A. Fredric Franklyn — Best Always, Puerco

October 15, 1926, New York, New York–March 7, 1989, Los Angeles County, California

A. Fredric Franklyn wrote poems that think like movies: voices interrupt one another, scenes jump without warning, private memory collides with public spectacle, and the speaker keeps changing his distance from the role he is playing. Working in the Los Angeles orbit of James Boyer May’s Trace, Franklyn also served as a West Coast representative for the bilingual Mexico City magazine El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn before becoming a familiar character actor in film and television. The twenty-five poems gathered in Best Always, Puerco show an exhilarating formal range—family monologue, prose nightmare, musical sequence, concrete poem, fractured column, and typographic joke. Learned, funny, bodily, and frequently exposed, they recover a poet whose crossings among little magazines, cinema, and inter-American exchange deserve a place in the history of Los Angeles modernism.

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Catalogue

Independent Little Magazines

Associations

Borderlands and Spanish-Language California Dada, Surrealism, and the Avant-Garde Eccentrics and Outsiders Film and Hollywood James Boyer May Circle The Incognoscenti Poetry Workshop Trace Visual, Concrete, and Book-Object Poetry

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Bibliography

Franklyn, A. Fredric. “Motion Pictures of the Past.” Trace, vol. 44, 1962, pp. 43–48.

———. “In Round Sums” and “The Dense Processional.” Trace, vol. 46, 1962, p. 174, 206.

———. “The Party in the Hole in the Ground.” Trace, vol. 47, 1962, pp. 297–302.

———. “Seventy-Proof” and “Appetites.” El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, vol. 6, Apr. 1963, pp. 126–128.

———. Letter on fiction, Charles Olson, sexuality, and action. El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, vol. 7, July 1963, p. 177.

———. “The Murdering Place” and “The Fiery Coffin.” El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, vol. 7, July 1963, pp. 113–116.

———. “Ten Minutes.” Trace, vol. 48, 1963, pp. 47–49.

———. “Allah’s Plan.” Trace, vol. 50, 1963, p. 185.

———. “Seventh Gate.” Trace, vol. 52, 1964, p. 96.

———. “Habits.” Coastlines, vol. 21–22, 1964, p. 55.

———. Virgules and Déjà Vu. Duende 2. Duende Press, 1964.

———. The Soi-Distant Plaintiffs. 1964. Full imprint not recovered.

———. “Best Always, Puerco.” Trace, vol. 55, winter 1964, pp. 340–345.

———. “My Name” and “Wailing.” El Corno Emplumado / The Plumed Horn, vol. 15, July 1965, pp. 85–90.

———. “The Opening Room.” Trace, vol. 57, 1965, pp. 163–166.

———. “The Means of Cinema.” Trace, no. 56, 1965. Film criticism.

———. “Devil Crone.” Trace, no. 58, 1965. Film criticism.

———. “Diana” and “The Cinematic Short Story Forms.” Trace, no. 59, 1966. Film criticism.

———. “Count Miraculous Burns,” “Then,” “The Andromeda Deep,” and “Long.” Trace, vol. 60, 1966, pp. 58–61.

———. “The Hand in the Fist.” Trace, no. 60, 1966. Film criticism.

———. “Talent vs Its Image.” Trace, no. 61, 1966. Film criticism.

———. “New York & World Cinema.” Trace, nos. 62–63, 1966. Film criticism.

———. “The Certainties.” Trace, vol. 64, 1967, p. 6.

———. “The Casual Mind.” Trace, no. 64, 1967. Film criticism.

———. “Homunculus,” “Pounds, Etc.,” and “In/vention · Con/vention · Fecund.” Trace, vol. 65, summer 1967, pp. 224–227, 293.

———. “Root, Stem and Blossom.” Trace, no. 65, summer 1967. Hybrid film essay.

———. “The War Game.” Trace, no. 66, 1967. Film criticism.

———. “Part IV: Book Allargando.” In a Time of Revolution: Poems from Our Third World, edited by Walter Lowenfels. Random House, 1969, pp. 35–36.

———. “Dimity Girl.” Typescript, one page. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66, box 14, folder 14f. Kenneth Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas.

———. Best Always, Puerco. CSF Publishing, 2011.

Works About the Author

“Center of Arts Sets Reading by 2 Poets.” Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, 9 July 1964, p. 11.

Goodell, Larry. “Musing Backwards to Duende.” 3 Dimensional Poetry, 2018. First-person account of meeting Franklyn at Vancouver and publishing Virgules and Déjà Vu.

———. “The Publishing of Louis Zukofsky’s Found Objects by Hank Chapin and Vancouver Poetry Conference—1963—a Letter.” lotsa larry goodell, 16 June 2024.

Granary Books. “Duende Press Collection.” Catalogue description of Larry Goodell’s archive and the poet-dedicated issues.

IMDb. “Fred Franklyn—Biography.” Birth name, dates, spouse, child, and screen credits. Consulted 25 Aug. 2026.

Los Angeles Department of City Planning. Environmental-impact appendices reproducing the 1962 Pacific Telephone directory listing for “FRANKLYN A FREDRIC (7142)” on Fountain Avenue.

Plex. “Fred Franklyn.” Screen filmography. Consulted 25 Aug. 2026.

Rotten Tomatoes. “Fred Franklyn.” Filmography and biographical summary. Consulted 25 Aug. 2026.

Tharp, Shannon. “Duende: The Real Heart of What’s Going On.” Post45, 2023.

TV Guide. “Fred Franklyn: Credits.” Film and television credits. Consulted 25 Aug. 2026.

University of Arizona Poetry Center. Rare Book Holdings. Entry for A. Fredric Franklyn, Virgules and Déjà Vu.

University of Kansas, Kenneth Spencer Research Library. Ronald Johnson papers, MS 66, box 14, folder 14f. Record describing Franklyn’s “Dimity Girl.”