Lost & Found: "In Thursday Sane"

by Ted Joans

This beautifully printed chapbook commemorates the discovery of a Joans poem lost for 25 years, never previously published, and recovered recently. Joans composed the poem immediately following a visit to painter Beauford Delaney in Saint Anne's Hospital for the Insane in Paris in 1976.

12 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2001

About the author

Theodore "Ted" Joans was an American trumpeter, jazz poet and painter.

Joans was born in Cairo, Illinois, but not on a riverboat as had been claimed. He earned a degree in fine arts from Indiana University. He later associated with writers of the Beat Generation in Greenwich Village and San Francisco. He was a contemporary and friend of Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. In the 1960s, Joans had a house in Timbuktu. He claimed to be a brother of Leroi Jones, despite the spelling difference, but this appears to be apocryphal.

Joans' painting Bird Lives hangs in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. He was also the originator of the "Bird Lives" legend and graffiti in New York City after the death of Charlie Parker in March 1955. Joans invented the technique of outagraphy, in which the subject of a photograph is cut out of the image.

Joans died in Vancouver, British Columbia due to complications of diabetes.