The collection contains correspondence, published and unpublished manuscripts between American poet Ron Loewinsohn and many of the most prominent American authors of the mid-to-late 20th Century.

Ron Loewinsohn has been associated with San Francisco poetry since the late 1950s. In the early 1960s he taught at San Francisco State College, and in 1963 he co-edited and published the little magazine Change with Richard Brautigan. Loewinsohn's poems first achieved a wide readership by virtue of their inclusion in Donald Allen's anthology, The New American Poetry. His first book, Watermelons, contains an introduction by Allen Ginsberg and a letter from William Carlos Williams. Loewinsohn acknowledges both writers as his major influences, along with Robert Creeley and Philip Whalen. A later collection of poems, L'Autre, was the first full-length publication of the Black Sparrow Press. Loewinsohn's later publications include Meat Air and Goat Dances, both of which are collections of poetry. A complete checklist of Loewinsohn's primary publications is included in Gary Lepper's Bibliographical Introduction to 75 Modern American Authors. Ronald William Loewinsohn was born December 15, 1937, in Iloilo, Philippines and came to the United States with his parents in 1945. After he graduated from high school in 1955, he traveled around the country and then worked at various printing jobs, before instructing at the San Francisco Poetry Center, 1960-61. He attended San Francisco State College and earned his bachelor's degree from University of California, Berkeley in 1967. Loewinsohn then again instructed poetry at the Center for Adult Education in Cambridge, Mass., in the summer of 1968. He earned his master's and doctorate from Harvard University, in 1969 and 1971, respectively. Loewinsohn returned to Berkeley where he received a professorship in the English Department teaching American literature and creative writing, beginning in 1970. Ron Loewinsohn's awards and honors include the Poets Foundation Award (1963), the Irving Stone Award of the Academy of American Poets (1966), and the Ina Coolbrith Memorial Prize for Poetry (1966).

20 Linear Feet (40 manuscript storage boxes)

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