Selected poems by the San Francisco "hippie" poet Allen Cohen.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
Review
Allen's poetic line is "so natural and real" you feel he's talking to you in Golden Gate Parki. --Lawrence Ferlinghetti
One of the most meaningful voices of the Counter Culture leaves behind him poems of beauty and soaring consciousness. --Michael McClure
One of the most meaningful voices of the Counter Culture leaves behind him poems of beauty and soaring consciousness. --Michael McClure
About the Author
Allen Cohen was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1940 into a working class, jewish family. He graduated Brooklyn College in 1962 and began his search for the Holy Grail on a trip across the United States, ending in San Francisco the following year. In search of the remnants of the Beat Generation, he first lived in North Beach. There, in the basement of City Lights Bookstore, Allen ran into an old friend from Brooklyn, Steve Walzer, who had room for him at his house in the Haight Ashbury, at the time a working class neighborhood in the west of San Francisco. Soon, the Haight became a flourishing bohemia and Allen a key personality. He had a dream of a new newspaper that would embrace both the alienation of American youth and the vision of a new world. From this dream came the San Francisco Oracle which Allen edited and which flourished from 1966 to 1968. It was a leading voice in the nationwide underground press movement. Allen also helped originate the community rituals of the Love Pageant Rally and then the Human Be-In. 1968, he started a commune in Northern California to explore a non-material self-sustaining and creative community. Out of necessity, he became a mid-husband and in 1970 wrote and published Childbirth is Ecstasy, the first book on natural child birth in a community environment (with photographs by Steven Walzer). He returned to San Francisco in 1975, joined the Peace and Environmental coalition and published The Regan Poems in 1980, examining this critical phase in American politics. During this time he also sought to recreate the now legendary psychedelic San Francisco Oracle in order to preserve it for posterity. Towards that end, encouraged by the vagabond poet Tony Seldon, he did performances, slide shows and lectures about the Haight Ashbury in the 60’s. His efforts were rewarded by the publication of the San Francisco Oracle Facsimile Edition with Regent Press in 1991 and the electronic version on CD in 2005. In 1993 he authored the CD ROM Haight Ashbury in the 60’s. Critics said it was almost like being there. Throughout this period he was reading his poetry at colleges, museums, coffee houses, bookstores, and other venues throughout the United States and Europe. In 2001 he consulted with the San Diego Museum of Art on High Societies, a sixties rock poster show, and produced inconnection withit a symposium on the Sixties. After September 11, 2001 he edited, with Clive Matson, an anthology of poetry An Eye For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 also published by Regent Press, a collection of over 100 poets, which received the 2003 PEN Oakland National Literary Award. His Book of Hats, illustrated by his wife Ann Cohen, appeared the same year. In 2005 Like A Radiant White Dove: Selected Poems was released. Allen Cohen died in 2004, at the age of 64, spending his last years in a basement apartment in Oakland where he received and manifested improbable impulses to save the world and to celebrate life.
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