Joel Lester Oppenheimer was born in Yonkers, New York, 18 February 1930 to Leopold Oppenheimer, a retailer, and Kate Rosenwasser Oppenheimer; he was raised there, in an "old-time" neighborhood. Young Joel became a New Yorker, a teenage fan of the Yankees, and an incipient poet. The themes of his origins followed him through all the periods of his writing. He attended Cornell University and the University of Chicago before finding himself at Black Mountain College, where he studied writing with M. C. Richards, Paul Goodman, and especially Charles Olson. He began life-long associations with fellow Black Mountain writers Edward Dorn, Robert Creeley, Jonathan Williams, Michael Rumaker, and Fielding Dawson. (Later associates included Paul Blackburn, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones, Frank O'Hara, and Gilbert Sorrentino.) Having actually been a student at Black Mountain from 1950 to 1953, taking courses with Olson and having his work published in the Black Mountain Review, edited by Creeley...