Now & Then

Since the inception of Lost & Found in 2009, we have witnessed enormous losses in the wider community of affiliated writers and artists. A central part of our mission has been to connect younger scholars and researchers to the work and person of elders whose artistic world they inherit. As this world hurtles toward oblivion due to reliance on increasingly fragile, unstable, and fragmented means of transmitting the record, Lost & Found Now & Then adds a new facet to the prism we are constructing, a place for tribute and immediate response, as and when necessary.

Archie Rand: Eulogy For Cecil Taylor

LOST & FOUND NOW & THEN #1 Color broadside, folded, 4 pages

The death on April 5, 2018 of Cecil Taylor, a cultural giant of the 20th/21st centuries, prompted us to initiate a new rubric, Lost & Found Now & Then, as a site from which more immediate responses could emerge on such momentous occasions. Our first project features the reproduction of a poster for a Cecil Taylor / Max Roach concert given at Columbia University on June 4, 2000. The poster, signed by Cecil “to Archie” was created by Brooklyn born and based painter Archie Rand, and it serves as the outer cover of the eulogy printed within and delivered by Rand at Taylor’s funeral.

Archie Rand (1949—) was born and still lives in Brooklyn, New York, and first exhibited at the legendary Tibor de Nagy Gallery at the age of 17, in 1966. His meteoric production and voracious curiosity have continued unabated since then, with projects including The 613, based on the commandments of the Hebrew bible, The Letter Paintings (or The Jazz Paintings), based on the work and lives of American musicians, sequences of paintings based on works by Montale, Beckett, Celan, Spicer, and other poets and writers; synagogue murals that revive a tradition almost untouched since Dura-Europus (Syria, 200 BC to 300 AD), and ongoing work in collaboration with poets, from John Ashbery and Robert Creeley to Clark Coolidge and John Yau. Throughout his work, Rand’s deep knowledge of visual art, music, literature, and popular culture, is never gratuitous but always in service to traditions we are being summoned to learn more about. He is Presidential Professor of Art at Brooklyn College, CUNY. 

Cecil Taylor: Memorial Scrapbook & Sessionography

LOST & FOUND NOW & THEN #2

Editors: Ammiel Alcalay & Michelle Yom
scrapbook 56 pp, soft-bound, saddle-stitched Sessionography 56 pp, soft-bound, saddle-stitched

Cecil Taylor: Memorial Scrapbook & Sessionography present two very different aspects of pianist and composer Cecil Taylor’s achievements over time. While Sessionography is a historical document—listing all of Taylor’s known appearances by date and location, along with personnel—it will be used mainly for reference, but the sheer accumulation of names of performers, dates, and locations, creates a vast and intricate narrative with a weigh all its own. The Memorial Scrapbook, on the other hand, is primarily a visual document—a gathering of memorabilia in the form of concert posters and programs, annotations of music, and photographs, each gathered from Taylor’s friends and associates, and each evoking a particular time and place in order to provide a counterpoint visual history. The Memorial Scrapbook includes photographs by Allen Ginsberg and Val Wilmer, a poster by Bill Dixon, a text by Ted Joans, biographical notes by Ben Young, and musical notations by Karen Borca and Elliott Levin.

Ammiel Alcalay is a poet, translator, critic, and scholar whose books include a little history and from the warring factions. Initiator and General Editor of Lost & Found, he teaches in various fields at Queens College and The Graduate Center, C U N Y . He is the recipient of a 07 Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award for his work on Lost & Found.

Michelle Yom is a flutist and PhD student in musicology at The Graduate Center, CUNY. She teaches music history at Brooklyn College.

SELECTED ARCHIVES

In Memory of Michael McClure: Broadside by Diane di Prima

Michael McClure, Gough St. San Francisco. Photo by Diane di Prima, 1960s.

LOST & FOUND NOW & THEN #3: U-Print broadside during the coronavirus, “For Michael McClure” by Diane di Prima, May 6th, 2020. Click here or below to download or print the broadside.

As we mourn the loss and celebrate the life of visionary poet Michael McClure, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative has created a unique way to move through this period of social distancing and break through the ubiquitous screens many are communicating through. Our aim, in presenting this printable broadside by long time Lost & Found friend and luminary poet Diane di Prima, is to put something directly in your hands, despite the constraints we’re now operating under. Print this on beautiful paper, if you don’t have a printer on hand, ask a friend or neighbor and maybe they can mail or give you a copy! From us to you, we hope these broadsides will mark a time, a place, and a life.

For-Michael-McClure-by-Diane-di-PrimaDownload

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In Memory of Michael McClure: Broadside by Ed Sanders

LOST & FOUND NOW & THEN #4: U-Print broadside during the coronavirus, “A Memory of Michael McClure” by Ed Sanders. Click here or below to download or print the broadside.

As we mourn the loss and celebrate the life of visionary poet Michael McClure, Lost & Found: The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative has created a unique way to move through this period of social distancing and break through the ubiquitous screens many are communicating through. Our aim, in presenting this printable broadside by long time Lost & Found friend and luminary poet Ed Sanders, is to put something directly in your hands, despite the constraints we’re now operating under. Print this on beautiful paper, if you don’t have a printer on hand, ask a friend or neighbor and maybe they can mail or give you a copy! From us to you, we hope these broadsides will mark a time, a place, and a life.

A-Memory-of-Michael-McClure-Ed-SandersDownload