The biography of a poet seminal to postwar American poetry The poet Larry Eigner (1927-1996) was a key figure in New American poetry, which grew out of the Black Mountain School and San Francisco Renaissance, and a major influence on the Language poets.
The result is a deeply insightful account of an utterly distinctive voice whose influence widens and deepens with each new generation that encounters him..
Bartlett\'s biography covers every significant phase of Eigner\'s life: his childhood and young adulthood when he began typing poems with one finger on the manual typewriter that was a bar mitzvah gift; his first publications and the maturation of his poetic interests through correspondence with poets of the era; and after his move to Berkeley, the ever-expanding circle of friends, poets, caretakers, and collaborators he established there.
In the 1950s, Eigner attended Camp Jened, which later became famous in the film Crip Camp .
Later, he moved to Berkeley, California, at the height of the disability rights movement.
Except for brief periods attending camp and school, he lived with his parents in Swampscott, Massachusetts, until the age of 51.
It is fortuitous that the poet lived his Life in two locations vibrant in both poetics and disability activism.
Eigner also had cerebral palsy as the result of an accident at birth.
The biography of a poet seminal to postwar American poetry The poet Larry Eigner (1927-1996) was a key figure in New American poetry, which grew out of the Black Mountain School and San Francisco Renaissance, and a major influence on the Language poets
