Blazek, Douglas, 1941-

Douglas Blazek (born December 31, 1941) is a Polish-American poet and editor who published the literary chapbook Ole and was proprietor of the Open Skull Press. Blazek is one of the founders of the Mimeo Revolution, a literary movement that sprang up concurrently with The Beats. He was instrumental in bringing non-establishment poets and artists such as Charles Bukowski, Robert Crumb and D. A. Levy into the limelight by publishing their work. He published his first book of poetry under the pseudonym (and double entendre) Peter Wellinher. As described in the introduction to James DenBoer's A Bibliography of the Published Works of Douglas Blazek: 1961-2001 (Glass Eye Books, 2003), Blazek is noteworthy for his prolific early period (1964-1978), followed by an extended hiatus. Between 1978 and 2009, Blazek published only one book, but this was also a time of intense creativity, as the poet focused on rewriting all his previously published work. The first book-length results of this labor, Aperture Mirror and Gutting Cats in Search of Fiddles, were published in 2012 by Edition Muta with more titles published in the years following.