy Peters: In Greece in the early 1960s, I became friends with Nanos Valaoritis and Marie Wilson who were at the center of an international bohemian/surrealist community. They had a large home which was always full of traveling writers and artists whom they made welcome. The Beat writers were among their guests, and City Lights was frequently talked about as a place everyone would meet up someday. I met Philip Lamantia there and in 1965 he introduced me to Lawrence in Paris at one of Jean-Jacque Lebel’s anarcho-surrealist festivals of free expression.  Before a riotous crowd Lawrence gave a show-stopping rendition of his “Lord’s Prayer.” I was impressed by his powerful stage presence. Later that year, when Philip and I were living in Andalusia, Lawrence wrote Philip, asking for a selection of poems for a Pocket Poets Series volume. We corresponded some while we were putting the book together, but I didn’t see him again until 1971 when I moved to San Francisco.

I’d been working as an executive-trainee librarian at the Library of Congress in the fall of 1968. In April, Martin Luther King was assassinated and the impassioned protests that ensued left Washington neighborhoods in ruins. There was shockingly little assistance to residents from the government and my part of the city was under military surveillance, helicopters hovering over my apartment through the night. A Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam took place in Washington the following year. Over 750,000 people peacefully demonstrated. In a small way, I was involved in the planning and, during the protests, my apartment was crammed with fellow activists.

The Library of Congress was an amazing, fascinating place with compatible co-workers from all over the world—thousands of book people all in one place. However, the mission of the Library is to serve Congress, and the institution was a huge conservative bureaucracy serving a conservative and ineffective Congress as I saw it. I believed that if I stayed there I would have little contact with actual books or opportunities for civic activism.

So I moved to San Francisco, where Philip was living and urging me to come, and spent an enormous amount of time at City Lights while I was job hunting. It seemed like paradise, such a stimulating atmosphere where people could sit down to read, share ideas, and have conversations about books, politics, art. One day in early 1971 when I was walking down the street in North Beach, Lawrence hailed me and asked if I would like to help him with a bibliography of Allen Ginsberg’s writings.  After just a brief meeting at the publishing office, Lawrence went to Europe and his editorial assistant Jan Herman suddenly decided to move to Germany. Jan showed me how all the editorial work was done in the office, told me Lawrence “wouldn’t mind,” and so I found myself beginning an exciting new career in publishing.

 What was your experience taking over as executive director and co-owner in 1984?

The store back then employed seven people: six men at the bookstore and one (me) at the publishing branch. So “executive director” is far too grand a title. City Lights was a small, failing organization by 1982. The store was not founded to make profits for the owners and it never did make a profit. Breaking even was the goal. But every year the losses mounted and there came a time when there were very few books left on the shelves. No one had seen a customer venture downstairs to the lower part of the store for many months.  

At the time, Lawrence was immensely popular and in great demand as a performer and a speaker, so he was traveling much of the time, visiting foreign colleagues, living abroad, finding new writers to translate. At this low point in the store’s history Lawrence told me in a frustrated moment that if I’d like to own City Lights, he would give it to me outright if I would run the business, freeing him to do all the other things he wanted to do. I declined, but told him I would be honored to be his partner. Theft was seriously addressed, and a protracted payment plan was agreed to by Book People, the East Bay employee-owned distributors who extended us credit for a generous period. Savvy booksellers Richard Berman and Paul Yamazaki headed the re-stocking plan. The three of us would go every week to Book People and Lou Swift Distributors to collect enough books to sell the following week. As time went on, everybody at the store consulted book catalogs and took on the responsibility for buying subject sections. I envisioned a participatory structure. If not a co-op, I wanted a bookstore where all the staff had responsibilities and power.

Why the decision not to have multiple bookstore locations around SF?

At one time we seriously considered additional locations. We explored sites in San Francisco’s Mission district and visited city officials in San Jose to talk about a second store there. But our resources were limited, and we were concerned about the time and money that would be required to create a sister store that would embody the same spirit and ethic as the original. During my time as director, the evolving challenges from chain stores and especially Amazon made beginning a new store a very risky enterprise. In retrospect, so many independents were closing that we decided to invest in our present, iconic location. In retrospect I think it was a good decision after watching attempts by other stores fail to duplicate their success elsewhere.

How has North Beach changed, how has it stayed the same? With the exodus of Big Tech and falling rents, how do you think that will affect North Beach and San Francisco in general in the future? Will there be “a rebirth of wonder”?

North Beach when I came to SF was a small bohemian village, where neighbors shared meals on their flat rooftops watching the sun set over the Bay. My rent was $125 a month, cheap even then. City Lights and the Discovery Bookstore (used books) next door to Vesuvio were key places to spend an evening. Two large Italian grocers delivered (no charge) bags of groceries up four flights of stairs to my apartment. The neighborhood was full of inexpensive Basque, Italian, and Chinese restaurants, and many cafes, many of which seemed unchanged since the 19th century. Change happens, and City Lights is well prepared for the future. It’s never easy to predict how things will develop, but the feeling of a lovely Mediterranean town persists, with the wooden buildings painted pastel colors, and the shimmering sea light on misty days. I feel certain that the light of City Lights will prevail for a long time to come.

 Do you feel that your gender had any impact on your experience during your 23 years as director? Do you have any comments about women in bookselling or publishing in general?

Gender always has an impact. The Beat movement was certainly male focused. Even though the undaunted Diane di Prima was recognized, she was never enthusiastically supported by the inner nucleus of Beat poets. It was a long time before the Beat women came into their own. From the start, Lawrence, who insisted he wasn’t a Beat, had eclectic tastes and was open to women’s poetry. He admired Marianne Moore and Edna St. Vincent Millay as much as he did T.S. Eliot, Jacques Prévert, and Allen Ginsberg. In the Pocket Poets Series, he’d published di Prima and, very early in the series, both Marie Ponsot and Denise Levertov.

Women’s rights and opportunities are always vulnerable and cyclic. The Women’s Movement of the 1970s was very powerful and widespread, its impact on women’s lives enormous. At City Lights we hired more women; we published more women. There have always been outstanding women in publishing and bookselling, and during that time increasingly more women writers were published, reviewed, and were given accolades and awards. Women opened general bookstores and women’s bookstores, founded feminist and lesbian presses. It was a thrilling development, to see so many marginalized writers, and not just women, finding established publishers or creating their own presses. Together they created a larger, much more diverse national literature.

I’ve had the pleasure of working with many talented women at the bookstore. And in the publishing branch: Stella Levy, Kim McCloud, and Patricia Fujii. Gail Chiarello collected and edited our bestselling Bukowski stories. Annie Janowitz proposed the timely Unamerican Activities, and Amy Scholder brought us classics by Karen Finley, Rebecca Brown, and others. I’m happy to say that Amy Scholder is again working with City Lights as an editor.

When did you meet the now current publisher and executive director Elaine Katzenberger? What was her position at the bookstore? When did you know that she was the right person to take over as director?

Ah, Elaine, the woman who can do everything! Elaine began at the bookstore sales counter, then reorganized files and the store accounts, and very soon excelled as a book buyer. She had a great feeling for good writing, so I asked her to become an editor and she immediately began adding excellent books to City Lights’ list. She’s smart, witty, multitalented, and politically astute. We are very lucky to have her at the helm.

What is your understanding or vision of what of City Lights is and what it could be? How has Lawrence’s passing impacted this?

Lawrence’s democratic inclusiveness made him the best-selling poet in the U.S. His moral principles, his courage and resilience are a model to be emulated. He conceived City Lights as an educational institution that would open minds to explore and relate to the world through books. “One guy told me he’d got the equivalent of a Ph. D just sitting in the basement reading all our great books,” he often reminded us.

His “literary gathering place” was to be a fulcrum of San Francisco cultural experience, where our bookselling and publishing could amplify the voices of diverse experiences, connect with other creative communities, and serve as a center of dissent and, at the same time, a force for creating a better society.

Lawrence’s vision will continue to be our guiding light. An optimistic realist, he believed that City Lights would long endure as the co-creation of all the dedicated people who work here and make it what it is.

[uutpoetry]

All things change, one thing becomes another Wood becomes stone, trees become clouds Women become men, leaves become seas ... All tings exist in one another Stones inside of man, man inside of stones Rivers pour out of his fingers His words are tulips His love is a cistern...

Nanos Valaoritis, “One Thing In Another”

[justforbooks]

Ioannis (Nanos) Valaoritis (July 5, 1921 – September 13, 2019) was a Greek writer, widely published as a poet, novelist and playwright since 1939; his correspondence with George Seferis (Allilographia 1945-1968, Ypsilon, Athens 2004) was a bestseller. Raised within a cosmopolitan family with roots in the Greek War of Independence but twice driven into exile by events, Valaoritis lived in Greece, the United Kingdom, France and the United States, and as a writer and academic he played a significant role in introducing the literary idioms of each country to the rest. The quality, the international appeal, and the influence of his work led Valaoritis to be described as the most important poet of the Hellenic diaspora since Constantine Cavafy.

Valaoritis was born to Greek parents in Lausanne in Switzerland in 1921 but grew up in Greece where he studied classics and law at Athens University. He was also writing poetry, and in 1939 when he was barely eighteen, he saw himself published in the pages of George Katsimbalis’ review Nea Grammata alongside contributions from Odysseas Elytis and George Seferis, and was immediately taken into their literary circle. It was an ominous yet heady time, those early months of the war, during which Valaoritis was witness to the seminal encounter of Seferis and Katsimbalis with Henry Miller and Lawrence Durrell, which was to resonate within both Greek and Anglo-Saxon literature for years to come. Valaoritis met his wife Marie Wilson one evening at a large gathering in Paris full of Greek writers and artists. Marie Wilson was an American surrealist artist, Marie is the author of Apparitions: Paintings and Drawings by Marie Wilson. Wilson was embedded in the surrealist movement, and had a very close relationship with Andre Breton and Picasso. Nanos moved in together and lived there for six years, leading to marriage, which has now continued for forty years. They had three children together.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[afrouif]

Marie Wilson and Nanos Valaoritis photographed in 2000 by Tassos Vrettos in front of one of Marie's glorious paintings

[majestativa]

Madness glittering inside your head.

— Nanos Valaoritis, Hired Hieroglyphs: Poems and Collages, (1971)

[elladastinkardiamou]

Ioannos (Nanos) Valaoritis has been widely published as a poet, novelist, and playwright. The grandson of Aristotle Valaoritis, a famous nineteenth-century poet, Valaoritis escaped German-occupied Greece for London, where he met T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, and W. H. Auden. He translated George Seferis’s poetry collection, The King Asine, as well as work by Odysseus Elytis and Andreas Embiriko.

In 1954, he moved the Paris. Here he became closely associated with Andre Breton’s Surrealist group. Eventually, Valaoritis returned to Greece, but left again in 1968 after the military junta came to power. For a quarter century, he taught at San Francisco State University, where he and a colleague, Thanasis Maskaleris, edited An Anthology of Modern Greek Poetry. After his retirement from the University, he returned for good to Greece.

He is a prolific writer. His writing can be sensual and fantastic, with a certain quality of amusement and lightness, and then again, it can entirely change in tone and be quite lyrical.

A hot June day. I leave the crowded Plaka district that surrounds the Acropolis and make my way on foot towards leafy green Kolonaki Square. The crowds have thinned. There are only a few solitary walkers. Elegant upscale shops line the street where Nanos Valaoritis lives. I have not seen him in over twenty years. I ring the bell at the entrance of an older, gated building. A tiny old-fashioned elevator with wooden doors slowly lifts me to the second floor. Katerina, his oldest daughter, ushers me inside. Marie Wilson, his wife, died only a few months ago, and since then Katerina has taken charge of the household.

Nanos is in a wheelchair, white-haired, hunched over a laptop in a small room heaped with books. Books are heaped on shelves, tables, and the dining table where he sits. His dark eyes, beneath bushy white brows, sparkle with life. Despite the frailty of his body, his mind is diamond sharp.

Nanos and I begin to talk. Katerina, who is charming and who has a strong, melodious voice, helps to facilitate the conversation because he has recently grown very hard of hearing.

[venitisblr-blog]

HONORING NANOS VALAORITS

  On the occasion of the publication of the new issue of “Odos Panos” magazine, dedicated to Nanos Valaoritis, an event honoring the renowned Greek poet will take place. Six of the issue’s collaborators, the philologist and critic Anthoula Daniil, the poet Myrto Digoni, the writer, theatrologist and critic Konstantinos Bouras, the poet and publisher Ntinos Siotis, the writer Ersi Sotiropoulos…

[literaturha]

What is it like, not the city of God, but this structure of bones, this network of eyes, this broken continuity of flesh, this potential of words like a huge, unexploded arsenal. What is it like inside out?

Nanos Valaoritis, Problems of an Empire

[centerforhellenicstudies]

2019-2020 CHS-CCS Fellows | Victoria Ferentinou

2019-2020 CHS-CCS Fellows | Victoria Ferentinou

As a CHS-CCS Fellow 2019-2020 in Comparative Cultural Studies, I have explored the concept of myth in context of the Greek avant-garde movement of the 1960s, focusing on the Greek poet and critic Nanos Valaoritis and the Pali Group. Central to my research is the idea of modern mythogenesis and the ways that Greek intellectuals and artists associated with international Surrealism drew inspiration…