The Blue Tide is a vast, multi-part work that developed out of a diary Roth kept while teaching in the United States between 1964 and 1966 (which Edition Hansjörg Mayer had published in a full-color edition earlier in 1967). This publication consists of excerpts from the continuation of that work—all translated by Roth himself “from color + german into blackandwhite + english”—as well as sketches, diagrams, poetry, and assorted writing.

Originally published by Something Else Press between 1965 and 1967, the Great Bear Pamphlet series was envisioned by founding editor Dick Higgins as a “poor man’s keys to the new art,” or a means of exposing the most vital work of the time to a mass-market audience, and vice versa. The series made uncompromisingly radical work maximally accessible, with slim, chapbook-like publications of a mostly uniform, pared down design. Taken together, the pamphlets constitute a firsthand survey of the sixties avant-garde (Higgins, Barbara Moore, and Emmett Williams all had a hand in the editorial process) that is both sweeping and utterly unique, transmitting a still-vibrant signal of expanded possibility in art, music, and poetry. Presented here in a facsimile edition, the Great Bears epitomize the utopian vision of Higgins and Something Else.

5 x 8 inches
16 pages
Paperback
B&W
December 2007

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Managing Editor: James Hoff