My True Stories: Poets and Odd Fellows, Brenda Frazer
Book Specifications:
98 Pages
210 mm x 130 mm x 6 mm
Paperback
Perfect Bound
Print run of 100
Publication Date: 15.05.23
ISBN: 978-1-7399499-3-8
£15.00
Credits:
Design: Lucy Wilkinson
Printed and bound at Dean Print, Stockport, UK
Editors and contributors: Karolina Fedorowicz, Lucy Wilkinson and Tom Wenck
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In Poets and Odd Fellows, Brenda Frazer recounts her own experiences of New York City and Hoboken from 1959 to 1960. Her aim was to resolve her feelings of deep love and disappointment for her then-husband, poet Ray Bremser. Brenda explains, "I was a 'fool for love' as Ray Charles sang it. Young love and the injustice we suffered under the law in New Jersey.”
Brenda Frazer recounts the start of her relationship with Ray Bremser including the pregnancy of her first daughter, Rachel, whilst Ray was serving a prison sentence in New Jersey. Poets and Odd Fellows is a prequel to the previously published Troia: Mexican Memoirs. The first in the sequence of My True Stories, this book is from a female perspective of the Beat Generation, in which we find hunger, poverty and injustice.
Including an introduction by Lucy Wilkinson, the editor and publisher.
Further reading:
My True Stories collection: Poets and Odd Fellows, Drug City, Artista, Cherry Valley Ballads and Stories. You can also purchase a limited edition collection of all 4 books in a slipcase here. We will be republishing Some American Tales in the summer of 2023. I also recommend Troia: Mexican Memoirs published by Dalkey Archives Press in 2002 now called Deep Vellum.
Reviews/Press:
Love Above All Else: a Review of Brenda Frazer’s Poets and Odd Fellows, by Viola Ragonese
'Finally Brought to Light: Brenda Frazer’s My True Stories' (2022) by Heike Mlakar in Beat News
'Brenda Frazer' (2022) by Peter Hale (Allen Ginsberg Project)
Interview with Brenda Frazer by Nancy Grace
'Brenda Frazer's My True Stories' (2023) by Dawn Swoop in Beat Scene
Biography
Brenda Frazer published her first book Troia in 1966. She has also appeared in The Portable Beat Reader (edited by Ann Charters, ) and A Different Beat (Richard Peabody), as well as multiple periodicals from the 1950s and 60s such as Fuck You: A Magazine of the Arts and Blue Beat. She was married to the poet Ray Bremser. She lived in New York City during the late 1950s and 60s and moved to Cherry Valley in New York in 1970, living at The Committee set up by Allen Ginsberg for poets, writers and artists to live communally. In 2020, death of workers whilst building skyscrapers published Some American Tales.
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