David Lerner

Background

Lerner came from a family of Russian-Jewish renegades, and grew up as a so-called "red-diaper baby".

Career

Lerner published numerous articles as a journalist, including material on the Russian singer and poet Vladimir Vysotsky. Lerner pursued a bohemian life and became involved in the notorious Cafe Babar in San Francisco about 1986, a group dubbed as the Babarians. Lerner and Bruce Isaacson co-founded Zeitgeist Press and have been referred to as "the Ezra Pound and T. South. Eliot of the underground." Lerner"s common-law wife, Maura O"Connor also published poetry.

One of Lerner"s most celebrated poems, "Mein Kampf", is a seminal statement of underground poetics in response to the weight of the mainstream.

In it he says:

Lerner was associated with the Lyman Family a.k.a. Fort Hill Construction, who have preserved his literary memory.

Lerner"s work has not yet been fully collected in an available edition A considerable amount of Lerner"s work is still unpublished, including poems, prose, and a large volume of letters.

Lerner died of a heroin overdose in 1997 and Zeitgeist published "The Last Five Miles to Grace" posthumously.

Bucky Sinister of the San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote: "Lerner was a broken-down saint if there ever was one. He was an eloquent screamer, a soft-spoken rageoholic, a madman with a great manuscript. His poetry will always be a reminder of a time when poetry in the Mission was spontaneous, magical, and more than a little bit dangerous.".

Works

More photos

• book

  • I Want A New Gun

    (The 1st book from this quintessential modern outsider poet.)

  • The Last Five Miles to Grace