W.E. #3

Pavel Sterin

Intercultural Writing

Writing Exercise #3

Professor Rivera Garza

1/25/11

                                               

A day in the life of Ron Silliman

           

In the mid 1960’s I attended Merritt College, a two-year community college in Oakland. My goal at the time was transferring to nearby San Francisco State University. Once I realized my talent for writing, I frequently wrote poetry, and applied for a job in the school newspaper. I achieved my goal by enrolling at San Francisco State, and after only a year I transferred to the University of California Berkeley. My obsession with poetry grew stronger each day. After compliments from professors and other forms of social media, I realized a career in writing was possible. I was first published in Berkeley during the year of 1965.

Aside from poetry, my first publication came from journals associated with the School of Quietude.  I found such early acceptance to be a sign of the lack of standards and rigor characteristics of journal writing and began looking at other forms of writing media.  I left Berkeley without attaining a degree and got a job as an editor for a newsletter called, Tottels. In this newsletter I came across one of the earliest forms of Language Poetry. It was not until a piece called The Dwelling Place, which featured writing from nine poets, in which I first attempted describing language poetry. Attempting to publish my own language poetry, I wrote pieces very frequently.

Aint nobody


can write this…

            

big black fat cat
            

       lazes
               

at the white jeep
                                         

How, how


horse’s neck!


window not as clear as I’d like to think


webs on the margin
                              

But summer, dad!

like that!

            

right in the gutter the
            

gray
            

tennis ball



bearing fruit fruit fruit?

         Some language poetry more complex than others:

not cared about


without care.  a truck.  a blue


truck. trucking.



on, o,  blocks of wood.  On


a lot.

            It was simple. I wrote what I saw. I wrote how I felt, and what I thought. 

In 1971 these poems along with many others were published in a book called Crow. Throughout my career I worked as a political organizer, an ethnographer, a lobbyist, a newspaper editor, a director of development, and as the executive editor of the Socialist Review. While in San Francisco I served on numerous community boards including the 1980 Census Oversight Committee, the Arson Task Force of the San Francisco Fire Department, and the State Department of Health's Task Force on Health Conditions in Locale Detention Facilities.

Without attaining a degree from the University of California Berkeley I taught in the Graduate Writing Program at San Francisco State University, at the University of California at San Diego, at New College of California and, in shorter stints, at Naropa University and Brown University. After living in the San Francisco Bay Area for over 40 years, I now reside in Chester County, Pennsylvania with my wife Krishna and my two sons, Collin and Jesse. I currently work as a market analyst in the computer industry. On my free time, I still write, edit, and translate poetry.