Berkeley: Aldebaran Review, (1977).
Price: $450.00
Softcover. First edition. Biographical introduction by Aguila and a biographical note on rear cover by John Oliver Simon, who designed the book and printed it ("with friends") at Shameless Hussy Press. Topedge a trifle foxed else fine. One of 500 copies printed. Issued as Aldebaran Review 24.
Aguila was born in Nicaragua, came to the U.S. at age two, and in the mid-sixties wrote poetry in San Francisco’s Blue Unicorn scene. At the time of publication he was incarcerated in Folsom Prison for shooting and killing an armored car driver during a botched robbery. He served 23 years of his life sentence, authoring five books of poetry while incarcerated. While Simon describes Aguila’s poetry as “explicitly political, with a larger surreal prophetic clarity,” and Aguila describes himself as “mellowing out with poetry,” in 1993—six years after his release— Aguila achieved notoriety (and later became the subject of two episodes of the Netflix series *Heist*) when he and his 21-year-old paramour stole a Loomis armored truck with $3 million inside. He is still at large. Uncommon.
Item #625638
