John Carpenter
Published: 1997
Total Pages: 32
Get eBook
In 1956 Charles Olson suggested to me that I had some knowledge of and regard for poetry, and that I should consider publishing rather than writing it. And then in the early 1960s a bookseller, Bill Farrell, and a friend, Stevens van Strum, also encouraged me to publish. Stevens and I were influenced and captivated by the poets of the 1940s and 1950s in the Bay Area: Everson, Duncan, Fabilli, McClure, Meltzer, and others. So we selected ten poets and asked them to submit poems they wished to see in broadside form. Only Everson and Olson seemed to understand what that meant. But we published the ten and slowly developed a mailing list of individual and institutional customers. It was an obvious step to choose a David Meltzer manuscript as our first book, and then publish selected early works of Everson, Duncan, and Fabilli. From 1964 through 1986 we published about 130 items. Then in 1992 we issued Samuel Charters' wonderful A Country Year, and in 1996 a keepsake featuring two poems of Tomas Tranströmer, a friend and world-class poet.