Regarding himself as a "second generation Beat writer," the poet David Meltzer came to San Francisco in 1957. During the late 1950s period of the San Francisco renaissance, Meltzer's personal expression as a young poet was formed by his association with Michael McClure, Lew Welch, Jack Spicer, Robert Duncan, and Philip Whalen. His identification with the group has continued in the twenty-five years he has lived in the Bay Area, a place he feels is totally congenial to his gentle temperament and his writing. In this community of poets Meltzer has found a way to survive as a poet in America, a commitment which, by his own account, takes toughness, imagination,and a certain "gritty, flexible intelligence."

David Meltzer was born on 17 February 1937 in Rochester, New York. His mother, Rosemunde Lovelace, was a harpist and pianist, a former scholarship student at the Eastman School of Music, where she met...