This collection documents the personal and professional life of Jewish-American musician, poet, and teacher David Meltzer. His papers also document over 50 years of literary and artistic life in the Bay Area and beyond, Meltzer's expertise as a scholar of Kabbalah, and the Humanities and Poetics programs at New College of California. The collection includes correspondence with poets and writers from a variety of literary movements; manuscripts by Meltzer and his writer friends; materials related to the small press world, Jewish-American poetry, and Jewish mysticism/Kabbalah; teaching materials from his tenure at New College and his prison writing workshops; Meltzer's research and writings on music, particularly jazz, and records of his career as a musician and music critic. There are materials related to his wife, musician and artist Tina Meltzer, and their children, as well as other biographical and personal records, literary ephemera that spans nearly 60 years, and a small amount of audiovisual material.

David Meltzer was an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and the San Francisco Renaissance. Leon David Meltzer was born in 1937 in Rochester, New York to musician parents and raised in Brooklyn, Rockville, NY, and Los Angeles. Meltzer moved to San Francisco in 1957 and became part of a circle of writers that included Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer. He was also a key figure in the small press scene in California in the 1960s and 1970s, and a scholar of Judaica and Kabbalah. He founded the journal Tree and the publishing enterprise Tree Books in the 1970s and was well known as a music writer and critic. Meltzer formed a duo with his wife Tina, and the two were also in the bands bands The Serpent Power, and MIX. Meltzer wrote more than 50 books of poetry and prose, and edited many anthologies and collections of interviews, publishing most of them with small presses, such as City Lights and Oyez. He was a beloved teacher and mentor and taught poetry and humanities at the New College of California in San Francisco for nearly 30 years. Meltzer died at his home in Oakland in 2016.

64 Linear Feet (48 cartons, 1 oversize box, 11 oversize folders)

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Collection is open for research.