When I Was a Poet

Print: Pitch a combination of reviews/interviews/excerpts: SF Chronicle, SF Bay Guardian, SF Weekly, Bookforum, Jacket, Boston Review, Rain Taxi, Poetry Magazine, American Poet, Bloomsbury Review, Brooklyn Rail, Chicago Review, Denver Quarterly, Hudson Review, Kenyon Review, LA Times, NY Times, The Nation, New Yorker, Poetry Flash, Poets and Writers Magazine, St Marks Poetry Project Newsletter


Web: Silliman's blog, Complete Review, Constant Critic, Conversational Reading, Electric Review, Elegant Variation, Identity Theory


Radio: KPFA Cover to Cover, KSFR New Mexico: Poetry Talk, Literary Kicks, Poetry Daily, Prairie Home Companion

An autobiographical masterpiece by a prominent Beat poet, who Ferlinghetti has deemed "one of the greats."A milestone in City Lights history, David Meltzer's When I Was a Poet is number sixty of the famous Pocket Poets Series. The title work is an ambitious late masterpiece from a legendary poet at the height of his powers, a spiritual assessment of the meaning of a lifetime of writing poetry. Also included are reminiscences of California bohemian life, a series of mystical amulets, and profound meditations on love, loss, aging, and death. Associated with the Beat Generation and late '60s psychedelia, musician, novelist, and editor David Meltzer is one of America's foremost living poets. "Meltzer is a prolific poet of many modes and voices, quite a few of which are here, love poems, poems out of childhood, a series of "amulets," cryptic short wisdom poems, and much more. These are all tasty, often ironic and/or mysterious, pieces of Davidness to be savored ..." -- Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash