Poets of the Forties, Part 2 — Robert Duncan, Janet Lewis, Thomas Parkinson, Richard O. Moore, William Everson: May 15, 1974

The Poetry Center presents an historic re-creation of the "Festival of Modern Poetry," originally organized by Madeline Gleason's San Francisco Poetry Guild in 1947. This 1974 reading features nine of the original participants of the 1947 festival, a partial representation of poets then active in the San Francisco Bay Area who helped establish San Francisco as a center for poetry, before the Beat movement and San Francisco Renaissance defined other new directions in the 1950s. The nine poets read largely from works written during the 1940s. Robert Duncan serves as emcee and reads briefly at the start of the second half of the evening.

For convenience, the full program has been split into two parts. On this second half of the program appear Robert Duncan (1919–1988), Janet Lewis (1899–1998), Thomas Parkinson (1920–1992), Richard O. Moore (1920–2015), and William Everson (1912–1994)

Publisher
American Poetry Archives
Location
San Francisco Museum of Art
Date
1974-05-15
Event Run Time
00:56:07
Rights

©© American Poetry Archives. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For all other uses please email poetry@sfsu.edu.

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Robert Duncan (00:04:45)

Robert Duncan introduces the poets appearing in the second half of the program, then reads one poem: "The Homecoming."

Janet Lewis (00:06:30)

Janet Lewis, who in 1946 had published her collection The Earth-Bound, 1924–1944, and in 1947 the second in her trilogy of historical novels, The Trial of Soren Qvist, reads her poems: "In the Egyptian Museum," "Winter Garden," "Lines With a Gift of Herbs," "Old Love," and "Helen Grows Old."

Thomas Parkinson (00:14:00)

Tom Parkinson in 1945 had published Letter to a Young Lady, written during his undergrad tenure at UC Berkeley, and in 1948 joined the faculty of the English Department. He reads "September Elegy," "A Poet's Critic," "The Politician," "The Puppet," and "The Baseball Game." 

Richard O. Moore (00:12:57)

Richard O. Moore, among the early staff at KPFA-FM and KQED-TV, Bay Area community-based independent media outlets, would later produce the National Educational Television series USA: Poetry (1965–66, out of which The Poetry Center produced its NET Outtakes Series), among many documentary films for television. Moore here reads his poems: "A Reminiscence," "An Imprecation Against Saints," and "Orpheus." 

William Everson (00:15:33)

William Everson's collection The Residual Years would be published in 1948 by New Directions, following the poet's incarceration as a conscientious objector at the Waldport C.O. Camp in Oregon, where he took up the printer's trade. In 1951 he would join the Dominican Order, becoming Brother Antoninus, until 1969, when he left. Here Everson reads his long narrative poem from the forties, "The Blowing of the Seed." 

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