Philip Lamantia

Philip Lamantia (1927-2005). Photo by Harry Redl. Courtesy Boppin.com.

Philip Lamantia (October 23, 1927 - March 7, 2005) was an American poet and lecturer. Lamantia's visionary poems were ecstatic, terror-filled, and erotic, exploring the subconscious world of dreams and linking it to the experience of daily life.

Life

Lamantia was born in San Francisco to Sicilian immigrants and raised in that city's Excelsior neighborhood. His poetry was published in the magazine View in 1943, when he was 15, and in the final issue of surrealist magazine VVV the following year.

In 1944 he dropped out of Balboa High School to pursue poetry in New York City. He returned to the Bay Area in 1945 and his debut collection, Erotic Poems, was published a year later.

Lamantia was a member of the post-World War II poets now sometimes referred to as the San Francisco Renaissance, and later became involved with the San Francisco Beat Generation poets and the surrealist movement in the United States. He was on the bill at San Francisco's Six Gallery on October 7, 1955, when poet Allen Ginsberg read his poem Howl for the 1st time. At this event Lamantia chose to read the poems of John Hoffman, a friend who had recently died. Hoffman's poetry collection Journey to the End (which includes the poems that Lamantia read at the Six Gallery) was published by City Lights in 2008, bound together with Lamantia's own Tau, a poem-cycle also dating from the mid-50s. Tau remained unpublished during Lamantia's lifetime.

The poet spent time with native peoples in the United States and Mexico in the 1950s, participating in the peyote-eating rituals of the Washo Indians of Nevada. In later life, he embraced Catholicism, the religion of his childhood, and wrote many poems on Catholic themes.

Writing

Nancy Peters, Lamantia's literary editor and 2nd wife, was quoted as saying about him: "He found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the gothic castle -- a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially crossed."

Publications

• Erotic Poems. Berkeley, CA: Bern Porter, 1946.
• Towel (pamphlet). San Francisco: Golden Mountain Press, 1958.
• Ekstasis. San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1959.
• Destroyed Works. San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1962.
• Touch of the Marvelous. Berkeley, CA: Oyez, 1966; Bolinas, CA: Four Seasons Foundation, 1974.
• Selected Poems, 1943-1966. San Francisco: City Lights, 1967.
• Penguin Moern Poets 13 (by Charles Bukowski, Harold Norse, & Philip Lamantia). Harmondsworth, UK, & Baltimore, MD: Penguin, 1969.
• The Blood of the Air. San Francisco: Four Seasons Foundation, 1970.
• Becoming Visible. San Francisco: City Lights, 1981.
• Meadowlark West San Francisco: City Lights, 1986.
• Bed of Sphinxes: New and selected poems, 1943-1993. San Francisco: City Lights, 1997.
• Tau (edited by Garrett Caples; with Journey to the End by John Hoffman). San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2008.
• The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (edited by Garrett Caples, Andrew Joron, & Nancy J. Peters; with foreword by Lawrence Ferlinghetti). Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2013.

Non-fiction

• Narcotica: I demand extinction of laws prohibiting narcotic drugs! (pamphlet; with Antonin Artaud). San Francisco: Auerhahn Press, 1959.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

Philip Lamantia reading a poem A' (rare footage)

Philip Lamantia reading a poem B' (rare footage)-0

See also

• San Francisco Renaissance poets
• Beat poets
• Surrealist poets
• List of U.S. poets

References

• Nancy Joyce Peters, "Philip Lamantia," Dictionary of Literary Biography, Vol. 16, 330-336.
• Steven Frattali: Hypodermic Light: The poetry of Philip Lamantia and the question of surrealism. Peter Lang, 2005.
• Ann Charters (ed.). The Portable Beat Reader. Penguin Books. New York. 1992. ISBN 0-670-83885-3 (hc); ISBN 0-14-015102-8 (pbk)

External links

Poems

• "In a Grove"
• Philip Lamantia at The Beat Page (profile & 3 poems)
• Philip Lamantia 1927-2005 at the Poetry Foundation

Books

• Works by or about Philip Lamantia in libraries (WorldCat catalog)

Audio / video

• Philip Lamantia at YouTube
• Philip Lamantia at Amazon.com

About

• Biographic-appreciation of Lamantia as teacher
• "Philip Lamantia: Shaman of the surreal" by Thomas Rain Crowe
• Philip Lamantia and Andre Breton by Garrett Caples
• Philip Lamantia's Last Interview, 2001
• Why Did You Print This? by Nancy Peters (Lamantia)

Etc.

• Guide to the Philip Lamantia Papers at the Bancroft Library