Madeline Gleason

Madeline Gleason (born January 26, 1903 in Fargo , North Dakota , † April 22, 1979 in San Francisco , California ) was an American poet.

Life

Gleason came from a deeply religious family. In her early school years, she was accused of being a "difficult child," and as a teenager she dropped out of school and toured the Midwest with a cousin to dance and sing in vaudeville shows .

When her mother died, Gleason was brought back by her father and the two settled in Portland, Oregon . Gleason began working in a bookstore there, and it was during this time that she made her first attempts at writing. Soon she was able to publish some poems in the feature pages of local newspapers.

In the spring of 1934 Gleason got the opportunity from the Works Progress Administration to participate in their Federal Writers' Project . She went to San Francisco and began writing a History of California . In addition, she continued to write poetry and was able to publish it two years later in the magazine Poetry . Through this she made the acquaintance of the composer John Edmunds and worked with him for several years. She translated song texts for him by Johann Sebastian Bach , Franz Schubert and Robert Schumann and helped him to organize several events.

In 1944 Gleason left San Francisco for Phoenix, Arizona , but came back soon after the war ended and worked in a brokerage office. She had never lost contact with other writers and organized the First Festival of Modern Poetry in San Francisco in April 1947 . Almost at the same time, Gleason also founded the San Francisco Poetry Guild , in which Robert Duncan , Kenneth Rexroth and other writers of the San Francisco Renaissance became members.

In the post-war period Gleason made the acquaintance of Zekial Marko , who she a. a. Juanita Musson introduced. With their support, she was able to organize the Six Gallery reading together with Kenneth Rexroth in 1955 , where Allen Ginsberg , among others, attracted a larger audience with the performance of his poem Howl of the Beat Generation .

Even with their own works Gleason was getting known and together with Helen Adam , Barbara Guest and Denise Levertov published Donald Allen her poetry in 1960 in the landmark anthology The New American Poetry 1945-1960 . From that time on, Gleason taught creative writing , first privately in her apartment, and later with a teaching position at San Francisco State University .

Madeline Gleason died in San Francisco at the age of 76 and was buried in the Olivet Memorial Park Cemetery in Colma .

Works (selection)

• Poems . 1944.
• The metaphysical needle . 1949.
• Concerto for Bell and Telephone . 1966.
• Selected Poems . 1973.
• Here comes everybody. New and selected poems . 1975.

literature

• Bill Morgan: The beat generation in San Francisco. A literary tour . City Lights Books, San Francisco 2003. ISBN 0-87286-417-0 .
• Jonah Raskin: American scream. Allen Ginsberg's "Howl" and the making of the beat generation . University of California Press, Berkeley 2004. ISBN 0-520-24015-4 .