Charles Plymell (born April 26, 1935, in Holcomb, Kansas) is a poet, novelist, and small press publisher. Plymell has been published widely, collaborated with, and published many poets, writers, and artists, including principals of the Beat Generation.
He has published, printed, and designed many underground magazines and books with his wife Pamela Beach, a namesake in avant-garde publishing. He published former prisoner Ray Bremser and Herbert Huncke, whom he identified with from the hipster 1950s. He was influential in the underground comix scene, first printing Zap Comix artists such as Robert Crumb and S. Clay Wilson, whom he first published in Lawrence, Kansas.
Plymell received a citation for being a distinguished poet by Governor Joan Finney of Kansas and was cited in the 1976 World Book Encyclopedia as a most promising poet.
Charley Douglass Plymell was born in Finney County, Kansas during the worst dust storms of that time. He was born in a converted chicken coop near Holcomb. His grandfather, Charley Plymell, was deeded a homestead in Apache Palo lands by President Grover Cleveland. The stage line began in Plymell, a few miles south of Garden City where now stands the Plymell Union Church and Pierceville-Plymell Elementary School. Like many, his face was covered by wet rags as his mother went out to shoot jackrabbits and gather cacti for meals.[citation needed]
His father and mother were later divorced, and his father bought a home for Charles and his sisters so they could attend school in Wichita while his father traveled. In Wichita in the 1950s Plymell dropped out of his first year at Wichita North High School, lied about his age, traveled the western states in a new car his father bought him, working on pipelines, dams, factories and riding bareback broncs and Brahma bulls in rodeos.
Returning to Wichita he became a hipster, taking peyote, marijuana, and benzedrine, the drugs of the day. He listened to jazz, R&B, and “Race music” across the tracks in Wichita. He worked at factories and took courses at Wichita State University. Allen Ginsberg credited him with creating the "Wichita Vortex."[1] Plymell's Vortex in his own words does not relate to Ginsberg's "Wichita Vortex Sutra" but took place west of Wichita near the center of the U.S. at Space Needle Crossing in the Chalk Pyramids. His Vortex is spiritual/mythical and based on when he heard the Voice of the Game Lord, which he later authenticated through his mentor and influence, Loren Eiseley. His other influences included Hart Crane, Ezra Pound, Robert Ronnie Branaman, and Samuel Coleridge. He did not meet the Beats until 1963 when associated with Ginsberg, Neal Cassady, and William S. Burroughs. His Vortex is written about in his Tent Shaker Vortex Voice. Before that he considered himself a hipster and outsider.
Plymell moved to a quiet Russian neighborhood in 1962 at the corner of Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco. After the neighborhood filled with hippies and was taken over, Plymell moved to a famous flat, 1403 Gough Street. It was there at Plymell's LSD party that the Beats met the Hippies. Promptly Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady moved in with him where Plymell played Bob Dylan to Ginsberg for the first time.[2] It was during that time Plymell made two films that were shown at the Ann Arbor Film Festival and his collages, which opened at the "Batman Gallery" where fellow Wichitans Bob Branaman and Bruce Conner had shown. Plymell's show sold out except for a few pieces that ended up in Australia. Billy "Batman" Jahrmarkt gave Plymell his classic 1951 MGTD.[3] His work Robert Ronnie Branaman, published in 1964, is credited with being an early example of underground comix.[4]
Recently Plymell's book Benzedrine Highway was published by Norton Records/Kicks Books. He has been writing poems used as songs by Andrea Schroeder (Berlin); Mike Watt & Sam Dook (U.K.) They recently[when?] featured one of his songs on their CUZ tour. He has also written songs for Clubberlanggang, and is working on a book with his poems for Neal Cassady and Bob Branaman put to rockabillybyBloodshot Bill of Norton Records.
^Ginsberg, Allen. Introduction to Apocalypse Rose by Charles Plymell (Auerhahn Press, 1966): "Plymell and his friends inventing the Wichita Vortex contribute to a tradition stretching back....”
