A Chronology of the Cleveland Poetry Scenes  

(1945-Present)

  

 General—Cultural—Literary—Cleveland Regional Contexts

 (c) Larry Smith & Bottom Dog Press

The Cleveland Poetry Scenes collectively is a complex and vital landscape

noted for its openness, diversity, and mutual support of the written and spoken word.

We thank those writers and readers who make up this scene for their contributions.
*We appreciate any corrections or additions to this time charted road map.
Send them to Lsmithdog@aol.com  Like life itself, this is a work in progress.
[Last update February 15, 2008]

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Presses
 Venues
1942
 		1943
 		1944
 		1945
 		1946
1947
 1948
 1949
 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955
1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964
1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973
1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982
1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991
1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000
2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008



General factual material for historical aspects is drawn from America Chronicles: Year by Year Through the Twentieth Century, eds. Lois and Alan Gordon. (Yale University Press 1999); area dates taken from Cleveland: A Bicentennial Timeline (Case Western Reserve University <http://ech.case.edu/timeline.html>, and from my “d.a.levy Chronology” from d.a.levy and the mimeograph revolution co-edited with Ingrid Swanberg (Bottom Dog Press 2007), also The Encyclopedia of Cleveland History <http://ech.case.edu/index.html>.
 

1942 – General: War in Europe and Pacific; U.S. Conscientious Objectors’ Camps, Victory gardens, internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S. camps.  

Cleveland: Cleveland Transit System begins era of municipal operation of Cleveland's public transit system 28 April. Cleveland Ordnance (Cadillac tank plant; now I-X Center) opens at Municipal Airport.

1943 – General: Eisenhower made Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe; women move into the workforce; food and goods are rationed in U.S. for war effort. Race riot in Detroit, fire-bombings continue on October 29th every year.

Poetry: Poet Laureate: Allen Tate:  Pulitzer Prize to Robert Frost for A Witness Tree.

 

1944 – General: World War II throughout Europe and Philippines; D-Day landing of U.S. and allied troops at Normandy; United Nations is established; D.H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley’s Lover found obscene in U.S.   

Poetry: Poet Laureate: Robert Penn Warren 1944-1945; Pulitzer Prize to Stephen Vincent Benet for Western Star.

 

1945 – General: Harry Truman takes over presidency after death of Franklin D. Roosevelt; first atom bomb is dropped on Hiroshima, Japan (189,000 casualties), then Nagasaki; end of WW II.

Culture: Abstract Expressionist art is thriving throughout the Beat Era with such artists as Jackson Pollock, Mark Tobey gathered in the Greenwich Village scene; Literature: Steinbeck’s Cannery Row, Orwell’s Animal Farm; Louis Bromfield’s Pleasant Valley; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Louis Bogan; books: Gwendolyn Brooks’ A Street in Bronzeville;  W.H. Auden’s Collected Poems;  Pulitzer Prize to Karl Shapiro for V-Letter and Other Poems.

Cleveland: Cleveland Community Relations Board formed to promote racial harmony.
American Weave Literary Journal (earliest volume done in 1936; later volumes 1945–1964) published and edited by Loring E. Williams and Alice Crane Williams from their home at 4109 Bushnell Road, University Heights, then 23728 Glenhill Drive, Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  Printing was performed by Villier’s Publishers Ltd., Ingestre, London NW5 England. When Alice died in 1964, Loring moved back to Maine.  Editors in the mid-1960’s were Loring and Alfred B. Cahen, David C. French and James L. Weil continued to publish this collection of poems and light verse until 1971. *Alice Crane Williams was the aunt of famed Cleveland area poet Hart Crane. The journal was partially funded by the Hart Crane Memorial Fund and the Alice Crane Williams Memorial Fund. Final address for the publication offices was 4109 Bushnell Road, University Heights, Ohio. Local poets Lewis Turco, French, Weil, and Cahen from the Cleveland Poetry Society at Fenn College (now Cleveland State University) along with Robert Wallace of Case Western Reserve became frequent contributors to American Weave which also published a chapbook series of poets and sponsored poetry conferences along with the Ohio Verse Writers Guild.

 

1946 – General: First U.N. General Assembly Meeting in London; national strikes in coal, railroad, General Electric industries. Post-War Baby Boom (birth rate in U.S. increases by 20%);  Dr. Benjamin Spock's The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care; advent of television, use of commercial jet airlines; popularization of Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism.
Culture: Literature: Carson McCullers' A Member of the Wedding, Albert Camus' The Stranger, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Karl Shapiro.
Cleveland: Cleveland Browns begin play in All-American Football Conference.

 

1947 – General:  Fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia grows; Marshall Recovery Plan for Europe; Taft-Hartley Bill enacted to curb unions; House: Un-American Activities Committee begins hearings on Hollywood suspected Communists; college enrollment reaches all time high of 67.1 million; television becoming popular.
Literature: Bud Schulberg's The Harder They Fall. Poetry: Poet Laureate: Robert Lowell; Pulitzer Prize to Robert Lowell for Lord Weary's Castle.

Cleveland: Operations begin at the Cleveland’s Lakefront Airport.  First successful defibrillation of a human heart by Dr. Claude S. Beck and colleagues at University Hospitals in Cleveland. First telecast by WEWS, Ohio's first television station.

 

1948 – General: Harry S. Truman is elected president; Mahatma Gandhi is assassinated in India; national strikes of coal miners; publication of Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

Culture: Art: Andrew Wyeth and Edward Hopper; Literature: Albert Camus’ The Plague, Norman Mailer’s war novel The Naked and the Dead; Poetry: Poet Laureate:Leonie Adams; books by John Berryman, Theodore Roethke, Robinson Jeffers, William Carlos Williams's Patterson Book II; Pulitzer Prize to W.H. Auden for Age of Anxiety.

Cleveland: The Cleveland Indians win baseball World Series.

 

1949 – General: North Atlantic Pact is signed, NATO is created; Apartheid begins in South Africa; 500,000 steelworkers strike; minimum wage rises from 40 cents to 75 cents an hour; fear of Cold War with Communist China and Russia intensifies. 

Culture: Literature: Nelson Algren's The Man with the Golden Arm, George Orwell's 1984. Poetry: Poet Laureate:Elizabeth Bishop; Pulitzer Prize to Peter Viereck for Terror and Decorum; books by Louis Simpson, Muriel Rukeyser, Kenneth Fearing.

Cleveland: City is named an All-America City for first of five times.



1950 – General: Korean Police Action involvement, UN forces to be lead by General MacArthur; Senator Joseph McCarthy charges Communist infiltration of State Department; many professors at Universities of California refuse to sign noncommunist pledge oath (are dismissed)

Culture: Literature: William Faulkner's Collected Stories, Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles  Poetry: Poet Laureate: Conrad Aiken; Pulitzer Prize to Gwendolyn Brooks for Annie Allen; books by Howard Nemerov, William Carlos Williams' Collected Later Poems and Patterson Book III.
 

Cleveland: City’s population—914,808 (highest ever, 7th largest city in nation); Cuyahoga County population—1,389,532. Browns football team enters the NFL and wins the title. Cleveland City Council passes a Fair Employment Practices law, the first such city law in the United States. City’s infrastructure declines with aging and is not kept up, giving the sense of a city on decline for decades to follow. The Free Lance Poets and Prose Workshop launched in Cleveland by Russell Atkins (with ties to the Black poetry community of 1930s including Langston Hughes) and by Helen Johnson Collins, Casper L. Jordan, and later joined by Adelaide Simon (1954); it becomes perhaps Cleveland’s first alternative writing small press magazine The Free Lance:A Publication of the Free Lance Poets and Prose Workshops,and small press book publisher. Adelaide Simon trained in voice at Julliard Academy, sang folk songs, wrote for New York Daily News, and wrote “poems of love, nature, and outrage.” Though called “the Gertrude Stein of Cleveland Poetry,” she claimed she would rather be known as “the Mabel Dodge” of Cleveland writing. Toward Daybreak by Hazel Collister Hutchison (1893-1977) is published by Harper & Row.
[photo of Russell Atkins]
1951 – General: Korean War involvement; draft age lowered to 18; U.S. conducting tests of A-Bomb; suspected Russian spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are found guilty of treason and sentenced to death, despite protests. Cold war continues with schools conducting “bomb alert” drills in which school children practice kneeling under their desks or lining up in hallways; some Americans begin building home “bomb shelters.”

Culture: Literature: J.D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Carl Sandburg for Complete Poems; books by Adrienne Rich, Randall Jarrell, Theodore Roethke, Wallace Stevens’ Auroras of Autumn.

Cleveland:

 

1952 – General: Truman orders seizure of U.S. steel mills to avert strike (later ruled as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the Youngstown Sheet & Tube Company vs. Sawyer decision); Eisenhower elected president of U.S. with Richard Nixon as V.P.; supposed subversives are barred from teaching school in U.S.; England has A-Bomb and new Queen, Elizabeth II.

Culture: Literature: Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea (Pulitzer), Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man, Steinbeck's East of Eden; Poetry: Poet Laureate:William Carlos Williams appointed to two terms, but did not serve because of FBI investigation and illness; Pulitzer Prize to to Marianne Moore for Collected Poems; Dylan Thomas doing U.S. reading tour through NYC, San Francisco, etc., books by Randall Jarrell, Horace Gregory.

Cleveland: Alan Freed, Cleveland radio Disk Jockey, coins the term "Rock n' Roll." First rock n' roll concert, "The Moondog Coronation Ball," is held in Cleveland.
1953 – General: Death of Stalin; Health, Education, and Welfare Department is created; Rosenbergs are executed as spies; Charlie Chaplin leaves U.S. complaining of persecution by "vicious propaganda"; Screen Actors Guild adopts by-law banning Communists from the industry. 

Culture: Literature: James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain, Saul Bellows' The Adventures of Augie March, Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (fiction); Rachel Carson’s The Sea Around Us (nonfiction); Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Archibald MacLeish for Collected Poems 1917-1952; books by Richard Eberhart, May Sarton, Jesse Stuart, William Hillyer, Kenneth Rexroth.

Cleveland: Development of Southgate Shopping Center is launched.

The Free Lance: A Magazine of Poetry and Prose is launched by Free Lance Poets and Prose Workshop with Adelaide Simon (listed as an editor in Volume 2, 1954); General Editor: Russell Atkins; Poetry Editor: Helen Johnson Collins (librarian Cleveland Public Library), Prose Editor: Casper L. Jordan (librarian at Wilberforce University), and workshop meeting at Simon’s home (14112 Becket Rd., Shaker Heights; manuscripts sent to Atkins at 6005 Grand Avenue). The magazine included area as well as national poets : Langston Hughes, Robert Creeley, Clarence Major, and Judson Crews were frequent contributors, also printed reviews and selections from Hart Crane letters in the collection of Adelaide Simon who was working on a biography of Crane.

 




1954 – General: Joseph McCarthy probe of the Army for Communists begins, finally results in Senate hearing disputes, Edward R. Morrow's expose of McCarthy on television’s "See It Now," for slander tactics in Army-McCarthy hearings  and Senate condemnation of McCarthy methods; Supreme Court rules racial segregation in public schools unconstitutional. Alan Fried promotes “rock-n-roll” music nationwide.  

Culture: Literature: William Golding's Lord of the Flies; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Theodore Roethke for The Waking; books by e.e. cummings, W.S. Merwin, Wendell Kees, Conrad Aiken’s Collected Poems.

Cleveland: Anthony J. Celebreeze elected mayor of Cleveland. Last streetcars run 24 January. Last streetcar runs. Infamous case of Marilyn Sheppard murdered in her Bay Village home, husband Dr. Sam Sheppard is chief suspect.

 

1955 – General: Nikita Khrushchev becomes Soviet Party Secretary; Martin Luther King, Jr. leads Civil Rights Movement; rebel actor James Dean (24) dies in auto crash. Elvis Presley's appearance on "Ed Sullivan Show" starts protest against rock-n-roll.

Culture: Art: "Pop Art" of Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, et al; Elvis Presley's appearance on "Ed Sullivan Show" starts protest against rock-n-roll.Literature: McCarthy's A Charmed Life, Mailer's The Deer Park; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Wallace Stevens for Collected Poems. Lawrence Ferlinghetti launches all paperback bookstore and City Lights Books with Pocket Poets Series: #1, his own Pictures of a Gone World, #2 Kenneth Rexroth's 30 Spanish Poems, Kenneth Patchen's Poems of Humor and Protest. 
Cleveland: Rapid Transit System begins operation in March after month delay for longer pantograph bars to fit under the lines. Mayor declares “Rapid Transit Inaugural Celebration Week”; system links the inner city with the suburbs, while also dividing it by bridging over inner city Cleveland, allowing suburban travelers to travel downtown without seeing the ghetto. Marilyn Sheppard murder trial is in the news in Cleveland and nationally.
1956 – General: Salk vaccine for polio meningitis is distributed; Eisenhower wins landslide election, Richard Nixon as V.P.; marriages of actress Marilyn Monroe and playwright Arthur Miller, and of Grace Kelley and Prince Ranier of Monaco.

Culture: Art: Georgia O'Keefe and Helen Frankenthaler; Literature: Saul Bellow's Seize the Day, Nelson Algren's A Walk on the Wild Side, James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Elizabeth Bishop’s Poems: North and South—A Cold Spring; books by John Berryman, Marianne Moore, Donald Hall; Allen Ginsberg’s Howl and Other Poems published by City Lights Books creates national attention over controversy when it is seized by censors, then exonerated in trial that follows.

Cleveland:

 

1957 – General: Eisenhower proposes two year test ban of nuclear weapons; Russia launches "Sputnik," first space satellite prompting “space race” between countries, emphasis on math and science in U.S. schools.  

Culture: Picasso exhibit in NY, Chicago, Philadelphia; Literature: Jack Kerouac’s On the Road novel, Bernard Malamud's The Assistant, Wright Morris's Love among the Cannibals; Laurence Durrell's Justine; James Agee's A Death in the Family wins Pulitzer; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Randall Jarrell; Pulitzer Prize to Richard Wilbur for Things of This World; books by James Wright, W. H. Auden, Denise Levertov, Nellie Sachs; West Coast poets Kenneth Rexroth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Kenneth Patchen are doing poetry-and-jazz performances on the West Coast.

Cleveland:

 

1958 – General: Strategic Air Command is formed; U.S. and USSR begin cultural exchanges; V.P. Nixon is stoned in Caracas while on Goodwill tour; Russian Sputnik III orbits Earth, brings on U.S. study of "Crisis in Education" in U.S.; Fidel Castro rebels seize capital in Cuba; John Kenneth Galbraith's The Affluent Society portrays materialism and conformity of U.S., argues for fair distribution of wealth to end poverty. Beat Generation art and bohemian lifestyle has cultural impact. 

Culture: Literature: Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's, John Barth's The End of the Road; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Robert Frost; Pulitzer Prize to Robert Penn Warren for Promises: Poems 1954-1956; books by Muriel Rukeyser, William Meredith, William Carlos Williams's Patterson, Book V, James Wright’s The Green Wall chosen as Yale Younger Poet book, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind.

Cleveland:

 

1959 – General: Castro takes Havanna, Batista flees; Pope John calls for Ecumenical Council; Khrushchev threatens U.S. with military superiority; Eisenhower's call for on-site missile inspection is rejected; Laos asks for U.S. aid against North Vietnam; he and Khrushchev meet at Camp David. 

Culture: Literature: Philip Roth's Goodbye Columbus, Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s The Sirens of Titan, Leon Uris' Exodus; Allen Drury Pulitzer for Advise and Consent;  Poetry: Poet Laureate:Richard Eberhart; Putlitzer Prize to Stanley Kunitz for Selected Poems, 1928-1958; books by Robert Duncan, James Wright, Robert Lowell.

Cleveland emerges as primarily a working-class city with homes for working and middle class near the lakefront.


1960 – General: Blacks sit-in at Greensboro, North Carolina lunch counter; Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) created on campus of Shaw University in Raleigh, a spearhead for civil rights movement. Russians and Fidel Castro sign economic agreement; Kennedy wins narrow election victory as president; Democrats sweep Congress. New York Circuit Court of Appeals rules that D. H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterly’s Lover is not obscene. In speech toward end of his administration President Eisenhower warns of dangers of the "military industrial complex."

Culture: Literature: William Styron's Set this House on Fire, John Updike's Rabbit, Run, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to William Snodgrass for Heart's Needle; books by James Dickey, Kenneth Koch, W.S. Merwin, Anne Sexton, Charles Olson, Denise Levertov; Donald Allen publishes New American Poetry anthology featuring many of the Beat and alternative writing poets.

Cleveland: Population—876,050 (8th largest city in nation); Cuyahoga County population—1,647,895. Final issue of the Cleveland News published 23 January. French film The Lovers (1958) by Louis Malle is censored in U.S. as obscene, including in Cleveland, where Jasper Wood fought the censorship (and was later to help poet levy and bookseller James Lowell in their court censorship battles). Many Cleveland suburbs achieve city status.

 

1961 –General: John F. Kennedy at inauguration calls for “Grand, Global Alliance for Progress,” creates Peace Corps. U.S. severs relations with Cuba; then anti-Castro Cubans fail in assault on Bay of Pigs. Freedom Riders are attacked by mobs in Birmingham, Alabama. Beginning of Vietnam War as French are being driven out; Minimum wage raised from $1.00 to $1.25/hr.

Culture: Music: Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and others popularize folksinging from Greenwich Village; Literature: Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Louis Untermeyer; Pulitzer Prize to Phyllis McGinley for Times Three: Selected Verse: books by Charles Olsen’s The Distances: Poems, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, and Other Poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s Starting from San Francisco, Leroi Jones’s (Amiri Baraka) Preface to a Twenty-Volume Suicide Note. Diane DiPrima’s Dinners and Nightmares.

Cleveland: Russell Atkins’ Phenomena (Wilberforce University/ Free Lance Press). Native Clevelanders Jon and Louise Webb of Loujon Press publish first issue of the Outsider magazine, alternative poetry and prose collection from New Orleans, printed on letterpress, called "the Rolls Royce of small press publishing."
 

1962 – General: U.S. Embargo of Cuba, John Glenn orbits earth, Mississippi governor bars Black man James Meredith from University of Mississippi; Kennedy sends in federal troops to enforce integration. Students for a Democratic Society draft "Port Huron Statement" on social injustice.

Culture: Literatue: Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Jack Kerouac’s Big Sur; Martin Esslin's Theatre of the Absurd, Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, ; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Alan Dugan for Poems; books: Sylvia Plath's The Colossus and Other Poems, William Stafford’s Traveling through the Dark.

Cleveland: Mayor Ralph S. Locher (1962-1967; becomes Common Pleas Judge in 1968). 

Fenn College Poetry Forum is launched by faculty members Dave French, Lewis Turco…does workshops and readings; poet d.a.levy meets writer Russell Salamon at Poetry Forum (Salamon born in Yugoslavia, came to Cleveland in 1953), and they become friends, sharing walks and talks around Cleveland. Jau Billera (native of Brooklyn, arrived in Cleveland in 1961) does weekly radio show “Poetry Seminar” on WCLV-FM; he and his wife Eleanor publish Podium magazine for a short time. During the Cuban Missle Crisis, Mac Hammond, CWRU professor, organized a poetry reading at the lagoon in University Circle in response to the Cuban situation.

 

1963 – General: Birmingham, Alabama’s Sixth Street Baptist Church is bombed, killing four children, Blacks riot; Kennedy sends in troops. March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (August); Astronaut Gordon Cooper orbits the Earth twice. Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas; Lee Harvey Oswald is arrested and later murdered in jail; Lyndon Johnson takes office as President. Nation mourns death of John F. Kennedy.

Culture: Literature: Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.’s Cat’s Cradle; Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique, James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time; Poetry: Poet Laureate Howard Nemerov; Pulitzer Prize to William Carlos Williams for Pictures from Brueghel; books: James Wright’s The Branch Will Not Break.

Cleveland: d.a.levy buys used letterhead hand press and prints poetry from his aunt and uncle’s place on Cleveland's West side as Renegade Press and he publishes Fragments of a Shattered Mirror, Variations on Flip, More Withdrawed or Less and in March-May Renegade Press does book by Russell Atkins. May 1963, levy launches first of his magazines, Silver Cesspool, includes poems by D. r. Wagner, Kent Taylor, Adelaide Simon, Rene Schramm, Russell Atkins, Russell Salamon, Ted Berrigan, Lewis Turco and others. Renegade Press publishes Selected Poems of Kent Taylor. Free Lance workshop is joined by Kent Taylor, John Cornillon, Grace Butcher, Eric Albrecht, and d.a.levy; Free Lance magazine is perhaps Cleveland’s first alternative “little magazine”; d.a.levy joins staff briefly as art editor. Asphodel Book Shop is opened by Jim Lowell in the Old Arcade, 465 Euclid Ave. April 11, 1963, carries fine and alternative edition poetry books and magazines. Cleveland radio show "Poetry Seminar" host Jau Billera interviews many poets including Kent Taylor and d.a.levy.

 

1964– General: President Johnson calls for a “War on Poverty” and an end to racial discrimination. Mass demonstrations for civil rights. Blacks riot in Harlem and Brooklyn. Nobel Peace Prize to Martin Luther King, Jr. U.S. bombs North Vietnam. New York World’s Fair motto “Peace through Understanding.” LBJ and Barry Goldwater contend for presidency. Hell’s Angels motorcycle groups receive national attention. Beatlemania. Marshall McCluen’s “the medium is the message” theory of art is extolled.

Culture: Literature: John Le Carre’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold; Eric Berne’s Games People Play; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Reed Whittemore; Pulitzer Prize to Louis Simpson for At the End of the Open Road; books by Ted Berrigan, James Dickey, Robert Lowell, Louis Simpson, Amiri Baraka’s The Dead Lecturer.

Cleveland: Cleveland State University established 18 December. Fenn College of Engineering becomes part of Cleveland State University. Alberta Turner is appointed as new director of Cleveland State University Poetry Center, following Lewis Turco’s direction of the Poetry Forum at Fennn College. At Case Western Reserve Robert Wallace launches their poetry program; some of his students include Bonnie Jacobson, Lolette Kuby, Peggy Lally, Sudie Nostrand, also professor P.K. Saha. Alfred Cahen, a graduate student at Case and instructor in the English Department takes over editing of literary journal American Weave (1967-1971), and is assisted by professors Roger Salomon and Robert Ornstein who work to take poetry to the people of Cleveland. d.a.levy launches Marrahwannah Quarterly from Cleveland, moves in with Russell Salamon on West Side in “grungy garret,” (described in Salamon’s Descent into Cleveland) at West 22nd Place, near West Side Market above Cleveland Flats and Cuyahoga River. Salamon in relationship with poet Grace Butcher; levy in deep correspondence with fellow writers and Beat figures (Diane DiPrima, Ed Sanders, others), working on long “Cleveland Undercovers” poem. levy travels to New York City, meets Ed Sanders and attends Le Metro and Les Deux Mégots Coffeehouse (64 East 7th Street), where he hears poets read and develops plans of launching open readings back home in Cleveland. Renegade Press publishes books by Ed Sanders, Carol Bergé, Judson Crews, Les Czaban, Allen Katzman, Russell Salamon, Margaret Randall, Kent Taylor. Jim Lowell’s Asphodel Book Shop Press publishes short Cleveland Manifesto of Poetry with poetry and statements by poets d.a.levy, Kent Taylor, Jau Billera, Russell Atkins, Russell Salamon, and Adelaide Simon. 

1965 –General: Malcolm X is assassinated in Harlem; U.S. combat troops land in Vietnam, and 25,000 march in Washington, D.C. against the war in Students for a Democratic Society’s first anti-war protest (April 17). Watts Ghetto riots (34 die); civil rights march on Washington D.C. HUD is created for fair housing. Ginsberg coins term “Flower Power” for hippie movement and era.

Culture: modern jazz thrives; Literature: The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Timothy Leary’s The Psychedelic Reader, Arthur M. Schlesinger’s A Thousand Days: JFK in the White House, Ralph Nader’s Unsafe at Any Speed on auto industry; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Stephen Spender; Pulitzer Prize to John Berryman for 77 Dream Songs; books:  Leroi Jones' (Amiri Baraka) The Dead Lecturer; nationally Black Sparrow Press is launched; poet Frank O'Hara is killed in motor accident on Fire Island.

Cleveland:   WVIZ public television station begins operation 7 February. Cleveland State Poetry Center's Poetry Forum opens to  public under Alberta Turner’s direction in the old annex building behind Trinity Cathedral (22nd and Prospect Streets) where the English Department had headquarters; poets involved include d.a. levy, Jau Billera, Russell Salamon, Grace Butcher, James C. Kilgore, Russell Atkins, Cyril and Lynn Dostal, Barbara Angell, Muriel Ticktin, Clara Pfister, William McLaughlin, John Gabel, Linda Monacelli, Diane Kendig, Bob McDonough, Christopher Franke, and others. November, early reading at The Gate by levy with Adelaide Simon, Grace Butcher, and Kent Taylor (basement of Trinity Cathedral, 22nd St. and Euclid Ave.). levy meets rjs then engineering student at Cleveland State University who is working at Gate coffeehouse and editing a student newspaper at CSU. levy publishes Cleveland poem North American Book of the Dead Parts 1 and 2 (Free Lance Press) and begins writing poems and editorials about the city corruption. Renegade Press becomes 7 Flowers Press (mimeograph format), publishes books by Russell Atkins, Geoffrey Cook, Erik Albercht, Kent Taylor, Russell Salamon, Sam Dogan, Susan Cornillon, Allen Katzman, Carl Larsen, Ed Sanders, Thom Szuter, bpNichol, Carol Bergé, and DagmaR (levy’s wife and collaborator). James E. Magner’s Toiler of the Sea: Poems (Golden Quill Press), Magner teaching at John Carroll University.  

 

1966 – General: Stokley Carmichael elected head of Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. U.S. troops killed in Vietnam 6,358; Vietnamese dead, 77,115. War resistance is growing; Black Power Movement, Ken Kesey’s San Francisco Trips Festival; National Association of Broadcasters attempts to ban all records containing drug or obscene messages. Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Mothers of Invention, electric guitar rage. Ed Sanders' Peace Eye Bookstore, E. 10th Ave. C, NY, is busted by the police in a raid for obscenity in his magazine Fuck You/ A Magazine of the Arts. ACLU defends Sanders, who is eventually proven not guilty in courts in 1967, "summer of love."

Culture: Literature: Bernard Malamud’s The Fixer; Susan Sontag’s Against Interpretation, Truman Capote’s nonfiction-novel, In Cold Blood; Poetry: Poet Laureate: James Dickey; Pulitzer Prize to Richard Eberhart for Selected Poems; books by Dickey, Robert Creeley, Adrienne Rich, John Ashbery.

Cleveland:  Cuyahoga County Community College opens its Metro Campus. 18-24 July. Hough Race Riots in Cleveland’s Hough area bordering Euclid Ave. and E. 105th St.—following fires, arrests, shootings, martial law is declared. d.a. levy with rjs and others organize the “Poets at the Gate ”open reading series at Trinity Cathedral; levy and friends hang out at alternative poetry scene: Adele’s Bar, Stan Heilbrun’s headshop, “The Headquarters,” and later, the Coffehouse at the corner of Euclid Ave. and 115th St. Also East Cleveland art scene develops around levy: The Well coffeehouse (13923 Euclid) and the Continental Art Theatre (13931 Euclid, managed by Cleveland artist George Fitzpatrick), which showed erotic, art, and foreign films. Gallery 1-2 opens by Cleveland beat artists, near 306 W. Superior, organized by Al Diamondstein and included Ralph and Diedre Poplar and cartoonist R. Crumb. Summer 1966, Allen Ginsberg and Ed Sanders read at Amassa Stone Chapel (Western Reserve University); meet with T.L. Kryss and others at Euclid Tavern before reading. levy interviewed on Allen Douglas Exchange radio call-in show KYCA along with friends Rob Egan, Tod Roy, Jonathan Dworkin (lawyer), focusing mostly on the issue of marijuana use, and on the difficulty of raising cultural awareness. Jim Lowell and Asphodel Book Shop move to 306 W. Superior Ave. (after being evicted from the Old Arcade), store carries levy’s publications and other underground and small press work and first edition modern and contemporary poetry books. Nov. 28, secret indictment against levy by the Cuyahoga County Grand Jury, for “publishing and distributing obscene literature.” Dec. 1 Cleveland Police raid the Asphodel Book Shop, seize six cartons of poetry publications, including some of levy's, and arrest Lowell on charges of possession and distribution of obscene literature. levy printing from 7 Flowers press in mimeo editions, uses A.B. Dick mimeograph machine, publishes “Poets at the Gate” series and Marrahwannah Quarterly. levy and cartoonist R. Crumb meet, Crumb then working for American Greeting Cards in Cleveland, begins doing underground comics, eventually working with Clevelander Harvey Pekar. levy and D. r. Wagner work together on Egyptian Stroboscope; 7 Flower Press publishes books by: Kent Taylor, D. r. Wagner, Doug Blazek, Steve Richmond, Joe Nickell, Erik Albrecht, Russell Atkins, Grace Butcher, Joe Walker, Jacob Leed, Paul Blackburn, Thom Szuter, Charles Bukowski, George Montgomery, Kay Wood, Matt Schulman. levy books published: Cleveland Undercovers, The Great Tibetan Train Robbery Mystery Plan in Color: A Mandala Hernia Word Game, Robert Motherwell, The North American Book of the Dead Parts 1-5, The Egyptian Stroboscope (with D. r. Wagner), Cleveland: The Rectal Eye Visions (Wagner’s press: today: niagara). "Butcher Shop" workshop for “poems in progress” started by Robert Wallace  and his fellow poets Cy Dostal, Ruth Griffin, Richard Hawley, P. K. Saha, Al Cahen, Nicholas Ranson, Lolette Kuby, Robert Lawry, Robert McDonough, later joined by Leonard Trawick, Bonnie Jacobson, John Donoghue and occasionally by Alberta Turner.

1967 – General: Three astronauts perish in fire in Apollo space craft, Thurgood Marshall is first Black appointed to Supreme Court, War escalates as do protests. Sec. of Defense Robert McNamara resigns. First “Be-In” at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, “Summer of Love” hippy generation nationally.

Culture: Art: sculpture of George Segal and Claes Oldenburg; Broadway: Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming and The Birthday Party, Albee’s A Delicate Balance. Film: In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate, In Cold Blood, Elvira Madigan; Music: Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Heartclub Band; Fiction: William Styron’s Confessions of Nat Turner; Nonfiction: Mailer’s Armies of the Night (on war demonstrations). Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to Anne Sexton for Live or Die; books by Denise Levertov, W. S. Merwin, Anthony Hecht, Barbara Howes.

Cleveland: Cleveland Mayor Locher turns over keys to Carl B. Stokes (1968-1971), first Black American elected to mayor of a major city. First successful coronary artery bypass operation performed at the Cleveland Clinic by Dr. Rene Favaloro. Cuyahoga Community College opens its Metro Campus; folksinger Odetta and others play at La Cave club (10615 Euclid). Hiram Poetry Review is launched by Hale Chatfield at nearby Hiram College. National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities awards Ohio poet Kenneth Patchen for "life-long contribution to American letters." levy: Jan. 5,an arrest warrant is issued for levy indictment for possession and distribution of obscene literature; Jan. 16, levy surrenders.  He pleads not guilty in Criminal Court. Judge Frank Celebrezze insults levy as poet, asks how much he makes a day; levy answers, “I sell poetry for 89 cents a day.” Judge sets bail at $2500, declares, “Maybe you should charge more than 89 cents.” NY physicist Jack Ullman wires bail money, art dealer Jasper Woods sets up legal defense fund. "Levy and Lowell Defense Fund Reading" in Cleveland at Mills Science Center, sponsored by University Christian Movement, University Circle Teaching Committee, area poet readers include Russell Atkins, R. L. Carothers, Jacob Leed, Robert Wallace, Alex Gildzen. Nationally, CIA efforts to infiltrate peace groups and underground presses are exposed in Ramparts Feb. 14, 1967. J. Edgar Hoover’s list of groups for FBI to investigate is exposed. Attorney General Ramsey Clark launches IDIU (Interdivisional Information Unit) for surveillance of radical groups and underground presses. March 28th levy is arrested again for contributing to the delinquency of 2 minors (on Nov. 15, 1966 levy had read a 17-year-old boy’s poem to a Gate reading audience, which included the boy and a 15-year old girl). levy lawyer is Gerald Gold; assistant prosecuting attorney is George Moscarino, John T. Corrigan County Prosecutor. Jim Lowell's books taken at the raid on the Asphodel Book Shop and levy's mimeograph machine confiscated in the second arrest, are never returned. Case Western Reserve University law professors and students conduct picket at Criminal Court Building to free levy; March 30, Dick Feagler in Cleveland Press writes positive article on levy. May 14, Mother’s Day, Benefit Reading for levy and Lowell, Allen Ginsberg and The Fugs rock group including Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg. at Strosacker Hall on Case Tech’s Campus. levy’s poet-friends rjs and T. L. Kryss, despite police harassment, edit levy’s work and print off on mimeograph 1000 copies including 270 pages of levy writings and letters of support for him and free speech and documentation of the arrests and trials as ukanhavyrfuckinciti bak: d.a.levy: a tribute to the man / an anthology of his poetry (Ghost Press). Poetry-Artist Scene in East Cleveland: levy's 1744 Wymore St. apartment is located in an enclave of apartment buildings (now condemned) on Wymore and Page Streets just off of Euclid Avenue (near The Well coffeehouse and Crystan Bar-B-Q) include among others Tony Walsh, George Fitzpatrick, rjs, and many other poetys, artists, musicians. Sept. 4 Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes article attacking levy and Kent Taylor as “psychedelic assassins.” October –poet Adelaide Simon dies of cancer. levy launches The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle printing on newsprint (funded by record advertisements on the back pages). Books by levy: Kibbutz in the Sky Book I and Book II, Three Poems by Cleveland Poets (levy, Kent Taylor and Carl Woideck), Tombstone As a Lonely Charm Part 1 (Runcible Spoon).
1968 – General: Viet Cong launch Tet Offensive in January; Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy each announce candidacy for president. President Johnson announces he will not run for a second term.  Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated in Memphis; riots in 100 cities. Civil Rights Act passes; May ’68 student strike in Paris becomes a general strike paralyzing parts of the country. Robert Kennedy is assassinated in California. Prague Spring is brutally ended by the Soviet invasion of Checkoslovakia. Yippie Movement is launched by Abbie and Anita Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Paul Krassner, Ed Sanders, Dick Gregory, Phil Ochs, David Peel, et. al; they lead major resistance at Democratic Convention in Chicago where Mayor Daly’s  police force oppression resulted in riots and arrests; Hubert Humphrey is nominated. Nixon is elected by small margin. Vietnam: U.S. dead at 30,857; Vietnamese at 422,979. Feb. 4, Beat figure Neal Cassady dies of exposure on railroad tracks in San Miguel de Allende. Robert Bly uses National Book Award to criticize U.S. intervention in Viet Nam, gives funds to the Resistance, to encourage conscientious objection to war.

Culture: Broadway: The Great White Hope, We Bombed in New Haven, Hair. Music: John Lennon and Yoko Ono, The Fugs, Filmore East and Filmore West rock ballrooms. Films: Faces, Barbarella, Yellow Submarine, Planet of the Apes. Fiction: Robert A. Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land, John Barth’s Lost in the Funhouse, Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country. Poetry: Poet Laureate:William Jay Smith; Pulitzer Prize to Anthony Hecht for The Hard Hours; books by Diane Wakoski, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Richard Brautigan, Ginsberg’s Planet News, Robert Bly’s The Light Around the Body, Kenneth Patchen’s Collected Poems, Kenneth Rexroth Complete Poems.

Cleveland: Saturdays at midnight the Continental Art Theater runs the “Underground Cinema 12.”; La Cave (10615 Euclid) features The Blues Project, Canned Heat, Iron Butterfly, Tom Paxton, Richie Havens, The Steve Miller Band, Blood Sweat and Tears, Doc Watson & Son, John Hammond, The Fugs. Feb. 20, levy pleads “no contest” on charges of contributing to the delinquency of minors, in exchange for probation and dropping the obscenity charges, and pays $200 fine and $245 in court costs. levy’s friend and patron Jeanne Sonville. U.S. Supreme Court obscenity rulings forces Common Pleas Judge Francis J. Talty to dismiss the charges on levy and Lowell. August 1968 levy writes “Suburban Monastery Death Poem,” which is published in September, most of the people and places mentioned in the poem were within a few blocks of his Wymore apartment. October, levy travels to Madison, Wisconsin for a  month, to talk with students in the Free University writes Madison Poems and assembles collages. Returns to Cleveland and soon separates from common-law wife Dagmar, levy continues to publish The Buddhist 3rd Class Junkmail Oracle and The Marrahwannah Quarterly. Books by levy: Suburban Monastery Death Poem (Zero Edition), The Tibetan Stroboscope (levy’s Ayizan Press). Jim Lowell moves Asphodel Book Store to Miles Ave., Cleveland, because the building is to be torn down to make way for a parking lot. July 23-28 – “Glenville Shootout” Cleveland police and Ohio National Guard have shootout with Black Militant group in Cleveland: 7 dead, many businesses burned. November 24, after days of erratic behavior, talks of leaving town, even borrowing a suitcase, the happily giving away most of his belongings and burning copies of his publications, including 4,000 copies of The Tibetan Stroboscope, he gives away the flats for the next issue of the Oracle to rjs. Alone in his apartment at 1744 Wymore St., levy takes his life, shooting himself with a .22 caliber rifle in the “third eye” or middle of his forehead. November 25th body of levy found by friends rjs and Steve Ferguson. Death certificate lists his occupation as “Poet.” He had published more than 55 books and 33 issues of magazines. His body is cremated and the ashes shared with family and friend Tony Walsh, who arranged the funeral. levy’s grave is in Whitehaven Memorial Park, Wilson Mills Rd., Mayfield Heights, Ohio. Russell Atkins’ Heretofore (Breman Publishers, London, England).

 

 1969 – General: James Earl Ray pleads guilty to Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination, is sentenced to 99 years; Senate ratifies anti-nuclear proliferation policy; Ted Kennedy admits to part in death of young woman in Chappaquiddick; Apollo 11 Moon landing: Neil Armstrong is first man to walk on moon; Charles Manson and ‘Family’ are charged with murder of Sharon Tate Polanski and others; Vietnam Moratorium is held; Lt. Calley tried in My Lai massacre; first draft lottery is held in U.S.; the Woodstock Festival and Concert (Woodstock, NY). Death of Jack Kerouac.

Culture: Art: Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella; Films: Midnight Cowboy, Alice’s Restaurant, Easy Rider, The Wild Bunch, They Shoot Horses, Don’t They. Literature: Joyce Carol Oates’ Them, John Cheever’s Bullet Park, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr’s Slaughterhouse Five, Carlos Baker’s Ernest Hemmingway; The Selling of the President 1968, Diane DiPrima’s Memoirs of a Beatnik; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to George Oppen for Of Being Numerous; books by Amiri Baraka, Donald Hall, Kenneth Koch, Richard Howard (former Clevelander).

Cleveland: The Palace Theater, last operating movie house on Playhouse Square, closes 20 July. A burning oil slick on the Cuyahoga River attracts national attention, 22 June. Euclid Beach Amusement Park closes 28 September. Cleveland American Indian Center is founded. John Rose edits and publishes The Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle Fourth Last Issue, February 1969, rjs does Feb. 1969 Buddhist Third Class Junkmail Oracle, then turns it over to Steve Ferguson to edit; Ferguson kept it going for a year, then turned it into Great Swamp Erie Dada Boom. Gary Snyder does reading at Kent State University, becomes aware of levy's writings through Alez Gildzen, later writes “The Dharma Eye of d.a.levy” for KSU’s Serif magazine. Oberlin College Press Field magazine and Field Translation Series are launched from Oberlin College, southwest of Cleveland, editors Stuart Friebert and David Young, joined by Alberta Turner. Richard Howard receives Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Outsider #4/#5 appears from Jon and Louise Webb's Loujon Press, with a memoirium to d.a.levy, poems by levy and T.L. Kryss, and a 46 page "Homage to Kenneth Patchen" (final issue).


 


1970 – General: President Nixon pledges to bring troops back in next  year, yet admits to sending troops in Cambodia; student protests around the country, National Guard opens fire on students at Kent State University, kill four, two more students shot and killed at Jackson State University; Earth Day launched.

Culture: Literature: Saul Bellows’ Mr. Sammler’s Planet, Hemingway’s Island in the Stream; Kate Millett Sexual Politics, Studs Terkel’s Hard Times; Poetry: Poet Laureate: William Stafford; Pulitzer Prize to Richard Howard (native Clevelander) for Untitled Subjects; books by Robert Creeley, Nikki Giovanni, Philip Levine, Philip Whalen.

Cleveland: Caveliers (NBA) basketball team is organized. d.a. levy book: Variations On A Short Poem (Runcible Spoon). James C. Kilgore of Cuyahoga Community College publishes first book, The Big Buffalo and Other Poems: A Sampler of the Poetry of James C. Kilgore. Poetry workshops begin at Cuyahoga Community College, led by Cy Dostal.
 

1971 – General: New York Times publishes “Pentagon Papers” on secret involvement in Vietnam, and author Daniel Berrigan is arrested; Supreme Court upholds busing for desegregation; Nixon ends trade embargo with China, institutes wage and price controls in U.S.; Apollo XIV lands on moon; voting age is lowered to 18. 200,000 U.S. citizens rally against the war in Vietnam.

Culture: Film: The French Connection, The Last Picture Show; Music: Imagine album by John Lennon; Literature: Jerzy Kosinski’s Being There, Abbie Hoffman’s Steal this Book; Poetry: Poet Laureate: Josephine Jacobsen; Pulitzer Prize to W. S. Merwin for The Carrier of Ladders; books by Anne Sexton, Erica Jong, Adrienne Rich, A. R. Ammons, Diane Wakoski, Frank O’Hara’s Collected Poems, Gregory Corso.

Cleveland: Production of Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical plays in Cleveland at Hanna Theatre. The Serif magazine, Kent State University, Special Collections, ed. by Alex Gildzen, prints a special issue dedicated to levy, including a bibliography of levy’s work by James Lowell and essays poems and tributes by Eric Mottram, Gary Snyder, Russell Atkins, Carol Bergé, Douglas Blazek, Charles Bukowski, Hugh Fox, Alex Gildzen, Jacob Leed, Robert Lowry, and Steven Osterlund (Vol. VIII, No. 4 December, 1971). The CSU Poetry Center begins publishing local poets in 1971, with Poetry: Cleveland, an anthology of 42 poets from the region, edited by Alberta Turner, Mary Ann Magner, William McLaughlin, and Cyril Dostal, introduction by William Stafford. Also launched that year is the Cleveland Poetry Series of chapbooks leading to full-length books of poetry; the center has been bringing in national poets for reading series open to public: include Adrienne Rich, Galway Kinnell, John Hollander, Richard Wilbur, William Stafford, and Gary Snyder. New Day Press, Inc. launched by Karamu House (2355 E. 89th Street, Cleveland). James Magner's John Crowe Ransom: Critical Principles and Preoccupations (The Hague). Russell Atkins receives Award and Tribute from Karamu House. Jon Webb, author-printer-publisher of Outsider magazine passes away in Nashville, TN.
1972 – General: North Vietnam launches major attack, last U.S. ground troops leave Vietnam;

Charlie Chaplin returns to U.S., North Vietnam accepts cease-fire, Watergate conspiracy is disclosed in Washington Post, Nixon is re-elected over George McGovern.

Culture: Film: The Godfather; Television: M*A*S*H ; Literature: Pulitzer in fiction to Eudora Welty; Poetry: Pulitzer Prize to James Wright for Collected Poems; books by James Tate, John Ashberry, Sylvia Plath’s Winter Trees, O’Hara’s Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara (posthumous).

Cleveland: Ralph Perk elected mayor of Cleveland (1972-1977). Cleveland Magazine publishes first issue in April. James Lowell moves The Asphodel Book Shop to rural Burton, Ohio. Death of Ohio poet Kenneth Patchen (in Palo Alto, CA). Cleveland State University launched Whiskey Island as student literary publication. Poet Robert Duncan reads at John Carroll University.