Ted Joans
Afrodisia: New Poems, 1970
Hill & Wang, New York. Inscribed by the author.
Ted Joans
Black Pow-Wow: Jazz Poems, 1969
Hill & Wang, New York. Inscribed by the author.
Richard Hoffman Collection.
With facsimile of inscription.
A self-styled “Surrealist jazz poet” known for his spoken word performances and freeform collaborations with jazz musicians, Ted Joans was a fixture in the New York poetry scene before spending time in Paris and, later, Africa. One-time roommate of saxophonist Charlie Parker and close personally to Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Diane di Prima, and especially Jack Kerouac, he represents a unique bridge between the Beat aesthetic, jazz culture, European Surrealism, and Pan-Africanism. On Kerouac’s death in 1969, he wrote a tribute entitled “The Wild Spirit of Kicks,” in which he memorably called Kerouac “THE FUEL OF A GENERATION.”
Ted Joans (American, 1928 – 2003)
Ted Joans Reading His own Jazz Poetry and Surrealism, Cedar Bar, 1960s
printed collage on paper
Ted Joans was a prolific collage artist. This poster from the mid-1960s announcing his poetry reading at the Cedar Bar in lower Manhattan shows his sophisticated understanding of Dada and Surrealist montage. Joans was friends with the Surrealist assemblage artist Joseph Cornell and was embraced by the French founder of Surrealism, André Breton. Joans’s early book of collages, The Hipsters (1961), shows clear inspiration from Max Ernst, applied to the downtown Beat scene.
