La Commedia Sotterranea della Macchina da Scrivere

Marc Zegans

La Commedia Sotterranea della Macchina da Scrivere is a gathering of verse fragments and collages describing and illustrating the life of the Typewriter Underground, a spontaneous sub-cultural phenomenon that appeared with near simultaneity in a variety of cities and smaller locales across the globe in the late 20th and early 21st Century.  The Commedia (commonly referred to as Felt’s First Folio from The Typewriter Underground, a private publication putatively issued by Swizzle Felt, an early participant in the Underground and an avid collector of its ephemera) offers a lively picture of life in this subterranean community. The verse fragments appearing in La Commedia have the quality of the early gospels—personal accounts of authors who lived contemporaneously with the Underground, and were among its early apostles.


“Swizzle Felt’s First Folio from the Typewriter Underground is witty, erudite and impressively sustained, a tragicomic elegiac analogic little epic, and the collages are marvelous.” Stephen Kessler, poet

“that’s not typing...it’s WRITING!” Jim Hall, Peabody Award winning photojournalist

“[the]TYPEWRITER UNDERGROUND conjures a dream/ An army unseen/ A long-lived Resistance/ To conformity & fearful silence/ Join together we must/ In the power of the word we trust/ Spoken, written and performed/ The hope of a world reformed/ From greed and the need to tyrannize/and the fears that hypnotize and paralyze.” Jeff Westfield, poet and novelist

“Marc Zegans is a wordsmith and craftsman, who has elevated the art of the age of typeface, and has invited his readers to go on a nostalgic journey and get lost between the sheets in a pre-digital age….I highly recommend indulging yourself in this first folio of The Typewriter Underground.” Marie Boucher, Professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey and author of the forthcoming collection of poetry Becoming River

“Marc Zegans' current project, The Typewriter Underground is a brilliant embodiment of an underground society of creatives who have returned to the analog world of the typewriter as the instrument of their artistry. But what he's really done is created an alternate universe and cast of characters and shared them with other creatives to build shows and films and performances inhabiting this world. I am lucky to be one of them...” Deborah Oster Pannell, writer, editor and curator

“Swizzle Felt’s First Folio will set your mind spinning. It’s a world unto itself and you’ll want to be lost in its wonder.” Janice Blaze Rocke, Literary Performance Artist & Founding Director of Erotic Eclectic

“Lewis Carroll meets Groucho Marx on the pages of Finnegan’s Wake. Brian Hassett, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Jack Kerouac

“From the very first poem, Zegans steals you away from technology and social media and immerses you in the fundamental roadblocks of language and sound.” Adam Levon Brown, FIVE:2:ONE Magazine

“The architectonic of Felt’s First Folio is broad, profound and relevant.” Stephen Auerbach, award winning producer and filmmaker

“It may very well be that Marc Zegans is the greatest satirist in the English language since Jonathan Swift.” Dave Rubin, Spoken Word/Blues Harp, mad hands records

Marc Zegans is a working poet and spoken word artist. His collections include The Underwater Typewriter, Boys in the Woods, Pillow Talk, and The Book of Clouds. He has recorded two albums, Night Work and Marker and Parker, the latter in collaboration with pianist Don Parker.  Marc has worked regularly in immersive theater as a producer, author and performer, and has been introducing audiences to the Typewriter Underground in live performances since 2016. Marc’s Typewriter Underground saw its debut as a full theatrical production directed by Janice Blaze Rocke at the Henry Miller Library, Big Sur in June 2018.  He lives by the coast in Northern California. Marc’s poetry can be found at marczegans.com, and he can be reached for creative advisory services at mycreativedevelopment.com.

Eric Edelman, illustrator of La Commedia Sotterranea, is an accomplished collage artist who resides in New York.  His work can be found at Art of RetroCollage — The Metaphysical Art of Eric Edelman