Education
He attended the University of California, Berkeley on the G.I. Bill, writing dissertations on Henry James and Joseph Conrad.
He attended the University of California, Berkeley on the G.I. Bill, writing dissertations on Henry James and Joseph Conrad.
Born in Seattle, Tallman was raised in Tumwater, Washington. In 1963, they hosted a poetry conference attended by Denise Levertov, Charles Olson, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Duncan, Margaret Avison, and Philip Whalen. The Tallman home itself also served as a poetry enclave of sorts.
lieutenant was in the Tallman home that Jack Spicer gave some of his now legendary lectures.
Two years later, they held another poetry conference in Berkeley, California. Tallman was sometimes criticized for turning Vancouver poetry circle into a California branch plant.
Tallman embraced the Black Mountain school approach to poetry, but also showed the influence of the Beats, the New American Poets and the Language Poets. Among the Canadian poets he is said to have influenced are bill bissett, Stan Persky and Howard White.
The Poetics of the New American Poetry New York: Grove, 1973.
(edited with Donald Allen).