Harold Vernon Witt — Collected Poems
Harold Witt was a California formalist with an appetite for everything formal poetry was supposed to exclude: consumer absurdity, librarians, local eccentrics, pulp movies, family embarrassment, political dread, psychoanalysis, and jokes that suddenly become elegies. Born in Orange County and raised in Santa Ana, he published thirteen books across five decades while working as a reference librarian in California and Nevada. His work moved from the tight surreal satire of Superman Unbound, The Death of Venus, and Beasts in Clothes to documentary sequences, autobiographical portraits, collage, and the paired literary miniatures of American Lit. This edition gathers the eight complete books currently represented by source scans in the project archive and documents the five additional collections that remain to be recovered.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Witt, Harold. Family in the Forest. Porpoise Bookshop, 1956.
———. Superman Unbound. New Orleans Poetry Journal, 1956.
———. The Death of Venus. Golden Quill Press, 1958.
———. Beasts in Clothes. Macmillan, 1961.
———. Poems. Best Cellar Press, 1971.
———. Pop. by 1940: 40,000. Best Cellar Press, 1971.
———. Now, Swim. Ashland Poetry Press, 1974.
———. Surprised by Others at Fort Cronkhite. Felix & Selma Stefanie, 1975.
———. Winesburg by the Sea. Thorp Springs Press, 1979.
———. The Snow Prince Poems and Collages. Blue Unicorn Press, 1982.
———. Flashbacks and Reruns. 1985.
———. The Light at Newport. Daedalus Press, 1992.
———. American Lit. Ashland Poetry Press, 1994.