Alan Ansen's "Contact Highs" (1989)

Elmwood City, Illinois, US: Dalkey Archive Press (book, poetry, blurb), 1989.
8.5" x 5.5" x 0.75", 213 pages, softcover, ISBN 0-916583-45-7.

Contact Highs: Selected Poems 1957-1987 by Alan Ansen, as published in softcover [pictured] and hardcover editions by Dalkey Archive Press (Elmwood City, Illinois, US) in 1989. Alan Ansen was a friend of Burroughs who wrote about Burroughs, and was the model for "AJ" in Burroughs' The Naked Lunch.  This book is dedicated to Burroughs (and to W. H. Auden). Introduction by Steven Moore and Afterword by Rachel Hadas.

This book has a long blurb by William S. Burroughs on the back cover: "Alan Ansen occupies a specialized evolutionary niche in twentieth-century letters, and his poetry has unjustly been too long obscured by its unfashionable classicism and its author's self-effacing stance towards a poetic career. His writings achieve the scarcely possible: transmuting existence into life. No one who knows Ansen can call him to mind without seeing his irrepressible grin and, perhaps, thinking of the Chinamen of Yeat's 'Lapis Lazuli' – 'Their eyes, mid many wrinkles, their eyes / Their ancient, glittering eyes are gay.' This gaiety and love of life finds ample expression in these extraordinary poems."

The cover of this book reproduces a photo taken by Michael Portman [a poem for Michael is in this book] of Peter Orlovsky, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Ansen, Paul Bowles, Gregory Corso, and Ian Sommerville together in Tangier in 1961 (with writing by Allen Ginsberg).

The introduction by Steven Moore is a good overview of Alan Ansen's life, and contains multiple references to William S. Burroughs.

Contents: 

• Michael Portman and Allen Ginsberg: cover image
• Steven Moore: Introduction
• Alan Ansen: "Contact Highs":
• from Disorderly Houses:
• "'The Newport News has arrived in Venice for a week's stay'"
• "Heroin: An Ode"
• "The Wheel"
• "The Public Hangman"
• "The Easiest Room in Hell"
• "Tennyson"
• "Dragon Poem"
• "The Double Take"
• "A Fit of Something Against Something"
• "An Occupational Hazard"
• "The Pitcher and the Well"
• "Fatnes"
• "Envy"
• "Dead Drunk"
• "from The Return from Greece"
• from Field Report:
• "On and On and On"
• "Fuck"
• "Prohibition"
• "Juvenal"
• "Aqua Alta"
• "Joviality"
• "The First Men on the Moon"
• "from The Available Garden"
• "from The Fourth of July Masque"
• "Michaelangelo XLV and XXV"
• from Believe and Tremble:
• "Intimations":
• "The Faceless Millions"
• "Et in Arcadia Ego"
• "Exiles and Farewells"
• "In His Fortieth Year"
• "In the Footsteps of the Masters":
• "Letter to a Friend"
• "Out of Control"
• "Owners of the Fire: A Surah"
• from Day By Day:
• "A Poet Prepares"
• "For Michael Portman"
• "The Beleaguered"
• "The City in the Clouds"
• "For Adolf Hitler"
• "The Blessed Water Compared to the Heroin We Breathe"
• "On First Seeing the Persian Crown Jewels"
• "The Death of Nearchus"
• from The Ghosts of Neighborhood:
• "Town Mouse":
• "Piccolo Paese"
• "Stay-at-Home"
• "Rus in Urbe"
• "Genethliacon"
• "National Book Week"
• "Batman and Robin"
• "Love from the Cargo"
• "The Latest"
• "A Farewell to Masquing"
• "A Failed Phoenix"
• "Qasida"
• "Deseret: Contact Highs for a Reunion"
• "For Zanaide Rachevsky"
• "Playing for Keeps: A Routine"
• "Four Imayos"
• "A Song of David"
• "Quatrains"
• from The Lay Contemplative's Vade Mecum:
• "Urbane Vistas"
• "Sleepyheads"
• "Negative Memories"
• "Gifts"
• "Odelets"
• "Contacts"
• from Routines:
• "Trilogy"
• "From The Aegina Art School Masque"
• from Under Lycabettus:
• "Wedding Qasida"
• "from The Mount Lycabettus Masque"
• from The Cell:
• "from The Cell"
• "Epistle to Chester Kallman"
• "from The Schedule"
• "Guarding the Guardians"
• from Signs of Life:
• "'The final burst of power at the close'"
• "'Visconti's pot-bellied middle-aged Nazis sing"
• "from The Valetudinarian"
• "Birthday Poem for Peggy Guggenheim"
• from The Empty Quarter:
• "Father Louis"
• "Parollès"
• "The Empty Quarter"
• "The Desanctification of Israel"
• from Change of Address:
• "Moving"
• "'And at the end...'"
• "Nightly Vigils"
• "Cats" 
• "Imaginary Lives"
• Rachel Hadas: Afterword
• Bibliography
• Index of Titles