M.L. Liebler in Detroit sent me a copy of "John Sinclair: The Collected Poems 1964-2024." It arrived at Ormond Station on on the 5:10 Publisher is M.L.'s Ridgeway Press. It's big for a poetry book -- 556 pages -- but Sinclair's lifetime output was prodigious. It includes not only poetry but song lyrics as Sinclair was the manager of Detroit's legendary "kick out the jams" band, MC-5. He was arrested and jailed for avoiding the military draft and became a cause among antiwar activists. You heard "Free John Sinclair" from protests in Michigan to California and even South Carolina. This collection attempts to tie this together and does a fine job of it.
Not sure how to review it. I've just started to read but realize there are almost as many chapters as there are years of his life. I'll taste it until I get the flavors and then tell you about it.
The Fifth Estate is an underground newspaper M.L. writes about. He was a big fan in the 1960s and '70s and a big influence on his music and poetry career. I've talked about the influence of the alternative press on my life. The Fifth Estate was like the Boston Phoenix, Berkeley Barb, The Great Speckled Bird, and many others. Most no longer publish (the Fifth Estate does) but their spirits remain. Many can be found on online databases.
Some smaller cities had short-lived sheets. I was reminded of this in a recent Tim Gilmore column about "underground hippie newspaper" Both Sides Now in Jacksonville. Jax in 1969 was a much smaller city, a southern pro-military Navy town. It's where I took my draft physical in 1968 and spent the night on my friend Rick's Dad's destroyer at Mayport. He was the Chief Petty Officer and apparently had the run of the place. Never knew his name as he was "Chief" to everybody even his kids.
Gilmore's column is an in-depth piece about the rise and demise of Both Sides Now. It features visuals and ads from the paper. One yellowed ad from Slater's on Forsyth offered $6.98 eight-tracks of Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly for $3.98. Heck of a deal. One of the paper's founders, D.C. Jones, was a Navy vet from Detroit who helped promote bands from the city like Grand Funk Railroad.
Which brings me back to Detroit and Sinclair. He traveled through so many avenues of the underground. M.L. was a young denizen of the counterculture in 1967 Detroit. His intro to the volume echoes with reminders of that time, from rock bands such as MC-5 and Grand Funk Railroad to the 10-Mile-Road raps of Eminem. M.L. has toured with musicians Country Joe McDonald and Peter Lewis, one of the founders of the doomed L.A. band, Moby Grape. Poetry is one of the constants in M.L.'s life. He's published _________ books of poetry and puts on readings around the country (and sometimes overseas).
The Great Spoeckled Bird, Atlanta, archive through Georgia State University
From Wikpedia:
The Great Speckled Bird was a counterculture underground newspaper based in Atlanta from 1968 to 1976 and 1988 through 1990.[1][2] Commonly known as The Bird,[2] it was founded by New Left activists from Emory University and members of the Southern Student Organizing Committee, an offshoot of Students for a Democratic Society. Founding editors included Tom and Stephanie Coffin, Howard Romaine and Gene Guerrero Jr.[3] The first issue appeared March 8, 1968, and within 6 months it was publishing weekly. By 1970 it was the third largest weekly newspaper in Georgia with a paid circulation of 22,000 copies.[citation needed] The paper subscribed to Liberation News Service, a leftist news collective. The office of The Great Speckled Bird at the north end of Piedmont Park (240 Westminster Drive) was firebombed and destroyed on May 6, 1972.[4] In a letter to the editor of the New York Review of Books, Jack Newfield et al. noted that the bombing occurred after the paper published an exposé of the mayor of Atlanta.[5]
Writing in the Atlanta Magazine, Justin Heckert described The Bird's approach as one that treated objectivity as "a myth perpetuated by the capitalist press."[6] According to a statement in The Bird, "These are our opinions and we are entitled to them, they are not written anywhere else. So, don't expect us to tell both sides of the story. The big newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio do that all day long. Here you will hear our side of things."[citation needed] The Bird chose to report on issues not covered in mainstream newspapers. The paper focused on the war in Vietnam, black power, women's liberation, gay activism, red-baiting, Atlanta politics, labor, and environmental issues. The Bird's Women's Caucus challenged the paper's advertising norms and pushed the collective to share tasks more equitably.[7] The Bird included comics by Ron Ausburn and contributions on art and culture by Miller Francis.
GIs United Against the War in Vietnam founded at Fort Jackson outside Columbia, S.C. See Fifth Estate article at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/84-july-24-august-6-1969/ft-jackson-struggle-continues/. This article from the summer of 1969. And I was there the next month.
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