Literary Kicks: the Postage Stamp Series

These are the postage stamp images created for the earliest version of Literary Kicks in the mid 1990s. The “Beatnik series” (the first eight stamps) were created by Levi Asher. The Bukowski was created by Michael McCullough and the d.a. levy is the work of W. Luther Jett.

Over the years, these images have often been shared and sometimes been mistaken for real postage stamps. The best story I’ve heard about this came from a friend who visited Gregory Corso at his apartment before he died in 2001. A few friends were around Gregory’s place, and at one point Gregory produced a printout of the Gregory Corso stamp and told his friends: “Look! I’m on a stamp in Italy!”.

My friend says he later took Gregory aside: “you know those postage stamps aren’t real”. Gregory responded, “I know that, but they don’t”.

This story gives me endless pleasure. Here are the stamps.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

What we're up to ...

Litkicks is 26 years old! This website has been on a long and wonderful journey since 1994. We’re relaunching the whole site on a new platform in June 2021, and will have more updates soon. We’ve also been busy producing a couple of podcasts – please check them out.

World BEYOND War: A New Podcast
Lost Music: Exploring Literary Opera

Explore related articles ...