David Lerner (poet)

David Lerner (November 23, 1951 - July 1, 1997?) was a renegade American poet and journalist.

David Lerner (1951-1997?).

Life

Born in New York City, Lerner came from a family of Russian-Jewish renegades, and grew up as a so-called "red-diaper baby". Lerner published numerous articles as a journalist, including material on the Russian singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky. Lerner pursued a bohemian life, and around 1986 became involved in the notorious Cafe Babar in San Francisco, a group dubbed as the Babarians. Lerner and Bruce Isaacson co-founded Zeitgeist Press and have been referred to as 'the Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot of the underground.' Lerner's common-law wife, Maura O'Connor also published poetry.

Lerner was associated with the Lyman Family a.k.a. Fort Hill Construction, who have preserved his literary memory.

Lerner died of a heroin overdose in 1997 and Zeitgeist published 'The Last Five Miles to Grace' posthumously.

Writing

Bucky Sinister of the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote: "Lerner was a broken-down saint if there ever was one. He was an eloquent screamer, a soft-spoken rageoholic, a madman with a great manuscript. His poetry will always be a reminder of a time when poetry in the Mission was spontaneous, magical, and more than a little bit dangerous."

A celebrated Lerner poem, 'Mein Kampf', is a seminal statement of underground poetics in response to the weight of the mainstream. In it he says:

          I'd rather
          sell arms to the Martians
          than wait sullenly for a
          letter from a diseased clown with a
          three-piece mind
          telling me that I've won a
          bullet-proof pair of rose-colored glasses
          for my poem "Autumn in the Spring"

Lerner's work has not yet been fully collected in an available edition. A considerable amount of his work is still unpublished, including poems, prose, and a large volume of letters.

Publications

Poetry

• I Want a New Gun: Poems, 1987-1988. Oakland, CA: Zeitgeist Press, 1988.
• Why Rimbaud Went to Africa. Oakland, CA: Zeitgeist Press, 1989.
• The American Book of the Dead. Grace Street Press, 1990.
• Pray Like the Hunted. Oakland, CA: Zeitgeist Press / Brooklyn, NY: Juggernaut Editions, 1992.
• The Last Five Miles to Grace: New and selected poems. Las Vegas, NV: Zeitgeist Press, 2005.
• Die anmutige Kurve eines Marschflugkörpers = The graceful arc of a missile (bilingual English & German; translated by Ron Winkler). Leipzig : Poetenladen, 2008.

Edited

• The Barbarians of San Francisco: Poets from hell (edited by David Lerner, Julia Vinograd, & Alan Allen). Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2005.
  • also published as New American Underground Poetry. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2005.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

David Lerner - Mein Kampf

Audio / video

• Pirate Lerner (CD). Zeitgeist Press, 2005.

See also

• List of U.S. poets

External links

Poems

• "Mein Kampf"
• "Why Rimbaud went to Afrika"
• "Slam Dancing to the Blues"

About

• David Lerner at the Poetry Foundation