Asa Benveniste (August 25, 1925–April 13, 1990) was an American-born

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

typographer Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), an ...

and

publisher Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...

Early years

Benveniste was born in New York and settled in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

in the 1950s.

Career

After

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

Benveniste, at this time known as Albert, lived in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), ma ...

and in 1948 co-founded the ''Zero Press'' with

George Solomos George Paul Solomos (September 16, 1925 – November 8, 2010), also known as Themistocles Hoetis from 1948 to 1958, was an American publisher, poet, filmmaker and novelist. Family background G. P. Solomos was born in Detroit in 1925, the yo ...

(who was then known as Thermistocles Hoetis). Their first publication in spring 1949 was ''Zero Magazine''. One of the poets they published was Lionel Ziprin, whose recollections of Benveniste appeared in ''

Jewish Quarterly 'The Jewish Quarterly' is an international journal of Jewish culture and ideas. Primarily a UK-based publication until 2021, the journal is now published by Australian publisher, Morry Schwartz, for a global audience. With four issues released a y ...

'': "'He was a Turkish Jew; he had a very good poetry magazine, called The Trigram. I knew him in college; he went into the army. Later, he stayed in Paris. ...He and a guy called Themistocles Hoetis, this guy George Solomos, published a magazine called ''Zero''; George came to New York, and he said: Give us what you got. So I gave them “Math Glass”, and he published it and somehow T. S. Eliot got a part of it, and wrote me a nice little letter about it.’" Following the second issue of ''Zero'', which featured work by

Paul Bowles Paul Frederic Bowles (; December 30, 1910November 18, 1999) was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator. He became associated with the Moroccan city of Tangier, where he settled in 1947 and lived for 52 years to the end of his ...

, James Baldwin and Matta, Benveniste moved to London, then later Cornwall and Kent where he wrote a full length radio play "Tangier for the Traveller" for the BBC Home Service. Besides being a poet, he also worked as a printer, a typographer, and as a book designer. In London during 1965, he co-founded and managed the pioneering Trigram Press, which published work by George Barker,

Tom Raworth Thomas Moore Raworth (19 July 1938 – 8 February 2017) was an English-Irish poet, publisher, editor, and teacher who published over 40 books of poetry and prose during his life. His work has been translated and published in many countries. Rawor ...

Jack Hirschman Jack Hirschman (December 13, 1933 – August 22, 2021) was an American poet and social activist who wrote more than 100 volumes of poetry and essays. Biography Hirschman was born in New York City to a Russian Jewish family. He received a B.A. ...

J. H. Prynne Jeremy Halvard Prynne (born 24 June 1936) is a British poet closely associated with the British Poetry Revival. Prynne grew up in Kent and was educated at St Dunstan's College, Catford, and Jesus College, Cambridge. He is a Life Fellow of Gonvil ...

, David Meltzer,

B. S. Johnson Bryan Stanley William Johnson (5 February 1933 – 13 November 1973) was an English experimental novelist, poet and literary critic. He also produced television programmes and made films. Early life Johnson was born into a working-class family, ...

Jim Dine Jim Dine (born June 16, 1935 in Cincinnati, Ohio) is an American artist whose œuvre extends over sixty years. Dine’s work includes painting, drawing, printmaking (in many forms including lithographs, etchings, gravure, intaglio, woodcuts, l ...

Jeff Nuttall Jeffrey Addison Nuttall (8 July 1933 – 4 January 2004) was an English poet, publisher, actor, painter, sculptor, jazz trumpeter, anarchist and social commentator who was a key part of the British 1960s counter-culture. He was the brother of l ...

Gavin Ewart Gavin Buchanan Ewart FRSL (4 February 1916 – 23 October 1995) was a British poet who contributed to Geoffrey Grigson's ''New Verse'' at the age of seventeen. Life Ewart was born in London and educated at Wellington College, before entering ...

Ivor Cutler Ivor Cutler (born Isadore Cutler, 15 January 1923 – 3 March 2006) was a Scottish poet, singer, musician, songwriter, artist and humorist. He became known for his regular performances on BBC radio, and in particular his numerous sessions record ...

, Anselm Hollo, and

Lee Harwood Lee Harwood (6 June 1939 – 26 July 2015) was a poet associated with the British Poetry Revival. Life Travers Rafe Lee Harwood was born in Leicester to maths teacher Wilfred Travers Lee-Harwood and Grace Ladkin Harwood, who were then living ...

, among others. In 1966, Trigram Press produced the second and final issue of a little magazine called ''Residu'', which included work by

Alexander Trocchi Alexander Whitelaw Robertson Trocchi ( ; 30 July 1925 – 15 April 1984) was a List of Scottish novelists, Scottish novelist. Early life and career Trocchi was born in Glasgow to Alfred (formerly Alfredo) Trocchi, a music-hall performer of I ...

William S. Burroughs William Seward Burroughs II (; February 5, 1914 – August 2, 1997) was an American writer and visual artist, widely considered a primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodern author who influenced popular cultur ...

Harold Norse Harold Norse (July 6, 1916, New York City – June 8, 2009, San Francisco) was an American writer who created a body of work using the American idiom of everyday language and images. One of the expatriate artists of the Beat generation, Norse w ...

Gregory Corso Gregory Nunzio Corso (March 26, 1930 – January 17, 2001) was an American poet and a key member of the Beat movement. He was the youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers (with Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and William S. Burrou ...

Harry Fainlight Harry Fainlight (1935–1982) was a British/American poet associated with the Beats movement. He was the younger brother of Ruth Fainlight (b 1931), also a poet, who edited a posthumous volume of his work, ''Selected Poems'', published in 1986. ...

Gerard Malanga Gerard Joseph Malanga (born March 20, 1943) is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator and archivist. Early life Malanga was born in the Bronx in 1943, the only child of Italian immigrant parents. In 1959, at the beginning of ...

and other Beat Generation and underground writers. The magazine's editors / publishers were Dan and Jill Richter. In the 1980s Benveniste and his second partner Agnetha Falk moved to

Hebden Bridge Hebden Bridge is a market town in the Upper Calder Valley in West Yorkshire, England. It is west of Halifax and 14 miles (21 km) north-east of Rochdale, at the confluence of the River Calder and the Hebden Water. The town is the largest ...

West Yorkshire West Yorkshire is a metropolitan and ceremonial county in the Yorkshire and Humber Region of England. It is an inland and upland county having eastward-draining valleys while taking in the moors of the Pennines. West Yorkshire came into exi ...

, where they operated a secondhand bookshop. When he died in 1990, Benveniste was buried in the graveyard of

Heptonstall Heptonstall is a small village and civil parish within the Calderdale borough of West Yorkshire, England, historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire. The population of Heptonstall, including the hamlets of Colden and Slack Top, is 1,448 ...

church, with a gravestone that reads: "Foolish Enough to Have Been a Poet". He was both pleased and amused that his grave was to be within speaking distance of

Sylvia Plath Sylvia Plath (; October 27, 1932 – February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. She is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry and is best known for two of her published collections, '' Th ...

's own gravestone a few feet away. The artist Pip (Penelope) Benveniste, Asa's first wife, was also his partner in the Trigram Press project and provided the funds for its establishment. Pip's middle son (and Asa's stepson) Paul Vaughan was the highly skilled printer at Trigram Press, operating the classic Gutenberg Printing Press to a very high standard and developing groundbreaking results with silkscreen images for books, limited edition prints and other outlets. Pip died on August 30, 2010 (see Guardian obituary, September 16, 2010); she is now recognised as an important post-war British modernist painter. One aspect of her work - designs for hand-woven rugs - was launched by her youngest son, Mark Vaughan, with her blessing, in 2012 (se
www.landrugs.com
.

Michael McNay Michael McNay is a British journalist and author. He worked for 37 years at ''The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its s ...

"Pip Benveniste obituary"
''The Guardian'', September 16, 2010.

References

External links

Throw Out the Lifeline/Lay Out the CorsePommes Poems
{{DEFAULTSORT:Beneviste, Asa 1925 births 1990 deaths Poets from New York (state) American people of Turkish-Jewish descent Jewish American poets American Sephardic Jews 20th-century American poets 20th-century American Jews