Ronald William Loewinsohn (December 15, 1937 – October 14, 2014) was an American poet and novelist who was associated with the poetry of the

San Francisco Renaissance The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others (e.g., Alan Watts ...

since his inclusion in

Donald Allen Donald Merriam Allen (Iowa, 1912 – San Francisco, August 29, 2004) was an American editor, publisher and translator of American literature. He is best known for his project ''The New American Poetry 1945-1960'' (1960), one of the anthologie ...

's 1960

poetry anthology In book publishing, an anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler; it may be a collection of plays, poems, short stories, songs or excerpts by different authors. In genre fiction, the term ''anthology'' typically categ ...

, ''

The New American Poetry 1945–1960 ''The New American Poetry 1945–1960'' is a poetry anthology edited by Donald Allen and published in 1960. It aimed to pick out the "third generation" of American modernist poets, and included quite a number of poems fresh from the little magazin ...

.'' He was Professor Emeritus of English at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

Education and career

Born in

Iloilo Iloilo (), officially the Province of Iloilo ( hil, Kapuoran sang Iloilo; krj, Kapuoran kang Iloilo; tl, Lalawigan ng Iloilo), is a province in the Philippines located in the Western Visayas region. Its capital is the City of Iloilo, the ...

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

, Loewinsohn and his family relocated to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the largest city in the state of California and the second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world' ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1945. They later lived in

The Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

Allen, Donald (ed). "Biographical Notes: Ron Loewinsohn." In ''The New American Poetry," New York: Grove Press, 1960: 141. and then settled in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, where he lived until 1967. Loewinsohn credits this proximity to North Beach with his own development as a poet: "I graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in 1955, with the

Beat generation The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generatio ...

happening all around me. I met all of the principals, heard Ginsberg, Snyder, Whalen and McClure read in Berkeley in April, 1956, and continued to write, mostly poetry, in that vernacular and (I thought) oracular mode." Loewinsohn then traveled, married in 1957, and worked as a

lithographer Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...

for 12 years. In 1959, he published his first collection of poetry, ''Watermelons'' which contained an introduction by

Allen Ginsberg Irwin Allen Ginsberg (; June 3, 1926 – April 5, 1997) was an American poet and writer. As a student at Columbia University in the 1940s, he began friendships with William S. Burroughs and Jack Kerouac, forming the core of the Beat Gener ...

and a prefatory letter by

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

. He also co-edited the

little magazine In the United States, a little magazine is a magazine genre consisting of "artistic work which for reasons of commercial expediency is not acceptable to the money-minded periodicals or presses", according to a 1942 study by Frederick J. Hoffman, ...

''Change'' with

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – c. September 16, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. A prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four bo ...

. The poets who were most influential on his work included

, Robert Duncan,

Jack Spicer Jack Spicer (January 30, 1925 – August 17, 1965) was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, ''My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer'' won the American Book Award for poetry. H ...

Philip Whalen Philip Glenn Whalen (October 20, 1923 – June 26, 2002) was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation. Biography Born in Portland, Oregon, Whalen grew up in The Dalles f ...

Gary Snyder Gary Snyder (born May 8, 1930) is an American poet, essayist, lecturer, and environmental activist. His early poetry has been associated with the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance and he has been described as the "poet laureate of ...

Charles Olson Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York ...

Robert Creeley Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Char ...

Denise Levertov Priscilla Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-born naturalised American poet. She was a recipient of the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry. Early life and influences Levertov was born and grew up in Ilford, Ess ...

. In the early 1960s, Loewinsohn taught a poetry workshop at

San Francisco State University San Francisco State University (commonly referred to as San Francisco State, SF State and SFSU) is a public research university in San Francisco. As part of the 23-campus California State University system, the university offers 118 different b ...

Extension, an experience which made him realize that he wanted to be a teacher. He received a B.A. from the

in 1967 and Ph.D. from the

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

in 1971 (his dissertation was on

). He joined the faculty of the department of English at

in 1970 and retired in 2005. His papers are archived in Stanford University's Department of Special Collections and University Archives.

Publications

* ''Watermelons'', New York: Totem Press, 1959 * Poetry included in

's ''

'' (1960) by

Grove Press Grove Press is an United States of America, American Imprint (trade name), publishing imprint that was founded in 1947. Imprints include: Black Cat, Evergreen, Venus Library, and Zebra. Barney Rosset purchased the company in 1951 and turned it in ...

*''The World of the Lie'' (poems), Change Press, 1963 *''L'Autre'' (poems), Black Sparrow Press, 1967 *''The Step'' (poems), Black Sparrow Press, 1968 *The Sea, around us (poem) Black Sparrow Press 1968 *''Meat Air'' (Selected Poems), Harcourt Brace, 1970 *''The Leaves'' (poems), Black Sparrow Press, 1973 *''William C. Williams: The Embodiment of Knowledge'', (Editor) *''Goat Dances'' (poems) Black Sparrow Press, 1976 * Poetry included in

's ''The Postmoderns,'' (1982) by

*''Magnetic Field''(s) (novel), Knopf, 1983 *''Where All the Ladders Start'' (novel), Atlantic Monthly Press, 1987

Awards and honors

*Poets Foundation Award (1963) *The Irving Stone Award of the Academy of American Poets (1966) *The Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry (1966) *The University of California Scholar Award (1967) *Woodrow Wilson Foundation graduate fellowship (1967-8) *Harvard University fellowship (1967–70) *National Education Association Fellowship (1979 and 1986) *Guggenheim Fellowship (1984-5)

Media

Poetry reading
Ron Loewinsohn at SGWU, 1970 (with Robert Hogg)
-

Concordia University Concordia University ( French: ''Université Concordia'') is a public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1974 following the merger of Loyola College and Sir George Williams University, Concordia is one of the t ...

Video clip
Literature of the Beat Generation - Ron Loewinsohn
-

OLLI Olli is a Dutch children's book character and a stuffed toy. The character Olli was created in 2004 by Dutch designer and film director Hein Mevissen and writer Diederiekje Bok as a character for a bottled mineral water. Olli was one of the many ...

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Loewinsohn, Ron 1937 births 2014 deaths Beat Generation poets 20th-century American poets 20th-century American novelists Writers from the San Francisco Bay Area University of California, Berkeley alumni Harvard University alumni University of California, Berkeley College of Letters and Science faculty American male novelists American male poets 20th-century American male writers

Education and career

Publications

Awards and honors

Media

Further reading

Notes