The poet Anne Waldman's most direct link with the Beat Generation writers is her association since 1975 with Allen Ginsberg as codirector of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Her poetry also exhibits the open-form aesthetic often found in Beat writing, since she uses the literary methods and practices of spontaneous composition, collage, cut-up, and dream and journal investigations in her own work. Waldman is, however, more often characterized as a member of the community of younger East Side New York City poets than she is called a Beat writer. She has spoken at length about her own background in a Naropa lecture entitled, "My Life A List," published in 1979 in Talking Poetics from Naropa Institute, which Waldman edited.

Anne Waldman was born on 2 April 1945 in Millville, New Jersey. Her parents, John and Frances LeFevre Waldman, moved with her to MacDougal Street...