BIOGRAPHY
I have been in and out of poetry since I was a teenager. As an
undergraduate majoring in English, I took poetry for my vocation and college
teaching as my preferred livelihood. I was in the graduate program at U.C.
Berkeley from 1964-66, the early days of the Free Speech Movement, and
completed my doctoral coursework at S.U.N.Y. Buffalo, which had an excellent
department in modern literature: Ann London, Robert Hass, and John Logan
(with whom I studied), on the faculty, and Charles Martin and John Wieners
among the students. I then got hired to teach at San Francisco State
College, where I remained for five years, until 1974, and was asked to
specialize in the psychological interpretation of literature because my
dissertation, on Wallace Stevens, used a Jungian perspective.
During this time the economic and political prospects for teaching
humanities eroded badly (they have yet to recover). So in 1975 I returned to
school to study clinical psychology, graduated in 1979, became licensed in
1981, and was credentialed as a Jungian analyst in 1987, busy years when I
ceased thinking of myself as a poet. Eventually several factors, most
importantly encountering the British psychologist Marion Milner's work on the
theory of creativity, made it clear to me that I needed to go back to my old
vocation. A damned good thing!
I have been a featured reader at Keane's 3300 Club, The Paradise Lounge,
The Berkeley Poetry Festival, Manfred's Books, and various haiku events,
including the Two Autumns Reading of the Haiku Poets of Northern California.
If the gathering isn't specifically devoted to haiku I usually select work
from both my poetry worlds.
