A captivating look at the poet Helen Adam and her circle of collaborators
Guest-edited by Alison Fraser
In this issue Chicago Review features a special portfolio of documents surrounding Helen Adam and her closest collaborators in the San Francisco Renaissance: the visual artist Jess Collins and the poet Robert Duncan. Published here is an expansive selection of letters between Adam and Jess, accompanied by reproductions of photographs and scrapbooks in which they explored a shared “mystical” aesthetic. These letters and artifacts span more than a quarter century, providing a never-before-seen glimpse into their collaborative process.
Completing the feature are two essays in which Adam and Duncan admire each other’s work and express their affinity for a late twentieth-century visionary poetics, along with “The Nurse Speaks for R. D.,” Adam’s previously unpublished poem for Duncan.
This special portfolio places Helen Adam back in the center of the postwar San Francisco and New York avant-gardes. Preview the feature here.
Christmas 2016