Edward Marshall is one of the diverse personalities called forth to poetry by the Beat revolution of openness--this time from the restraints of granite-hard New England. He was born in rural Chichester, New Hampshire, near Concord, and was raised by an aunt and uncle, since his mother Lena Marshall had been committed to an insane asylum shortly after his birth and his father was too poor to care for him adequately. He took a few courses at the University of New Hampshire and spent a year at New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, then moved to Boston in 1953. There he met poet Stephen Jonas, with whom he shared a room, and also Joe Dunn (founder of the White Rabbit Press) and John Wieners, the latter just back from studying with Charles Olson at North Carolina's Black Mountain College. In their company, Marshall wrote his first poems. At...