Edited by Ben Estes and Joel Weishaus
Afterword by Lytle Shaw
The Song Cave presents an expanded edition of the long out of print City Lights Books classic On the Mesa: An Anthology of Bolinas Writing in celebration of its 50th anniversary.
This is a gathering of poets, writers and artists living on or around the mesa in Bolinas, California. Not so much a school of thought as a meeting of those who happened to be at this geographical location at this wobbly point in time, several divergent movements in American poetry (Black Mountain, San Francisco Renaissance, Beat, and New York School poets) came together with new Western and mystic elements at the unpaved crossroads of Bolinas.
featuring:
GORDON BALDWIN, BILL BERKSON, TED BERRIGAN, MICHAEL BOND, EBBE BORREGAARD, JOE BRAINARD, RICHARD BRAUTIGAN, JIM BRODEY, BILL BROWN, JIM CARROLL, TOM CLARK, ROBERT CREELEY, MAX CROSLEY, DIANE DI PRIMA, JOHN DOSS, BOBBIE LOUISE HAWKINS, LAWRENCE KEARNEY, JOANNE KYGER, KEITH LAMPE, LEWIS MACADAMS, PHOEBE MACADAMS, DUNCAN MC NAUGHTON, DAVID MELTZER, ALICE NOTLEY, ARTHUR OKAMURA, STEPHEN RATCLIFFE, ARAM SAROYAN, GAILYN SAROYAN, JOHN THORPE, CHARLIE VERMONT, ANNE WALDMAN, LEWIS WARSH, JOEL WEISHAUS, PHILIP WHALEN
Originally published 50 years ago, On the Mesa is the only anthology to come out of the vibrant and diverse poetry scene that existed in Bolinas, California in the 1970s. It appeared in the early days of that decade and thus didn’t feature the many other important poets who arrived there only a few years later. This updated and expanded edition has been a long time coming, but at last we have an anthology that truly represents the wide array of remarkable poets who called this legendary “psychedelic Peyton Place” home. -Kevin Opstedal
Softcover, 258 pages, 7.5" x 5.5", USA, 2021
