PIERO
HELICZER was born in Rome, Italy in 1937 and died in Preaux du Perche,
France in 1993. He was the author of several books including &
I Dreamt I Shot Arrows in My Amazon Bra and The First Battle
of the Marne, both of which were printed and published by his
own press, the dead language. The Soap Opera, a collection
with illustrations by Andy Warhol, Wallace Berman, Jack Smith and
others, was published in London by Trigram Press in 1967. A talented
actor (he was a child star in Il Piccolo Tucci and Bengasi)
Heliczer had a role in Jack Smith's Flaming
Creatures. Also a filmmaker, he made such underground movies
as Satisfaction, Venus in Furs, Joan of Arc (in
which Andy Warhol had a role) and the unfinished three-hour epic Dirt.
Heliczer was a seminal figure in sixties underground culture in NYC,
London, Amsterdam and Paris. A Purchase in the White Botanica,
edited by longtime friends and collaborators Gerard Malanga and Anslem
Hollo, brings back into print all of his published poetry and is supplemented
w ith an extensive illustrated biographical interview with Heliczer's
half-sister Marisabina Russo-Stark, conducted by Malanga.
