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PHOTO GALLERY
Lew Welch was born August 16,
1926 in Phoenix, Arizona, to Lewis Barrett Welch Sr. and Dorothy
Brownfield Welch. Mrs. Welch was the daughter of a wealthy Phoenix
surgeon. Following the birth of Welch's sister his parents marriage
broke up, and Dorothy Welch moved the family to California in
1929. Welch was three at the time, and for most of his childhood
his mother moved from town to town in California. He attended
schools in Santa Monica, Coronado, La Mesa, and El Cajon. In
Palo, Alto Welch finished high school.
Welch entered Reed College in
1948, and the following year moved into a house with Gary
Snyder; the following year they were joined by Philip
Whalen. By the fall of 1949 Welch was co-editor of the school's
literary magazine and was writing constantly. He wrote his senior
thesis on Gertrude Stein and graduated in 1950.
For a number of years Welch showed
his poetry only to close friends. With the emergence of the Beat
movement, however, Welch's friends Philip
Whalen and Gary Snyder began receiving
national attention. Welch's desire to devote himself completely
to his poetry was revived. He transferred to the Oakland office
of Montgomery Ward and soon became a part of the San Francisco
poetry scene. In 1958 he was fired from his job. His marriage
fell apart soon after.
At the same time, however, Welch's
poetry was beginning to meet with some success. Donald Allen
included one of Welch's poems in The New American Poetry - the
important anthology published in 1960. That same year Welch's
first book, Wobbly Rock, was published. He was drinking heavily
during this time, but he continued to write extensively. For
a time he lived with his mother in Reno, Nevada, and then in
a cabin in the Trinity Alps. He moved back to San Francisco in
1963, and in 1965 published three books.
In 1965, Welch began teaching
a poetry workshop offered through the Extension program of the
University of California at Berkeley. Despite his burgeoning
success, Welch's bouts with depression and heavy drinking continued.
After the breakup of another relationship in 1971 Welch returned
to the mountains. On May 23, 1971, Gary
Snyder went up to Welch's campsite and found a suicide note
in Welch's truck. Despite an extensive search, Welch's body was
never recovered.
Taxi Suite (excerpt: 1. After Anacreon) ( Top of Page
)
When I drive cab
I am moved by strange whistles and wear a hat
When I drive cab
I am the hunter. My prey leaps out from where it
hid, beguiling me with gestures
When I drive cab
all may command me, yet I am in command of all who do
When I drive cab
I am guided by voices descending from the naked air
When I drive cab
A revelation of movement comes to me. They wake now.
Now they want to work or look around. Now they want
drunkenness and heavy food. Now they contrive to love.
When I drive cab
I bring the sailor home from the sea. In the back of
my car he fingers the pelt of his maiden
When I drive cab
I watch for stragglers in the urban order of things.
When I drive cab
I end the only lit and waitful things in miles of
darkened houses
Not Yet 40, My Beard is Already
White ( Top of Page
)
Not yet 40, my beard is already
white.
Not yet awake, my eyes are puffy and red,
like a child who has cried too much.
What is more disagreeable
than last night's wine?
I'll shave.
I'll stick my head in the cold spring and
look around at the pebbles.
Maybe I can eat a can of peaches.
Then I can finish the rest of the wine,
write poems 'til I'm drunk again,
and when the afternoon breeze comes up
I'll sleep until I see the moon
and the dark trees
and the nibbling deer
and hear
the quarreling coons
The Image, as in a Hexagram ( Top of Page )
The image, as in a Hexagram:
The hermit locks his door against the blizzard.
He keeps the cabin warm.
All winter long he sorts out all he has.
What was well started shall be finished.
What was not, should be thrown away.
In spring he emerges with one garment
and a single book.
The cabin is very clean.
Except for that, you'd never guess
anyone lived there.
I Saw Myself ( Top of Page )
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
"ring of bone" where
ring is what a
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