25¢ a pop — or poem

Nora Sandler and Peter Gizzi [correspondents]; Jack Spicer [poems]

Correspondence and objects related to Poems to Chew On [including six poems in plastic gumball machine capsules]

Chicago: Nora Sandler / Poems to Chew On, 2012. Very Good +. Item #50421

Chicago: Nora Sandler / Poems to Chew On, November 2012. Correspondence and objects related to Poems to Chew On, a project that reprinted and sold poems out of gumball machines on the University of Chicago’s campus. Work by Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, and Jack Spicer, among others, went for 25¢ apiece. Contents include one typed letter signed, a plain envelope, three glossy color photographs of the machines on UChicago’s campus, and six typed poems in clear gumball machine containers (two of which are missing their plastic lids). All items housed in a padded mailer addressed from Sandler to Gizzi. Mailer bumped and smudged; envelope torn; letter creased due to previous folding. Altogether Very Good or better. 

The written correspondence is addressed from Nora Sandler, Editor-in-Chief of Poems to Chew On, to Peter Gizzi, poet and editor of several Jack Spicer collections. Sandler expresses her gratitude for being allowed to reprint Spicer’s work and describes the project’s success on campus. In two weeks, she writes, the machines sold one hundred poems and received an enthusiastic response from students. Sandler’s letter expresses an ambition to install more machines and grow the project beyond campus, though our research yields no evidence that this expansion occurred. (The project’s extant Facebook page was last active in December 2012.) The photographs show the gumball machines in use on UChicago’s campus, including at the still-operating student-run Harper Cafe. 

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Price: $250.00

Status: On Hold