This post is part of an ongoing series featuring items from the newly acquired Santo Domingo collection.
The Hipsters, a book by Ted Joans, is a collection of collages of paintings that depicts Greenwich village and the types of people that lived there. He explains many types from the Folknik to the Hipper-than-thounik. The folkniks “carry musical instruments and long loose flowing hair as they sit on the steps of the hip folklore music shop or every Sunday gather at the Washington Square circle. (Notice the sad three meals-a-day look and the folknik who has been fingered out by Commissioner of Parks Newbold Morris for playing in the square that Sunday he banned folknik singing.” 
The hipper-than-thounik “is the overread writer or painter of sorts who speaks as an astute authority on every subject, even sex, which she knows only from books. For she considers herself so hip that sexual activity is strictly for squares. Thus the hipper-than-thounik is a sicknik.” Also included is a three act play made up of Act 1: That Day, Act 2: That night or nite scene, and Act 3: The Flight. Fleeing, Splitting.
Ted Joans is a notable African American poet, jazz artist and writer. His works often include themes of Black Nationalism although he was also closely linked with the Beat Generation as The Hipsters exemplifies. Joans considered himself a surrealist, a point of view clear in The Hipsters. He was deeply involved with the movement, and for a time was close with Salvador Dali as well as André Breton.
Several of Ted Joans books are available at Widener Library including Black pow-wow: jazz poems, A black manifesto in jazz poetry and prose, All of Ted Joans and no more : poems and collages by Ted Joans ; introduction by Ilizabeth D. Klar. The Hipsters is in the Julio Mario Santo Domingo Collection and accessible at Widener Library.
Thanks to Emma Clement, Santo Domingo Library Assistant, for contributing this post.