The Poetry Center - Poetry For Dummies

The Poetry Center & American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University was founded in 1954 on the basis of a gift by W.H. Auden. The Poetry Center is one of the most long-lived, prestigious, and nationally renowned literary arts institutions in the United States. For almost 50 years, since Ruth Witt-Diamant, with esteemed poets Robert Duncan and Josephine Miles, initiated the Poetry Centers pioneering reading series, the Center has presented readings by poets, novelists, and other writers, in accord with the highest standards of literary excellence. The Poetry Center presents readings over two seasons annually, both on- and off-campus, open to the public.

The Poetry Center today operates under the aegis of San Francisco State Universitys Creative Writing Department, the largest in the country, and represents an irreplaceable collective record of the past half-century of American literary accomplishment. The Poetry Centers American Poetry Archives is a collection of over 2,000 original recordings of poets and writers reading from their work, recorded since the 1950s at Poetry Center readings. The collection includes rare readings by Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Langston Hughes, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Alice Walker, Anne Sexton, Frank OHara, and many other great writers of the past 50 years.

John Timpane is the Commentary Page Editor of The Philadelphia Inquirer. Howd he get there and howd he get from there to Poetry For Dummies? John was graduated from Stanford University with an M.A. and Ph.D. in English and the Humanities in 1980. He taught English in colleges and universities for 20 years; wrote books on composition and poetry; published articles on Shakespeare, Spenser, and other great writers; and, on the side, did a nifty little freelance writing gig (scientific writing, industrial film scripts, and journalism). John has written poetry since he was very small, works at the craft, and is very much involved in the poetry scene. He won the Academy of American Poets Prize at Stanford in 1980 and was a Fulbright Scholar in 19831984. Poetry, with its demand for clarity of vision, concentration of feeling in a small space, and richness of language, helps John be a better editor and writer at the Inquirer. He is the eldest of nine children and is married to Maria-Christina Keller, copy manager of Scientific American and a fine writer herself. They have a daughter, Pilar, and a son, Conor. John also musicks about, as a flutist in a jazz band and a bassist in a zydeco outfit. You can e-mail him at jtimpane@aol.com .

Maureen Watts started her career as a receptionist at a small publishing company in Berkeley, California, after graduating from the University of California at San Diego. From there, she fell into the exciting world of book publicity. The idea for Poetry For Dummies came to Maureen while she was driving over the San Francisco Bay Bridge on a bright day in March. A longtime poetry activist, she is on the board of directors of the National Poetry Association and past president of Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center. She attributes her love of poetry to long afternoons spent playing in the fields of Illinois as a child. Watts adds literary agent and writer to her job description as head of Watts Communications in San Francisco, California.