To Be of Use

[Berkeley]: Maidu Press. [c. 1973]. "A Maidu Free Poem" broadside of the title poem of Piercy's 1973 collection. This version has one small change from the book version published in 1973 (there were several more changes in later versions). The edition of this broadside is unstated, but the broadside is marked as "1/ ." The only other Maidu Free Poems we are aware of are a 1971 Gary Snyder broadside, "Swimming Naked in the Yuba River," and "I Saw the Green Yuba Flow" by Franco Beltrametti. The Snyder was done in an edition of 200 copies. Maidu Press was the creation of two of Snyder's neighbors and friends, Steve Sanfield and Dale Pendell, both of them (truncated) poets living on the San Juan Ridge, as Snyder was. This broadside reproduces calligraphy by Snyder, according to the Snyder bibliography. The presence of a blacked out mistake in the last line of the first stanza and the backward limitation (the copy number specified but not the number of copies, rather than vice versa) combine to suggest this is a trial copy or an unused or proof copy. We have no evidence that the edition was ever done: the Piercy bibliography lists no Maidu Press publication and OCLC shows no copies held in institutional libraries. A scarce, virtually unknown collaboration between Piercy and Snyder, both of them major American poets of the postwar era, and both associated with the counterculture of the 1960s and beyond. 8-1/2" x 11", on heavy orange paper. One tiny lower corner bend; still fine. Unless otherwise noted, our first editions are first printings. First Edition. No Binding. Fine. (Inventory #: 036504)