Career
Other info : Furtherreading | Bibliography
Writer. Spot welder, Brooklyn Naval Yard, Brooklyn, NY, 1945; dishwasher, Bickford's Cafeteria, New York City, 1945; worked on various cargo ships, 1945-56; literary agent, reporter for New Jersey union newspaper, and copy boy for New York World Telegram, 1946; night porter, May Co., Denver, CO, 1946; book reviewer, Newsweek, New York City, 1950; market research consultant in New York City and San Francisco, 1951-53; instructor, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 1963; founder and treasurer, Committee on Poetry Foundation, 1966-97; organizer, Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In, San Francisco, 1967; cofounder, co-director, and teacher, Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, Naropa Institute, Boulder, CO, 1974-97. Has given numerous poetry readings at universities, coffee houses, and art galleries in the United States, England, Russia, India, Peru, Chile, Poland, and Czechoslovakia; has addressed numerous conferences, including Group Advancement Psychiatry Conference, 1961, Dialectics of Liberation Conference, 1967, LSD Decade Conference, 1977, and World Conference on Humanity, 1979. Has appeared in numerous films, including Pull My Daisy, 1960; Guns of the Trees, 1962; Couch, 1964; Wholly Communion, Chappaqua, and Allen for Allen, all 1965; Joan of Arc and Galaxie, both 1966; Herostratus, The Mind Alchemists, and Don't Look Back, all 1967; Me and My Brother, 1968; Dynamite Chicken, 1971; Renaldo and Clara, 1978; It Doesn't Pay to Be Honest, 1984; It Was Twenty Years Ago Today, 1987; Heavy Petting, 1988; John Bowles: The Complete Outsider, and Jonas in the Desert, both 1994; and (narrator) Kaddish (TV film), 1977.
