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18.
SEMINA 7 (Larkspur, CA: 1961).
8vo. Cardstock cover, with pasted-on altered photo-still of Susan Hayward depicting Barbara Graham from the 1958 film “I Want to Live” (Graham was the first woman sentenced to the electric chair in California).
Inserts printed offset on cardstock or paper, contained in a tipped-in paper pocket with the printed text reading: “ALEPH/a gesture involving photographs drawings & text by Wallace Berman, 200 copies, Larkspur, 1961, for Shirley & Tosh I love you”.
18 inserts, all of them by Berman, as follows:
i) photograph featuring images of Cocteau, Nijinsky, and a Pre-Raphaelite portrait, with untitled poem by Berman printed below;
ii) “Art is Love is God” (the second and only other issue after Semina Two to include the slogan);
iii) “Boxed City”, a poem beginning “My beautiful wife”;
iv) “Opos” (poem);
v) “Fairytale for Tosh” (poem);
vi) “First & Last Fearpoem”;
vii) mailer to George Herms (collage);
viii) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and Tosh with toy machine gun);
ix) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and Patricia Jordan wearing mask);
x) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and large pendant hanging over Shirley Berman’s torso);
xi) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph and marijuana plants);
xii) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph with inscription reading “Jarry H. Mill Valley W.B.”);
xiii) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph, matchbook, Charlie Parker, with inscription reading “Bird 1920-1955”);
xiv) photographic collage (Hebrew Aleph over photograph of Arthur Richer playing saxophone);
xv) “Rapist & Voicethrower” (poem, with numbers substituted for words);
xvi) “Some easy-rider titles by Rohmer” (poem with references to Sax Rohmer’s detective novels);
xvii) self-portrait photograph (“P. Xantos”), with untitled manuscript poem and printed dedication “For John Birch & Karl Marx”;
xviii) photographic collage (photograph of John Wieners with inscription by Berman and a section from mail sent by Berman to David Meltzer).
An unusually Near Fine copy, with only the merest hint of a bump to the upper right corner of the front cover. The front cover pastedown is in excellent state, as are all the photographic reproductions and the paper pocket (minor glue spot and tiny tear at seam), with only one paper insert showing very slight creasing to the upper edge.
Overall, a superb example of the only issue of Semina entirely devoted to contributions by Berman.
