Kirby Doyle first came to prominence during the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance of the late 1950s. His friend and mentor was Lew Welch, with whom he shared a passion for the wilderness of California and the Pacific Northwest. Like many of the San Francisco poets, Doyle rejected the ponderous, self-important verse of the eastern literary establishment. The Beats--preferring Ezra Pound to T.S. Eliot, and William Carlos Williams to Wallace Stevens ("Images instead of concepts," as Charles Olson said)--sought to free their poetry from what they considered the overrefinements of American academic verse. The San Francisco poets believed that poetry could retain an unconformist, idiomatic expression, while remaining ardent and meaningful in its expression (a lesson learned through their study of the Zen poets of Japan and the Orient).

In a 1980 interview, Doyle recalled his earlier life: "I was born the year Roosevelt was elected to his...