David Lerner

David Lerner (born November 23, 1951 in New York , † July 1, 1997 in San Francisco , California ) was an American poet, publisher and journalist.

Life

Born in Brooklyn, Lerner grew up there and in Queens before moving to California at age 21. He has already written poetry and worked as a construction worker and movers. He began working as a journalist in the 1980s, including for the San Francisco Chronicle and US Magazine . After a burnout at the age of 35, he and Bruce Isaacson founded the Zeitgeist-Press publishing house in San Francisco in 1986 . Until his death in 1997 he belonged to the so-called San Francisco Barbarians - a group of lyric poets and spoken word poets who performed regularly at Cafe Babar .

During his lifetime, four volumes of his poetry that were quickly out of print were published, followed posthumously by a collection of selected and previously unpublished poems as well as a CD with original recordings of readings.

Lerner was known as the " Ezra Pound of the Underground". Jeffrey McDaniel writes that his poems, which often begin with wild, associative loops , are “agile and full of kicks. More kung fu than sumo. "

One of Lerner's best-known poems is originally titled “Mein Kampf” and resembles a vehement commitment on the part of the author to poetry, especially underground poetry, while rejecting the literary mainstream.

Original American version	German version by Ron Winkler
I'd rather sell arms to the Martians than wait sullenly for a letter from some diseased clown with a three-piece mind telling me that I've won a bullet-proof pair of rose-colored glasses for my poem “Autumn in the Spring « ...	I would rather sell weapons to Martians than wait doggedly for a letter from a sick clown with a threefold consciousness who tells me that I won bulletproof pink glasses for my poem "Autumn in Spring" ...

In his own words, he saw the mission of his poetry as "driving a cherry-red Mercedes Benz into the middle of hell and making a bet on God." Lerner died of a heroin overdose in 1997, leaving behind thousands of manuscript pages and letters. It was first translated into German by Ron Winkler and appeared in the Austrian magazine Lichtungen and as a book edition by the publisher poetenladen .

Works

• I want a new gun . Poems. Zeitgeist-Press, Las Vegas 1988. ISBN 0-929-73003-8 . (Second edition from 2006)
• Why Rimbaud Went to Africa . Poems. Zeitgeist-Press, Las Vegas 1990. ISBN 0-929-73012-7 .
• The American Book Of The Dead . Poems. Grace St. Press, San Francisco 1990.
• Pray Like the Hunted . Poems. Zeitgeist-Press, Las Vegas 1992. ISBN 0-929-73038-0 .
• The Last Five Miles to Grace . Selected and new poems. Zeitgeist-Press, Las Vegas 2005. ISBN 0-929-73072-0 .
• The graceful curve of a cruise missile . Selected poems. Translated by Ron Winkler. poetenladen, Leipzig 2008. ISBN 978-3-940691-04-0 .

Web links

• David Lerner at Zeitgeist-Press