Tuli Kupferberg: Yeah
Tuli Kupferberg: Yeah / ISBN 9780990689690 / 5.5 x 8.5 inches / 10 facsimile zines in a hardcover box, 342 pages total / published by Primary Information
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“Yeah! presents something inherently valuable and historical … it’s a personal documentary of a vast network of friends and collaborators who would not, or could not, accept the stifling values of the 1950s.”–Alex Zafiris, The Paris Review
“Something akin to the production of an illuminated manuscript of Torah scroll.”–J. Hoberman, Artforum
This volume collects all ten issues of the classic 1960s zine Yeah, edited by Fugs pioneer and poet Tuli Kupferberg and his wife Sylvia Topp, as facsimile editions. Originally published by Kupferberg and Topp’s Birth Press between 1961 and1965, the magazine was, according to Kupferberg, “a satyric excursion; a sardonic review; a sarcastic epitome; a chronical of the last days,” and throughout its pages he acts as both editor and artist, threading the needle of leftist politics with the sharp wit for which he became known as one of the founders of the counterculture rock heroes The Fugs.
The magazine began under the shadow of the Cold War, with Kupferberg and fellow poets contributing poetry, drawings and collages that protested the social problems of the time: nuclear war, white supremacy, the Cold War and the Vietnam War, among others. Around issue seven, the magazine shifted toward an aesthetic that most closely resembles the cut-and-paste zine style of the 70s and 80s.
