Larry Fagin is an American poet, editor, publisher, and teacher, and a member of the New York School

New York School

The New York School was an informal group of American poets, painters, dancers, and musicians active in the 1950s, 1960s in New York City...

.

Biography

Born in Far Rockaway

Far Rockaway, Queens

Far Rockaway is a neighborhood on the Rockaway Peninsula in the New York City borough of Queens in the United States. It is the easternmost section of the Rockaways. The neighborhood starts at the Nassau County line and extends west to Beach 32nd Street. The neighborhood is part of Queens Community...

, New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, Fagin grew up in New York, Hollywood, and Europe. He began associating with other poets and writers in 1957, meeting David Meltzer

David Meltzer

David Meltzer is an American poet and musician of the Beat Generation and San Francisco Renaissance. Lawrence Ferlinghetti has described him as "one of the greats of post-World-War-Two San Francisco poets and musicians." Meltzer came to prominence with inclusion of his work in the anthology, The...

 in Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, and Allen Ginsberg

Allen Ginsberg

Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

, William S. Burroughs

William S. Burroughs

William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...

, and Gregory Corso

Gregory Corso

Gregory Nunzio Corso was an American poet, youngest of the inner circle of Beat Generation writers...

 two years later in Europe. He received a BA from the University of Maryland

University of Maryland

When the term "University of Maryland" is used without any qualification, it generally refers to the University of Maryland, College Park.University of Maryland may refer to the following:...

 in 1960 and in 1962 joined the Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer

Jack Spicer was an American poet often identified with the San Francisco Renaissance. In 2009, My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer won the American Book Award for poetry.-Life and work:...

 circle of poets in San Francisco, where he also was friends with Michael McClure

Michael McClure

Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

, Philip Whalen

Philip Whalen

Philip Glenn Whalen was an American poet, Zen Buddhist, and a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance and close to the Beat generation.-Biography:...

, Robert Duncan

Robert Duncan (poet)

Robert Duncan was an American poet and a student of H.D. and the Western esoteric tradition who spent most of his career in and around San Francisco. Though associated with any number of literary traditions and schools, Duncan is often identified with the poets of the New American Poetry and Black...

. At the 1965 Berkeley Poetry Conference

Berkeley Poetry Conference

The Berkeley Poetry Conference was an event in which individuals presented their views and poems in seminars, lectures, individual readings, and group readings at California Hall on the Berkeley Campus of the University of California during July 12 – July 24, 1965.The conference was organized...

 he met Charles Olson

Charles Olson

Charles Olson , was a second generation American modernist poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New York School, the Black Mountain School, the Beat poets, and the San Francisco Renaissance...

 and Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, and befriended Ted Berrigan

Ted Berrigan

-Early life:Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining the U.S. Army in 1954 to serve in the Korean War. After three years in the Army, he finished his college studies at the University of Tulsa in...

 and Lewis Warsh

Lewis Warsh

Lewis Warsh was born in 1944 in the Bronx, New York. He is co-founder, with Anne Waldman, of Angel Hair Magazine and Books, and co-editor, with Bernadette Mayer, of United Artists Magazine and Books...

. During two years in London, he began friendships with Tom Clark

Tom Clark (poet)

Tom Clark is an American poet, editor and biographer. Clark was born on the Near West Side of Chicago and educated at the University of Michigan where he received a Hopwood Award for poetry. On March 22, 1968, he married Angelica Heinegg, at St. Mark’s Church, New York City...

, Jonathan Williams

Jonathan Williams (poet)

Jonathan Williams was an American poet, publisher, essayist, and photographer. He is known as the founder of The Jargon Society, which has published poetry, experimental fiction, photography, and folk art for more than fifty years...

, and Aram Saroyan

Aram Saroyan

Aram Saroyan is an American poet, novelist, biographer, memoirist and playwright. There has been a resurgence of interest in his work in the 21st century, evidenced by the publication in 2007 of several previous collections reissued together as Complete Minimal Poems.- Biography :Saroyan was born...

. In 1967 he returned to the United States and, after a year in San Francisco, where he became friends with Clark Coolidge

Clark Coolidge

Clark Coolidge is an American poet born in Providence, Rhode Island.Often associated with the Language School, his experience as a Jazz drummer and interest in a wide array of subjects--- including caves, geology, bebop, weather, Salvador Dalí, Jack Kerouac, and movies--- often finds...

, settled in New York’s East Village

East Village, Manhattan

The East Village is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, lying east of Greenwich Village, south of Gramercy and Stuyvesant Town, and north of the Lower East Side...

. There he maintained his friendship with Beat

Beat generation

The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

 writers and developed extensive connections with the New York School of painters and poets (including Berrigan, Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman

Anne Waldman is an American poet.Since the 1960s, Waldman has been an active member of the “Outrider” experimental poetry community as a writer, performer, collaborator, professor, editor, scholar, and cultural/political activist....

, Warsh, Ginsberg, Bill Berkson

Bill Berkson

Bill Berkson is an American poet, critic, teacher and sometime curator, who has been active in the art and literary worlds since his early twenties.-Life:Born in New York on August 30, 1939, Bill Berkson grew up on Manhattan’s Upper...

, Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett

Ron Padgett is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School. Bean Spasms, Padget's first collection of poems, was published in 1967 and written with Ted Berrigan...

, and Charles North

Charles North

Charles North is an American poet, essayist and teacher. Described by the poet James Schuyler as “the most stimulating poet of his generation,” he has received two National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowships, an Individual Artist’s Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts,...

)--the latter associated with the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church

St. Mark's Poetry Project

The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 in the East Village of Manhattan by the poet and translator Paul Blackburn, it has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetries for over four decades....

. He began publishing the Adventures in Poetry magazine (4 vols., March 1968–Summer 1969) and chapbooks (1970–1976). In 1975 he founded Danspace

Danspace Project

Danspace Project was founded in 1974 to provide a performance venue for contemporary dance. Its performances are held in St. Mark's Church in the East Village area of the Manhattan borough of New York City.-History and mission:...

with Barbara Dilley and was its artistic director through 1980. He taught writing for many summers at Naropa Institute

Naropa University

Naropa University is a private American liberal arts university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher and Oxford University scholar Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the eleventh-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda.Naropa describes itself as...

’s Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics

Jack Kerouac School

The Jack Kerouac School was founded at Naropa University in 1974 by Chögyam Trungpa, and Beat Generation poets Allen Ginsbergand Anne Waldman. The school consists of the Summer Writing Program and the Department of Writing and Poetics, which administers the Master of Fine Arts in Writing and...

, as well as at the New School University. In 2000 he revived the Adventures in Poetry imprint with Cris Mattison, publishing books by John Ashbery

John Ashbery

John Lawrence Ashbery is an American poet. He has published more than twenty volumes of poetry and won nearly every major American award for poetry, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1976 for his collection Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror. But Ashbery's work still proves controversial...

, John Godfrey, Kit Robinson

Kit Robinson

Kit Robinson is an American poet and translator. An early member of the San Francisco Language poets circle, he has published 20 books of poetry.-Life and work:...

, Alan Bernheimer

Alan Bernheimer

Alan Bernheimer , is an American poet, often associated with the San Francisco Language poets.-Biography:He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve Benson, Kit Robinson, Rodger Kamenetz, and Alex Smith and studied literature...

, Jean Day

Jean Day

-Life and work:Born in Syracuse, New York, and raised in Middletown, Rhode Island, Day graduated from Antioch College in 1977. Since then she has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and worked in literary publishing, currently as associate editor of...

, Carla Harryman

Carla Harryman

Carla Harryman is an American poet, essayist, and playwright often associated with the Language poets. She teaches Creative Writing at Eastern Michigan University and serves on the MFA faculty of the Milton Avery School of the Arts at Bard College...

, North, Coolidge, Kenward Elmslie

Kenward Elmslie

Kenward Gray Elmslie is an American writer, performer, editor and publisher associated with the New York School of poetry.-Life and career:...

, and others. Since 2000 he has edited and published Sal Mimeo magazine and continues to teach privately.

Selected bibliography

Parade of the Caterpillars (Angel Hair, 1968); Twelve Poems (Angel Hair, 1972); Landscape, with George Schneeman (Angel Hair, 1972); Rhymes of a Jerk (Kulchur Foundation, 1974); Seven Poems (Big Sky, 1976); Poems Larry Fagin Drawings Richard Tuttle (Topia Press, 1977); I'll Be Seeing You: Selected Poems (Full Court Press, 1978); Stabs (Poltroon, 1979); The List Poem (Teachers & Writers Collaborative, 1991); On the Pumice of Morons, with Clark Coolidge (The Figures, 1993); Dig & Delve, with Trevor Winkfield (Granary Books, 1999).

Sources

• A Secret Location on the Lower East Side, Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, ed. Steven Clay and Rodney Phillips, (The New York Public Library/Granary Books, 1998)
• The Angel Hair Anthology, ed Anne Waldman and Lewish Warsh, (Granary Books, 2001)
• Larry Fagin Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut
• New York Times "City Room" profile
• Larry Fagin's website: http://larryfagin.com