Raymond Pettibon: my fists r free (186 Twitter Poems)
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Raymond Pettibon: my fists r free
(186 Twitter Poems)
by Raymond Pettibon, LG Williams (Editor)
PCP Press | Available now on Amazon | View Sample
Between 2012 and 2016, Raymond Pettibon—already a towering figure in contemporary visual art—turned his attention to one of the most unlikely literary stages: Twitter. In an era when most artists used the platform for self-promotion or fleeting quips, Pettibon treated it as a high-speed poetic press, producing hundreds of short, combustible texts that fused the compressed immediacy of a tweet with the associative density of modernist poetry.
my fists r free gathers 186 of these Twitter poems, presented for the first time in a PCP Press paperback edition. The book spans the full expanse of Pettibon’s concerns: politics and punk, baseball and surf culture, the art world’s hypocrisies, sex, death, and divinity, snippets of pop detritus, and sudden flashes of lyric tenderness. His subjects range from Robert Hughes and Greg Ginn to Modigliani, from Obama-era geopolitics to Burma Shave billboards, from the mechanics of mortality to the grammar of desire.
The syntax is as restless as the mind behind it—spelling mutates mid-word, slang collides with classical reference, capitalization wavers, and punctuation obeys its own internal score. Sentences fragment and recombine; jokes arrive with the blunt force of barroom graffiti; aphorisms dissolve into surreal image-chains. If Ezra Pound invented the ideogramic method for poetry, Pettibon has given us the tweetogramic—condensing cultural critique, autobiography, and aesthetic play into bursts that reward both immediate impact and sustained rereading.
my fists r free isn’t just a book — it’s the most dangerous American poetry in print today.
From the Back Cover
THE THIRD VOLUME IN THE PCP Press Éditions Du Piràtes poetry series explores Raymond Pettibon’s Twitter poetry, written between November 27, 2012, and July 28, 2016.
Appearing for the first time in a PCP Press paperback edition, my fists r free collects 186 poems from Pettibon’s Twitter account. Included are such favorites as “More Oral?,” “I play golf w/ Truympf n OJ. Both cheaters,” and “Balls Don’t Lie,” along with Pettibon’s signature dazzle of satirical exposition, love poems, and syntactical provocations.
In this landmark volume of Pettibon’s monumental Twitter masterpiece, the character “Raymond Pettibon” migrates to Twitter, where—having left his wife—he leads a solitary artistic existence. He forges friendships with fellow Twitter users, including Nietzschean intellectuals and baseball fanatics, while tracking down major and minor figures of Western civilization, past and present, who fascinate him deeply.
At heart, my fists r free is an art love story—the story of Pettibon falling in love with his own artistic gifts. Yet these poems also tell other stories: of becoming a father, of the turbulence of family life, of outrageously unsuccessful attempts at creative vacations, of the emotional strain of art gallery parties for admirers, and of the daily frustrations, rhythms, and distractions of city life that both obstruct and nourish his work.
This publication delivers on an unlikely promise: that hundreds of pages later, readers will be left breathlessly demanding more from this unrivaled American poet.
“Individual derangement, the spaces of the disenfranchised, and the types of social violence and sexual pathology… along with the mass-culturally enforced delirium… appear [in Pettibon] as intrinsically connected.” — Benjamin H. D. Buchloh, Raymond Pettibon: Return to Disorder and Disfiguration, October 92 (Spring 2000)
Selected Poems —
Samples of Pettibon’s Fearless and Inventive Voice
Why?
Cuzz i'm bouy y
vilence
— p.15
Mike Purpos? Mfckrs I fck porpoise.
PowerBottoymTurns, Here dck Playgirl.
SBaySantaAnas
OffshoreWesterlyWaitnSea, Whtevr way
wind blows thts me.
— p.150
1200 autographs tonite;
noyt one hand
job.
Sayd.
— p.43
Homie tell me ART is fake—
to my face, trycckk:
Begins th'SLAYP DOWN!!
All right then....btch.
— p.20
ve goyt 28 inch pythons
(dnt sak me bout my dck:indiscreeyt)
Well I thnk thts bouyt all U need to know.
I'm tough;
hell-bent for leather
WHUYTUP
UCLA vs USC
(Univ o sckin cck, Univ o Second choice):
Prediction: UCLA LOSES!
Check iyt ouyt cuzz.
Whuytt Upp
Tryycyykkk whuytuypp
— p.13
If 6 were 9: I stopped to ask: "
There must be pleasure in it for you too?/
— p.48
I H8 Death,
H8 mortality,
cept U mfckn murderers.
U sck.
There is no hell,
buyt shld be one 4 U pussies.
No heaven either.
Why Goyd's a bytch.
— p.37
Auden cck
Erect moufface in vein full up,
ouyt feign in unvain but who cld tell unless its beating
till the heart redress: double dribbling.
— p.136
Pleeeeaaase dnt drug/partyEstonia trip if yr goin.
It'sArt, and if U dnt know wht art is U dnt know mine.
They deserve better than theFlynn/
— p.39
Lot dpends on red sled
u decide wht it means t'me
I'll lead u be led on
2dying breath
'Rosebud'??it
Whuytuyp.
— p.55
More oral?
Good-living is eating-well
BurmaShaving's Moral.
— p.94
The Art o the Object o Use
Iyt's what U do w/it
Take tube 2 bits, U bot our line
N put it where sun dnt shine
FineArt as asinine
BurmaShave
— p.103
BallsXchange: ShaunT or ShaunR.
Pipe’s prknl loyt o bareass wetsuiyt off
Overhead n toe, 2 4 tangohangin10
FredHemmings judgn lemmngs
BurmaWavn
— p.175
Book Details:
Format: B&W, Paperback
Page Count: 389 pages
Language: English
Dimensions: Approx. 5 × 8”
ISBN: 979-8749386295
1st Edition Publication Date: March 5, 2021
Publisher: PCP Press
Related Titles from PCP Press
SCKONTHIS!!: The Essential Raymond Pettibon Twitter Compilation
Raymond Pettibon, LG Williams (Editor)
PCP Press, 2021 | 671 pages | ISBN: 979-8743817795 | Available on Amazon
Tuff Luyv: The Abridged Raymond Pettibon Twitter Compilation
Raymond Pettibon, LG Williams (Editor)
PCP Press, 2021 | 680 pages | ISBN: 979-8747765139 | Available on Amazon
my fists r free: 186 Twitter Poems
Raymond Pettibon, LG Williams (Editor)
PCP Press, 2021 | 389 pages | ISBN: 979-8749386295 | Available on Amazon
About Raymond Pettibon
Raymond Pettibon (born Raymond Ginn; June 16, 1957, Tucson, Arizona) is an American artist who lives and works in New York City. He first rose to prominence in the early 1980s Southern California punk rock scene, creating posters and album art for SST Records, which was founded by his brother, Greg Ginn. Pettibon has since become a major figure in the contemporary art world, known for drawing upon American iconography—from literature, art history, and philosophy to politics, sport, and sexuality.
About LG Williams
LG Williams is a Los Angeles–based artist whose positions have included Endowed University Instructor at the Academy of Art University, Robert Hughes Distinguished Visual Artist-in-Residence at The Lodge in Hollywood, and Emmy Hennings Distinguished Professor at D(D).DDDD University. His work has been shown internationally—including at the Internet Pavilion of La Biennale di Venezia—and has been featured in Artforum, The New York Times, The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, La Stampa, Purple Diary, Mousse Magazine, and The Brooklyn Rail.
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About PCP Press
PCP Press is an independent publisher of avant-garde books and insurgent authors. Founded in 1990 in San Francisco to champion subversive and esoteric art, PCP has since published books, special editions, and rare interventions with figures such as Wally Hedrick, Wayne Thiebaud, Dave Hickey, Raymond Pettibon, Bryan Reynolds, and LG Williams.
More information and titles can be found at www.pcppress.com
