San Francisco Renaissance

As a San Francisco Renaissance refers to a literary movement that took place in San Francisco and had an impact on areas of the arts, philosophy and social, especially cross-cultural issues relating to Asia.

The poet Kenneth Rexroth is regarded as the founding father of the Renaissance. He belonged temporarily to the second generation of American modernism by Pound, the " objectivist poets". The unorthodox socialist corresponded with the extreme right-wing Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams. Rexroth was represented in the canonical Objectivist Anthology. He was strongly influenced by jazz, but also from ancient Greek, Chinese and Japanese poetry and was among the first American poets who seriously dealt with the Chinese and Japanese language and genres such as the Japanese haiku.

If you like Madeline Gleason was the mother of the San Francisco Renaissance. In the 1940s, Gleason and Rexroth were with a group of poets who studied at Berkeley friends, including Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer and Robin Blaser. Gleason and Duncan were particularly close and also rated each other's poems.

Beginning of the movement

In April 1947, Gleason organized the first Festival of Modern Poetry in Lucien Labaudt Gallery at Gough Street. On two evenings they had two dozen poets, including Rexroth, Duncan and Spicer present themselves and their poems to an interested audience. It was the first event of its kind in San Francisco.

In the 1950s, Duncan and Robert Creeley spent longer time than teachers at Black Mountain College in North Carolina and served as a sort of connection of the avant garde to San Francisco. The poet of the city on the Pacific could publish their poems in Cid Corman "Origin" and in the "Black Mountain Review ". Spicer developed an interest in the canto jondo ( deep song) and was with deep image poets in conjunction. In 1957 he held a seminar entitled "Poetry as Magic" at the San Francisco State College.

  • Literary group
  • Literature (United States)
  • Culture ( San Francisco)
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