San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets

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.

Diane di Prima, William Everson, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jack Hirschman, Joanne Kyger, Philip Lamantia, Michael McClure, David Meltzer, Jack Micheline, Kenneth Rexroth, Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Philip Whalen

. . . as we begin to slip into a national slumber somewhat akin to that of the Eisenhower years, it's exhilarating to have this squall line of Beats pass through our consciousness.--Kirkus Reviews

. . . fierce engagement executed with humor and vernacular sensitivity.--Dale Smith, Austin Chronicle

David Meltzer (1937-2016) was the author of many books of poetry, including Tens, The Name, Arrows: Selected Poetry 1957-1992 and Two-Way Mirror (City Lights). He was 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.

A poet at age 11, David Meltzer began his literary career during the Beat heyday in San Francisco and early on took his poetry to jazz for improv wonders, which he continues to astound listeners with today. He is the author of many volumes of poetry including The Clown, The Process, Arrows: Selected Poetry, 1957 - 1992, No Eyes: Lester Young, Beat Thing and David's Copy. City Lights published his most recent book of poetry, When I Was A Poet, as #60 in the Pocket Poet's Series, and a reissue of his classic book of poetics, Two-Way Mirror: A Poetry Notebook. Meltzer edited numerous anthologies such as Reading Jazz, Writing Jazz and San Francisco Beat: Talking with the Poets. He was also the lead singer and guitarist of the psychedelic folk-rock group The Serpent Power, whose eponymous 1967 Vanguard Records LP was listed by Rolling Stone as one of the top 40 albums of the Summer of Love (which included a number of classic albums released that year, including Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band by The Beatles). He taught in the Humanities and graduate Poetics programs at the New College of California in San Francisco for 30 years. In 2011 he received the SF Bay Guardian's Lifetime Achievement Award. He died in December 2016.