DOUGLAS DUNN + DANCERS

at Unnameable Books

Image: Undated photo of Larry Fagin.

You are invited to join us for a backyard book launch for

LARRY FAGIN featuring:

Douglas Dunn + Dancers

Miles Champion

Porter Fox

Gillian McCain

Jenni Quilter

Kyle Schlesinger

Aaron Simon

DATE: Thursday, July 16

TIME: 7 - 9 pm

LOCATION: Unnameable Books

615 Vanderbilt Avenue

Brooklyn, NY 11238

Image: Larry Fagin: Smash the State & Have a Nice Day, Cuneiform Press, 2026

In 2020, Kyle Schlesinger’s Cuneiform Press published Larry Fagin’s Peaches & Gravy: Selected Poems 1966–2016. Six years later, Cuneiform has done Fagin the tremendous service of publishing his selected non-poems, Smash the State & Have a Nice Day. Like Peaches before it, Smash has been wonderfully designed by Richard Tuttle; unlike Peaches, which is a regular paperback, Smash is a whopping, twelve-inches-tall clothbound hardcover. Fittingly, given that Fagin is the author of The List Poem, the book primarily comprises lists: of things Fagin liked to talk about, of his favorite things, of study topics, of words (ingredients) to use in poems, of favorite movies, poetry, and prose, etc. These are accompanied by notes on Frank O’Hara and Clark Coolidge, an Adventures in Poetry checklist (1968–75), travel pieces, an essay on Laurent de Brunhoff and Babar the Elephant, miscellaneous oddments, and a recipe for oeufs en meurette (notwithstanding the fact that its author could scarce boil an egg). A veritable gallimaufry, then, and a generous window into Fagin’s world.

The book is available for purchase HERE

Larry Fagin (1937–2017) was a poet, editor, and publisher, and a great admirer of Lora Logic. His books include Rhymes of a Jerk, Stabs, I’ll Be Seeing You: Poems 1962–1976, Dig & Delve (with Trevor Winkfield), Complete Fragments, and Eleven Poems for Philip Guston. His selected poems, Peaches & Gravy: Selected Poems 1966–2016, and his selected non-poems, Smash the State & Have a Nice Day: A Larry Fagin Reader, were edited for Cuneiform Press by Miles Champion

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