Ring of Bone: Collected Poems, 1950–1971 by Lew Welch, and How I Work As A Poet & Other Essays/Plays/Stories by Lew Welch (1975)

168 Western American Literattire Ring of Bone: Collected Poems, 1950-1971. By Lew Welch. Edited by Donald Allen. (Bolinas: Grey Fox Press, 1973. Paperback, 233 pages. $3.95.) How I Work As A Poet & Other EssaysjPlays/Stories. By Lew Welch. Edited by Donald Allen. (Bolinas: Grey Fox Press, 1973. Paperback, 139 pages. $2.95.) Lewis Barrett Welch was born in Phoenix, Arizona on August 16, 1926. In the mid-1940’s through James Wilson, a teacher at College of the Pacific, he became interested in the writings of Gertrude Stein and in writing as a profession. Later at Reed College he majored in English and became friends with Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen. With them he published his first poems in Janus, the college literary magazine. His M.A. thesis on Gertrude Stein was accepted in June, 1950. In the fall of 1951 he entered graduate school at the University of Chicago, eventually transferring to the English department there, where James R. Shedd’s course in structural linguistics influenced his writing style. His friends included the likes of such literary giants as William Carlos Williams and Jack Kerouac. Welch, in fact, appears as David Wain in a Kerouac novel. (It was Kerouac who told Welch the way to write a novel was to rig a long teletype roll to his typewriter and begin writing! Very much turned on by the idea Welch devoted the major part of 1960 working on two novels this way but in the end they failed to hold his interest and he abandoned them. Two stories, “The Man Who Played Himself” and “The Late Urban Love of Peter Held” appearing in How I Work as a Poet come from this period). Welch’s later years were spent mainly in the San Francisco area in the Haight-Ashbury district where he worked at odd jobs supporting himself. On occasion he’d read his material to interested audiences. In 1968 two of his works, “Greed” and “Final City, Tap City,” were published in the San Francisco Oracle. In the fall of that year he occasionally wrote reviews and essays for the San Francisco Chronicle. In mid-April 1971 following a lecture at Reed College he drove to his friend Gary Snyder’s home in Nevada county. He’d hoped to build a small cabin there on Allen Ginsberg’s adjoining land but on May 23rd, in apparent deep depression, he took his revolver and walked into the forest leaving a farewell note. His body has not since been found. By Fall, 1969, Welch had completed the assembly of two decades worth of sporadic literary work which he hoped to have published in a book to be titled Ring of Bone after a “hermit song” based on a vision he’d had in 1962. By February, 1970, the book had been accepted by a New York publisher, a contract signed and an advance paid to him. But something apparently happened postponing its publication. “Storm clouds gathered,” writes his editor and when he walked away he left his farewell note naming Donald Allen to complete the task for him. With what Welch had gathered Reviews 169 together Allen has added other manuscripts and some correspondence written to friends. The result is the present work. Arranged somewhat chronologically they tell Lew Welch’s story. Some­ times depressing, sometimes humorous, in some cases illuminating, they reveal much concerning his attitude toward himself as an individual, his life in general and the things that went into the writing of his works. How I Work As A Poet is a written transcript of a recorded lecture Welch gave at Reed College in January, 1971, when conducting a writing workshop there. Included with the lecture are some of his writings for the San Francisco Chronicle and Oracle written in the 1960s. “Language Is Speech,” a start on a textbook for a course in poetry which grew out of his experiences teaching the University of California Extension Poetry Work­ shop between 1965 and 1970, rounds out the work. FRED L. LEE, Kansas City Posse of the Westerners John G. Neihardt, The Man and His Western Writings, The Bancroft Years, 1900-1921. By Fred L. Lee. (Kansas City...