Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words

The Collected Early Books of Bernadette Mayer

Bernadette Mayer's revolutionary first books are long out of print, available in the caches of  the secondary market at high costs, by loan or via single-page facsimiles online at Eclipse. While these early books have played an oceanic role in the formation of generations of poets, they are difficult to secure, meaning that opportunities to read, let along examine comprehensively, these books prove challenging at best, largely reducing their operative life to rumor and/or partial engagement, such as may be derived from New Directions' Bernadette Mayer Reader. This has left a woeful gap in the continuum of American experimental poetry, which Station Hill bridges with the publication of Eating the Colors of a Lineup of Words: The First Books of Bernadette Mayer. This multi-book collection includes CEREMONY LATIN; RED BOOK IN THREE PARTS; STORY; MOVING; POETRY; ERUDITIO EX MEMORIA; and THE GOLDEN BOOK OF WORDS.

Bernadette Mayer of East Nassau, NY Bernadette Mayer was born in Brooklyn, New York, and received her B.A. from the New School for Social Research in 1967. She is the author of more than two dozen volumes of poetry. From 1972 to 1974, Mayer and conceptual artist Vito Acconci edited the journal 0 TO 9, and in 1977 she established United Artists Press with the poet Lewis Warsh. She has taught writing workshops at The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church in New York City for many years, and she served as the Poetry Project's director.

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