A milestone in City Lights history, David Meltzer's "When I Was a Poet" is number sixty of the famous Pocket Poets Series. The title work is an ambitious late masterpiece from a legendary poet at the height of his powers, a spiritual assessment of the meaning of a lifetime of writing poetry. Also included are reminiscences of California bohemian life, a series of mystical amulets, and profound meditations on love, loss, aging, and death. Associated with the Beat Generation and late '60s psychedelia, musician, novelist, and editor David Meltzer is one of America's foremost living poets."Meltzer is a prolific poet of many modes and voices, quite a few of which are here, love poems, poems out of childhood, a series of "amulets," cryptic short wisdom poems, and much more. These are all tasty, often ironic and/or mysterious, pieces of Davidness to be savored . . . " -- Richard Silberg, "Poetry Flash"

Marilyn Buck was a committed political radical, imprisoned for over thirty years for her revolutionary activities. She was also a prolific writer and poet, publishing her work in a prize-winning chapbook, an audio CD, and in various journals and anthologies. She received a PEN American Center prize for poetry in 2001.

Buck was released from prison less than a month before her death at age sixty-two from uterine cancer. This selection of her finest poetry is a living testament to the fierce intelligence and huge compassion that inspired and informed her life, and to the transcendence of her poetic vision.

"This is an important book on so many levels... it models a degree of resistance most of us are never called upon to develop.""--Ms. Magazine"

"Though it is unclear from Buck's writing what place organized religion had for her after she left home, these pages contain prayers, answers, wise and generous gifts.""--The Rumpus"

"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 Po

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The poem is perhaps the highest verbal form of communication. It illuminates and it conceals. It is as precise and as vague as a mirror."-David Meltzer Two-Way Mirror is a classic book of poetics. Written in short remarks, autobiographical anecdotes, and inspirational quotations drawn from philosophical, ethnographic, and literary sources, Two-Way Mirror is both a nondidactic guide to the art Meltzer has devoted his life to, and a literary pleasure in itself. With its various writing prompts, Two-Way Mirror has proven to be both inspirational and practical, a teaching tool and a guide to creativity that makes the perfect gift for poets at any stage of development. Attractively bound and printed in a deluxe gift edition, and featuring Meltzer's collection of found artwork collaged from thrift-store grammar books, this new and expanded edition retains the charm of the original while updating it for the present day.Building upon the version he self-published in 1977, Meltzer has written additional material that considers the effect of technological developments since the book's publication, as well as an afterword in which he reflects on the history of the volume, its inception, and its usefulness. Praise for Two-Way Mirror Reading Two-Way Mirror, I feel continually surprised, excited, alive. This book makes me want to make poems, and readers, beware: if you are not already a poet, this book could very well turn you into one."----Matthew Zapruder "I know of no better amalgam of poetry & poetics & no better introduction to the ways in which poetry can emerge for us & lead us beyond ourselves & toward our own fulfillments. Meltzer's grace of mind & the life of poetry that surrounds it make the case complete."--Jerome Rothenberg "A great book of learning from a lifetime's thoughts of the poem. Ramble, scribble, tickle, lightbulb! Timely and highly worthwhile."--Clark Coolidge "Invaluable for anyone who reads or writes poetry, or has a restless desire of any kind, this wondrous, zany compendium gives us 'a biography of poetry' that directly enters our veins, bypassing all the crud and restoring our sense of the art, and David Meltzer is a champion of the impossible to have compiled it ...a gift of delight and wisdom-keep it in your bag by day and by your bed at night."-Mary Ruefle

One of the most respected poets of the Beat and San Francisco Renaissance periods, David Meltzer has kept alive interest in the interface between jazz and poetry that exploded in the 1950s. This new edition of selected poems includes previously unpublished material and serves as a map to this very prolific and interesting poet.

Has jazz become a white invention, "neutralized" by the attempts of white critics to describe, define, and even defend a black form of expression? Such is the provocative argument that emerges from David Meltzer's compilation of controversial and thought-provoking writings on jazz from the early decades of this century to the present. This diverse anthology of writings on jazz not only charts the evolution of a musical form, it also reflects evolving racial and cultural conflicts and stereotypes. An unusual source book of jazz history, Reading Jazz examines its roots and its future as well as its links to and influence on other forms of modern cultural expression. David Meltzer artfully juxtaposes a variety of texts to explore the paradox of jazz as an art form perceived as both primitive and modern, to consider the use of jazz as a metaphor for new attitudes, to show how it was mythopoeticized and demonized, to view jazz as a focus for a variety of cultural attitudes, and to probe its relation to other aspects of modern culture. Arranged historically, both literary and popular texts are included, reflecting the interplay of jazz with both high and low culture, from such contributors as Hoagy Carmichael, Artie Shaw, Norman Mailer, Art Pepper, Simone de Beauvoir, Julio Cortazar, William Carlos Williams, Robert Creeley, and many more. Reading Jazz will be indispensable not only for jazz enthusiasts but also for anyone interested in the evolution of modern culture.