Ira Cohen Sold at Auction Prices

b. 1935 - d. 2011

Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Cohen lived in Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Cohen died of renal failure on April 25, 2011. Ira Cohen's literary archive now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.

Cohen was born in 1935 in the Bronx, New York City, to deaf parents. Cohen graduated from the Horace Mann School at 16 and attended Cornell University, where he took a class taught by Vladimir Nabokov. Cohen dropped out of Cornell, then enrolled at the School of General Studies of Columbia University. He married Arlene Bond, a Barnard student, in 1957. They had two children, David Schleifer and Rafiqa el Shenawi.


In 1961, Cohen took a Yugoslavian freighter to Tangier, Morocco where he lived for four years. Before settling in Tangier, he crossed over to Spain's Costa del Sol and stayed for a spell with friends in Torremolinos. (Cohen's early sojourns in certain European cities, including London and Paris, were as part of a return trip he made up from Morocco a little later on.) In Tangier Cohen edited and published GNAOUA, a literary magazine devoted to exorcism and Beat-era writings (prose and poetry), introducing the work of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, Harold Norse and others. GNAOUA also featured Jack Smith and Irving Rosenthal. Cohen also produced Jilala, field recordings of trance music by a sect of Moroccan dervishes made by Paul Ira Cohen (February 3, 1935 – April 25, 2011) was an American poet, publisher, photographer and filmmaker. Cohen lived in Morocco and in New York City in the 1960s, he was in Kathmandu in the 1970s and traveled the world in the 1980s, before returning to New York, where he spent the rest of his life. Cohen died of renal failure on April 25, 2011.Ira Cohen's literary archive now resides at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University.
editor of Third Rail Magazine, a review of international arts and literature based in Los Angeles.