Guy Beining Archive.
circa 1970s–2018. Item #3163 This collection comprises the literary archive of poet, playwright, and visual artist Guy Beining, with autograph, typescript, and collaged drafts of works, correspondence, original artworks and bookworks, and ephemera.
Writing since the 1960s, and creating visual art since the 1970s, Beining’s work is situated within the experimental world of verbal/visual/borderblur avant-gardes, including Fluxus, Mail Art, Dada, and concrete poetry. During the heyday of the mimeograph revolution and through the present day, Beining published in several hundred little magazines, honing a style that began with modernist-influenced fiction, shifted to absurdist plays, transformed into Olson-inflected epic poetry, and finally landed with his most prolific form: verbal/visual collages.
With significant unpublished work, this archive offers substantial possibilities to researchers of visual and experimental poetry, small press publishing, and poetic outsiders in postwar American writing.
The archive has sold; the illustrated prospectus is available here.