The Berkeley / San Francisco Renaissance

Instructors: Victor Coleman & Michael Boughn
Duration: 10 weeks, 8 September – 10 November (Wednesdays), 6:30 – 8:30PM

This course will cover the background and work associated with what is called The San Francisco Renaissance, a literary moment that occurred from the mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. Although sometimes associated with the Beats, we will instead look at the work of the coteries that came out of the Berkeley Renaissance in the 1940′s, including Robert Duncan, Jack Spicer, Robin Blaser, Helen Adam, Ron Loewinsohn, Philip Lamantia, Joanne Kyger, Madeline Gleason, Ebbe Borregaard, Richard Duerden, Richard Brautigan, George Stanley, Harold Dull, Lew Welch and other less well known writers. Every other week, Victor Coleman will lead a discussion of these writers and the circumstances of their coming together. In alternate weeks, Michael Boughn will lead a detailed consideration of the work of Jack Spicer, a poet who was at the centre of much of what was going on.

Required texts:

Coleman: The New American Poetry, Donald M. Allen, ed., currently out of print. For those unable to locate a copy a reference library will be made available to students by the instructor.

Boughn: Gizzi & Killian, eds. My Vocabulary Did This To Me: The Collected Poems of Jack Spicer (Wesleyan, 2009). Also highly recommended: The House that Jack Built: The Collected Lectures of Jack Spicer

Capacity: 12 students

Fee: $300