Overview
Nonfiction. Lew Welch narrates the story of his life in these letters written to his mother and his friends and mentors, from his Reed College days, through the years of exile in New York and Chicago, to his return to his native California in 1957 and his active participation thereafter in the San Francisco scene. Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen are his chief correspondents and their letters to him are also included here, as well as letters to Kirby Doyle, Allen Ginsberg, David Haselwood, Jack Kerouac, Joanne Kyger, Charles Olson and William Carlos Williams, among others. This volume collects many of Welch's occasional poems together with his "Poems and Remarks," the early essay on his poetry and poetics he wrote for William Carlos Williams, and the draft of an essay on man's sexual nature.