Readings, Rated
RIP Franklin Rosemont
“Some day there will be no State Police, or any other police, to obstruct the free play of the waking dreamers! Some day the Halsted Street bus will reach Florida, and will set out from there to new destinations! From Halsted Street to Easter Island to the Garden of Eden!”
- Franklin Rosemont, Arsenal
With sadness, we report that Franklin Rosemont died at the University of Illinois Medical Center last Sunday, of unexplained causes. In 1966, Franklin and his wife, Penelope, started the Chicago Surrealist Group – a big deal, as the group was into both weirdo dreamy word salads and the way Surrealism can invert, subvert, address routine and injustice and routine injustice. It critiqued the world but it lived in it too.
Franklin worked with everyone from Haymarket anarchists to the Wobblies to the Beats and Anti-Beats. Hung out on Maxwell and at Gallery Black Swan and in Bughouse Square, with Breton, Terkel, Carrington, St. Clair. Along with Penelope, he hitchiked thousands of miles across the US, revitalized Kerr Press, and kept the Dil Pickle Club sharp. A mentor, a historian, a poet, a student, the world’s best pen-pal, and many more things that don’t fit into pixels. Rest in peace, sir.
What a cool piece of postal art! FYI, the Newberry has the Franklin and Penelope Rosemont Collection of IWW Publications and Ephemera, the Charles H. Kerr Company Records *and* the Dil(l) Pickle Club Records. Check ‘em out..
[...] http://literago.org/site-bulletins/rip-franklin-rosemont/ [...]
(I know – isn’t it? And wow, will definitely hightail it to the Newberry. Meanwhile,) here’s a link to Rosemont’s last public appearence, courtesy Marc Moscato: http://marcmoscato.com/in-memoriam-franklin-rosemont-1943-2009/.
Correction: Franklin Rosemont died at University of Illiois Medical Center in the middle of the afternoon. After only about 6 hours in the hospital. The causes are unexplained.
I am very sorry for the error, Penelope, and corrected the post.
[...] from Literago. Published [...]
Franklin and I were best friends in grade school and high school. During our freshman year we published “The Lantern,” an underground student newspaper that got us invited to the school disciplinarian’s office more than once. He introduced me to Surrealism while we were in high school, and it has remained my spiritual orientation ever since. During our Junior year, I was sent away to military school, and Franklin produced a few more issues of “The Lantern” on his own, although I think I sent in an article or two. The last time I saw him was in 1964. He was working in Barbara’s Bookstore in Old Town.