Foley's Books: California Rebels, Beats and Radicals
(The book contains reviews and articles on a variety of pe...)
The book contains reviews and articles on a variety of people, all stemming from Foley's many years of writing and thinking about poetry, Beats, rebels, and radicals
Visions & Affiliations: A California Literary Time Line Part One
(Poetry is a major element in this kaleidoscopic Californi...)
Poetry is a major element in this kaleidoscopic California scene. Poetry is as Western as the Sierra foothills, and the questions raised here go to its very heart. Beginning with the publication of Kenneth Rexroth's first book, this all-encompassing history-as-collage plunges us forward into the 21st Century
Jack Foley is an American poet and author. He is also known as a critic and translator of the works of the French singer and songwriter Georges Brassens.
Background
Ethnicity:
Jack Foley's father was an Irish-American, and his mother was an Italian-American.
Jack Foley was born as John Wayne Harold Foley on August 9, 1940, in Neptune, New Jersey, United States. He is a son of John Harold Aloysius, a vaudeville singer and dancer, songwriter, telegrapher, and Western Union office manager, and Juana Foley (maiden name Terio). He was raised in a Port Chester village, New York.
As an adolescent, Foley had an intense sense of not belonging. He viewed other people from a distance, as if they were figures on a movie screen.
Education
Jack Foley studied at Cornell University. He was suspended for a year for stealing books but soon came back and received his Bachelor of Arts in English in 1963. Then, he went to California and entered the University of California, Berkeley. He graduated in a couple of years with a Master of Arts degree.
Foley pursued his graduate studies at Berkeley in the 1960s and the 1970s.
As a young man, Jack Foley worked in Western Union telegraph office. He started his career of a poet and writer in the middle of 1970s. It was then when he began to present his poetry with his wife Adelle at so called spoken-word performances, the recitations often accompanied by multi-voiced pieces.
In 1987, the first Foley’s book, 'Letters/Lights – Words for Adelle' was published. Like all his books, it featured a cassette tape on which he and Adelle performed his work.
A year after the pulication, Foley joined the staff of the Berkeley radio station KPFA where he has hosted the program delivering interviews and poetry presentations. At the beginning of the new decade, he tried his hand for the first time as an editor-in-chief. From 1990 to 1995, he was an editor-in-chief of Poetry USA, a magazine which, under his editorship, encouraged experimental writers such as Alabaman Jake Berry. In 1992, he became a contributing editor of Poetry Flash, the Bay Area poetry calendar and review. Foley's review column, Foley's Books, was published for some period of time on the online periodical ‘The Alsop Review’.
Foley published the poetry volumes 'Gershwin' in 1991, 'Adrift' in 1993, and 'Exiles' in 1996. 'O Her Blackness Sparkles!', a prose book dealing with the history of the Bantam Art Gallery in San Francisco, appeared in 1995.
In addition to the collections of his poetry books, Jack Foley has contributed to many periodicals and anthologies both as a poet and critic. He published many articles on art and film as well as on poetry. The author has collaborated with Beloit Poetry Journal, Berkeley Poetry Review, MaLLife magazine, Epoch, the New York Quarterly, and others. Among the anthologies he has contributed to is ‘Poly: New Speculative Writing’.
Jack Foley has collaborated with a dancer Judy Patton, a saxophonist Glenn Spearman, and composer Lou Harrison.
In all his works Jack Foley tends to center on issues arising from “performance” and “spoken word.”
Quotations:
"I am writer, husband, father, poet, teacher, friend, ‘radio personality,' occasional cook, householder, amateur guitarist, sometime tap dancer, jobless person, performer, student, any number of other things."
Membership
Modern Language Association
,
United States
Poets and Writers
,
United States
Oakland PEN
,
United States
Personality
Physical Characteristics:
Although diagnosed with a mild form of adult diabetes, he remains high-spirited, looking forward to a future of even greater productivity.
Quotes from others about the person
"Jack Foley is our firebrand experimentalist and he holds his torch high so the reader can have more light." Michael McClure, poet
"Jack Foley's work represents that rare commodity – genuinely avant-garde poetry. He takes the polyphonic forms of Pound and Eliot and pushes them into possibilities open only to performance-based art. This is experimental poetry with depth and intelligence as well as intensity." Dana Gioia, American poet and writer
"Jack Foley is doing great things in articulating the poetic consciousness of San Francisco." Lawrence Ferlinghetti, American poet, artist and political activist
Interests
playing guitar, tap dancing, writing songs
Connections
Jack Foley married Adelle Joan Abramowitz on December 21, 1961. The family produced one son named Sean Ezra.
Jack and Adelle lived together until her death on June 27, 2016. Adelle was also a poet specializing in haiku and often accompanied Jack on his spoken-word performances.
After the death of his beloved Adelle, Jack formed a couple with Sangye Land, a daughter of poets Julie Rogers and David Meltzer.