More Information
Greyhounding
This
America
by
Maurice
Kenny
Poetry
and
dialog
by
the
Mohawk
author
from
his
cross-country
bus
trips
About the author
Maurice Kenny, at the time this book was published, had authored 14 books, appeared in 15 anthologies and had been published in many magazines and papers. He had won the American Book Award for The Mamma Poems (White Pine Press). He was co-editor of the New York literary magazine, Contact II.
Comments by the publisher
Kenny's publisher, Larry S. Jackson, first came to know the writer when Kenny submitted poetry that was subsequently published in Phantasm by Heidelberg Graphics. Jackson invited Kenny to Chico for a reading at the local literary guild where Kenny read his renowned oral masterpiece, "I Am the Sun." The two became friends.
On one of his cross-country travels from Brooklyn by Greyhound bus, Kenny was picked up in Sacramento by Jackson and driven to Chico. There Kenny gave a private reading to Jackson and his wife, Jennifer, in their dining room that was tape recorded for a book. The recording was transcribed and published as Greyhounding This America. Wendy Rose illustrated the text. Jackson typeset and indexed the transcription then, using a small offset press, printed the pages which Jennifer collated into a book. There were about 475 copies after binding. Water damaged one carton which was discarded.
Jackson asked New York civil rights attorney William M. Kunstler to write the foreword. Kunstler, who had recently written his eleventh book, a collection of sonnets entitled Trials and Tribulations (Grove Press), wrote the foreword while waiting for jury deliberation on a case he had defended for six months.
