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Overview
Interviews. SAN FRANCSCO BEAT: TALKING WITH THE POETS is an essential archive of the Bear Generation, as rich moment in a fortunate place. America, somnolent, conformist, and paranoid in the 1950s, was chaged forever by a handful of people who refused an existence of drudgery and enterprise, opting instead for a life of personal, spiritual, and artistic adventure. In these intimate, free-wheeling conversations, a baker's dozen of the poets of San Francisco talk about the scene then and now, the traditions of poetry, and about anarchism, globalism, Zen, the Bomb, the Kabbalah, and the Internet. Includes conversations with Diane di Prima, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Philip Lamantia, Gary Snyder, and others.
Synopsis
San Francisco Beat is an essential archive of the Beat Generation, a rich moment in a fortunate place. America-somnolent, conformist, and paranoid in the 1950s-was changed forever by a handful of people who refused an existence of drudgery and enterprise, opting instead for a life of personal, spiritual, and artistic adventure. In these intimate, free-wheeling conversations, a baker's dozen of the poets of San Francisco talk about the scene then and now, the traditions of poetry, and about anarchism, globalism, Zen, the Bomb, the Kabbalah, and the Internet.
Thirty years ago, poet David Meltzer interviewed his poet friends for The San Francisco Poets. Now in San Francisco Beat he has combined these classic interviews with recent follow-up. San Francisco Beat features major new interviews with Philip Lamantia, Joanne Kyger, Gary Snyder, Jack Hirschman, Diane di Prima, Jack Micheline, Philip Whalen, and David Meltzer himself.
David Meltzer is the author of many books of poetry, including Tens, The Name, Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992, and No Eyes: Lester Young. He is the editor of Birth, The Secret Garden, Reading Jazz, and Writing Jazz, among other collections. His agit-smut fictions include The Agency Trilogy. Meltzer read poetry at the Jazz Cellar in the 1950s and in the 1960s fronted the band, Serpent Power. Meltzer teaches poetics at New College of California.
Table of Contents/Interviewed Authors
Preface
Acknowledgments
Diane di Prima (1999)
William Everson (1971)
Remembering Everson (1999)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti I (1969)
Lawrence Ferlinghetti II(1999)
Jack Hirschman (1998)
Joanne Kyger (1998)
Philip Lamantia (1998)
Michael McClure I (1971)
Michael McClure II (1999)
David Meltzer (1999)
Jack Micheline (1994)
Kenneth Rexroth (1971)
Remembering Rexroth (1971)
Gary Snyder (1999)
Lew Welch (1971)
Philip Whalen (1999)
Bibliographies
Preface
Nothing is hidden;
As of old
All is clear as daylight
-Anonymous haiku, 16th century
San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Police
LA Times - Jonathan Kirsch
The Beats go on, as David Meltzer allows us to see by including the transcripts of 13 memorable and illuminating conversations wuth such members of the Beat generation as Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and William Everson. All of the interviews are raw and edgy, full of ramblings and moments of rhetorical excess, yet are always intimate and illuminating.
Editorials
Jonathan Kirsch
The Beats go on, as David Meltzer allows us to see by including the transcripts of 13 memorable and illuminating conversations wuth such members of the Beat generation as Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Gary Snyder and William Everson. All of the interviews are raw and edgy, full of ramblings and moments of rhetorical excess, yet are always intimate and illuminating.— LA Times
Ray Gonzalez
Thirty years ago, David Meltzer interviewed key figure from the San Francisco Beat generation and published them in The San Francisco Poets, long out of print. This new edition reprints those classic interviews with Kenneth Rexroth, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, William Everson, and Lew Welch, along with recent conversations with Diane di Prima, Jack Hirschman, Joanne Kyger, Philip Lamantia, Jack Micheline, Gary Snyder. and Philip Whalen. Together these writers represent what is arguably the most important literary movement in post World War II American poetry. Insights by di Prima and Kyger on women Beat writers do away with long-held notions that only male writers were important to this West Coast renaissance. The Rexroth interview is timeless and shows what a visionary and prophet he was.— The Bloomsbury Review