San Francisco, CA
Born 1934, Vallejo, California
Poet, teacher
The shape of the day, the words of the moment, what's happening around me in the world of interior and exterior space -- these are my writing concerns. Living in a semi rural environment the cast of characters in my poems are often the quail, deer, raccoons, coyote bush, oaks, the ocean, the weather, and a few treasured friends. All are equally valid in the environment of place. Some talk more than others. My attention to writing is a daily practice, which then builds an accumulative narrative of chronology. Which ends up as the story of one's life. An historical sense of 'self', breathing and experiencing what is common to every human -- the local, the ordinary, the non-motivated sense of just 'being'. One is also aware of the accumulations of lineage of all those writing persons who have come before and to whom one owes the inheritance of this written moment.
1952-1956 Attended University of California, Santa Barbara
2004 Mills College, Oakland, California
1989- 2004 New College of San Francisco
1975 Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado
2004 The Distressed Look. Coyote Press
2004 God Never Dies. Blue Press
2002 As Ever. Selected Poems 1957-2001. Penguin Books
2001 Again. Poems 1989-2000. La Alameda Press
2000 Some Life. The Post Apollo Press
2000 Strange Big Moon. The Japan and India Journals 1960-64. North Atlantic Books
1991 Just Space. Black Sparrow Press
2005 Lifetime Achievement Award, Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center
1986, 2000 Marin Arts Council Grant
1983 National Poetry Series Award, Selected Poems 1958-1980
