Ed Smith Papers
Call Number
Dates
Creator
Extent
Language of Materials
Abstract
Ed Smith was a poet, active in the 1980's in the scene centered around the Beyond Baroque/Literary Arts Center in Los Angeles. His papers cover the period 1978-2005, when Smith lived in Los Angeles and New York City. The materials include, but are not limited to, journals, notebooks, correspondence, drafts, manuscripts, flyers, photographs, monographs and periodicals.
Biographical Note
Ed Smith was born in Downey, California in 1957. He attended Pomona College in Claremont, California for one academic year (1975-76), before making his way to Los Angeles. He worked as a paralegal and for an independent record and video company, became interested in the punk scene, and then found his calling as a poet in the scene centered around the Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in the 1980's. He published two collections of poetry, Fantasyworld (Venice, CA, Cold Calm Press, 1983)and Tim's Bunnies (Los Angeles, Cold Calm Press, 1988). His poems also appear in the collection Poetry Loves Poetry (Santa Monica, Momentum Press, 1985), and in various magazines. He practiced some journalism, writing articles and doing interviews for the magazine Shiny, of which he was also West Coast Editor, and for the L.A. Reader. To make ends meet, he worked as a typesetter, a movie ad copywriter, and as a math tutor at a private school. His friends and associates in the poetry scene included Dennis Cooper, Bob Flanagan. Other friends well represented by his papers include poets Amy Gerstler, Steven Hall, and Celia Pearce, musician Ingrid Baumgart, and video and performance artist Skip Arnold. He lived for periods of time with the latter two. After moving to New York City in the late 1990s and marrying artist Mio Shirai, Smith devoted himself to a business venture, CSAI, a consulting firm helping companies apply W. Edwards Demming's principles of emergent intelligence to their organizations.
Arrangement
Ed Smith maintained his own combined subject and correspondence files, which he kept in folders arranged alphabetically, occasionally by first name, more often by last name, and by subject. His original arrangement has been kept in Series II. Where no folders existed for loose materials, new subject or correspondence files were created and interfiled with Smith's. Folders that were not part of Smith's arrangement scheme are indicated by brackets around the title.
Materials are arranged chronologically within the folders, except in the [flyers] folder wherein the mostly undated material is arranged by venue.
- Series I: Journals/Notebooks
- Series II: Correspondence and Subject Series
- Series III: Drafts, Production Materials, Final Published Work
- Series IV: Printed Matierals
Scope and Content Note
The Ed Smith Papers are part of the Downtown Collection at Fales Library, New York University. The papers cover the period 1978-2005, when Smith lived in Los Angeles and New York City. The material is arranged into four series:
Series I: The Journals/Notebooks Series consists of spiral notebooks, bound notebooks, loose pages, and legal pads containing diary entries, drafts of poetry and correspondence, and business notes, arranged chronologically.
Series II: The Correspondence and Subject Series consists of interfiled correspondence folders and subject folders, arranged alphabetically (see arrangement note, below). The folders contain correspondence received by Ed Smith, flyers, photographs, and ephemera in chronological order. Some of the correspondents in his papers are former tutoring students.
Series III: The Drafts, Production Materials, and Final Published Work Series consists of published copies of Smith's books and articles, production material related to Tim's Bunnies, and draft material, including drafts by other writers. Draft material can also be found within the journals of Series I and the letters of Series II.
Series IV: The Printed Materials Series consists of four subseries of materials collected by Ed Smith: subseries A consists of monographs arranged alphabetically by author, subseries B consists of periodicals arranged alphabetically by title, subseries C contains catalogs for art shows arranged chronologically, and subseries D is miscellaneous printed materials arranged chronologically.
There is one large flat oversize box of material removed from Series II, and one large flat oversize box of material removed from Series III.
Other books and periodicals owned by Ed Smith have been separated out and moved to the stacks of the Fales Downtown Collection.
Subjects
Organizations
Genres
People
Topics
Access Restrictions
Materials are open without restrictions.
Conditions Governing Use
This collection is protected by copyright and/or related rights. You are free to use materials in the collection in any way that is permitted by the copyright and related rights legislation that applies to your use. For other uses you need to obtain permission from the rights-holder(s).
Preferred Citation
Identification of item, date; Ed Smith Papers; MSS 177; box number; folder number or item identifier; Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University Libraries.
Provenance
The materials were created and/or assembled by Ed Smith, and donated to the Fales Library in 2006 by his wife Mio Shirai.
Separated Materials
The following published materials have been separated and individually catalogued into the Fales' Downtown Print and Periodicals Collection. Call numbers for these items can be located through Bobcat, NYU's online catalog.
Monographs removed to the Downtown Collection:
Abbott, Steve: Holy Terror (Freedom, CA: The Crossing Press, 1989)
Abbott, Steve: Lives of the Poets (San Francisco: Black Star Series, 1987)
Abbott, Steve: Skinny Trip to a Far Place (San Francisco: e.g. a literary press, 1988)
Abbott, Steve: Wrecked Hearts (San Francisco: Dancing Rock Press, 1978)
Barry, Lynda: Naked Ladies Naked Ladies Naked Ladies Coloring Book (Seattle, WA: The Real Comet Press, 1984)
Carr, Robin: Black Jello (Los Angeles, Little Savage Press, 1992)
Carr, Robin: Mudpies (Los Angeles, Little Savage Press, 1984)
Clinton, Michelle T.: High Blood Pressure (Los Angeles, West End Press, 1986)
Cooper, Dennis: Antoine Monnier (Sherman Oaks, CA: Anon Press, 1978
D'Allesandra, Sam: Slippery Sins (San Francisco: Ice Press, 1983)
DeLynn, Jane: Bad Sex is Good (New York: Pantheon Books, 1990)
DeLynn, Jane: In Thrall (New York: Clarkson N. Potter Inc., 1982)
DeLynn, Jane: Leash (Los Angeles and New York: Semiotext(e), 2002)
DeLynn, Jane: Some Do (New York, Macmillan, 1978)
Equi, Elaine: The Corners of the Mouth (Culver City, CA: Iridescence, 1986)
Ferrari, Mary: The Isle of the Little God (New York: The Kulchur Foundation, 1981)
Fisher, Harrison: Curtains (Washington, DC: The Word Works, Inc., 1980)
Flanagan, Bob: Bob Flanagan: Super-Masochist. Re/Search People Series, vol. 1(San Francisco: Re/Search Publications, 1993)
Flanagan, Bob: The Kid is the Man (Hermosa Beach, CA: Bombshelter Press, 1978)
Flanagan, Bob: The Pain Journal (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2000)
Friedman, Michael: Special Capacity (New York, Intermezzo Press, 1992)
Gerstler, Amy and Smith, Alexis: Past Lives (Santa Monica: authors and Santa Monica Museum of Art, 1989)
Gerstler, Amy: Early Heaven (San Francisco, Ouija Madness Press, 1984)
Gerstler, Amy: Primitive Man (Madras and New York: Hanuman Books, 1987)
Gerstler, Amy: The True Bride (Santa Monica: The Lapis Press, 1986)
Gerstler, Amy: Yonder (Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1981)
Hall, Steven: Black Watch (New York: Intermezzo Press, 1991)
Hall, Steven: My Newport (New York: Shell Press, 1981)
Hall, Steven: Style (New York: Shell Press, 1980)
Koertge, Ron: Diary Cows (Los Angeles: Little Caesar Press, 1981)
Krusoe, James: ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ (Los Angeles: Illuminati, 1984)
Krusoe, James: Small Pianos (Los Angeles: Momentum Press, 1978)
Lehman, David (editor): Ecstatic Occasions, Expedient Forms (New York: Collier Books, 1987)
Maw Shein Win: Tales of a Lonely Meat Eater (Long Beach, CA: Lemon Fingers Press, 1991)
McKuen, Rod: In Someone's Shadow (New York: Cheval Books and Random House, 1969)
McKuen, Rod: In Someone's Shadow (New York: Cheval Books and Random House, 1969)
McKuen, Rod: Listen to the Warm (New York: Random House pocket edition, 1963-1969)
McKuen, Rod: Listen to the Warm (New York: Random House, 1963-1967)
McKuen, Rod: Lonesome Cities (New York, Random House, 1965-1968)
McKuen, Rod: Moment to Moment (New York, Simon and Schuster/Cheval Books, 1974)
McKuen, Rod: Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows (Hollywood, CA: Cheval/Stanyan, 1966)
McKuen, Rod: Stanyan Street and Other Sorrows (New York: Random House, 1967)
McKuen, Rod: Suspension Bridge (New York: Harper and Row, 1984)
McKuen, Rod: With Love (Los Angeles: Stanyan Books and Random House, 1968)
McWilliams, Peter: I Have Loved (Allen Park, Michigan: Versemonger Press, 1968)
Meltzer, Richard: Richard Meltzer's Guide to the Ugliest Buildings of Los Angeles (Los Angeles, Illuminati, 1984)
Northup, Harry E.: Enough the Great Running Chapel (Santa Monica: Momentum Press, 1982)
Notley, Alice: How Spring Comes (West Branch Iowa: The Toothpaste Press, 1981)
Podesta, Patty (editor): Resolution: A Critique of Video Art (Los Angeles: Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, 1986)
Rexroth, Kenneth (translator): One Hundred More Poems from the Japanese (New York: New Directions, 1976)
Rexroth, Kenneth (translator): One Hundred Poems from the Japanese (New York: New Directions, 1971)
Schutz, Susan Polis: Peace Flows From the Sky (Boulder, CO: Blue Mountain Arts Inc, 1974)
Sexton, Anne: The Death Notebooks (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1974)
Shaw, Jim: Life and Death (The End is Here Publications, 1981)
Sherwood, Rachel: Mysteries of Afternoon and Evening (Chatsworth, CA: Sherwood Press/Yarmouth Press, 1981)
Smith, Ed: Dwasline Road (Clifton, NJ: Gaede's Pond Press, 1983) (note: the author is a different Ed Smith from the Ed Smith of these papers)
Smith, Ed: Fantasyworld (Venice, CA: Cold Calm Press, 1983)
Smith, Ed: Tim's Bunnies and Other Poems (Los Angeles: Cold Calm Press, 1988)
Tom of Finland: Cops in Tom's Drawings (Los Angeles: Tom of Finland)
Turrell, Occluded Front (Larkspur Landing, CA: The Lapis Press, 1985)
various authors: Atrophy! (Los Angeles: Blue Funk Press, 1987)
Vinogrand, Julia: Street Mystery (J/S Press, 1985)
Periodicals removed to Downtown Collection:
Actual Size, no. 1
Blind Date, no. 3, 1988
Comet, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2000
Comet, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 2001
Common Lives/Lesbian Lives, no. 1, Fall 1981
Damage no. 5, Spring 1980
Damage no. 9, September/October 1980
The Daughters of the Rectangle, no. 2, 1981
Destroy All Monsters vol. 2, no. 6, 1979
Destroy All Monsters no. 5
Destroy All Monsters no number, no date
Female FYI, no. 5
Flat Disk Newsletter, vol. 4, no. 16 [1981]
Flat Disk Newsletter [1982]
Flip Side, no. 9, [1978]
Flip Side, no. 15, 1979
Flip Side, no. 18, 1980
Flip Side, no. 57, Fall 1988
Forehead, vol. 1, 1987
Forehead, vol. 2, 1990
Gandhabba, no. 4, 1986
The Headbanger, no. 6, 1983
Heavy Metal Hardware no. 11
Insurgence no. 1, 1984
Lemon Fingers Emerge, no. 2
Lemon Fingers Emerge, no. 3
Lemon Fingers Emerge, no. 4, 1987
Magazine, vol. 12, no. 3, Winter 1982
Magazine, vol. 13, no. 1, Winter 1983
Magazine, vol. 13, no. 2, Spring 1983
Magazine, vol. 13, no. 3, Summer 1983
Magazine, vol. 14, no. 1, Winter 1983-84
Magazine, vol. 14, no. 2, Spring 1984
Nude Erections, no. 2, 1985
On-Slaught, no. 2, 1982
Poetry Project, no. 110
Poetry Project, no. 111
Puncture,
Scratch Magazine, vol. 1, no. 4, 14 July 1983
Scratch Magazine, vol. 1, no. 24, 2 December 1983
Shiny: The Magazine of the Future, no. 5, 1990
Shiny: The Magazine of the Future, no. 6, spring/summer 1991
Slash, vol. 1, no. 12
Slash, vol. 2, no. 7
Slash, vol. 3, no. 3
Slash, vol. 3, no. 4, 1980
Snap, vol. 1, no. 1, 1982
Spazz, vol. 1, no. 9, 1994
Spectacle Magazine, nos. 5/6, Fall 1986
Stop, vol. 2, 1990
Stuff Magazine, no. 36, 1982
Stuff Magazine, no. 39, 1983
Umezowea, no. 6
Whispering Campaign (contains 3 poems by Ed Smith)
Zomoid Illustories by Jim Shaw, vol. 1, no. 27, 1985
Zyzzyva, vol. 2, no. 1, Spring 1986
Zyzzyva, vol. 2, no. 4, Winter 1986-87
Zyzzyva, vol. 3, no. 3, Fall 1987
Zyzzyva, vol. 3, no. 4, Winter 1987-88
About this Guide
Processing Information
Decisions regarding arrangement, description, and physical interventions for this collection prior to 2021 are unknown.
In 2021, narrative description was revised in the biographical note to edit harmful language regarding mental health and suicide. Changes were made based on the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide.
