Jack Foley is a widely-published San Francisco poet and critic. Born in Neptune, New Jersey (1940), raised in Port Chester, New York, and educated at Cornell University, Foley moved to California in 1963 to attend U. C. Berkeley. By 1974, deeply influenced by Charles Olson's Maximus Poems, he had dropped out of graduate school to pursue a career as a poet and writer.
Foley is well-known throughout the Bay Area and elsewhere for his spoken-word performances -- performances which often involve "choruses" (multi-voiced pieces) presented jointly with his wife, poet Adelle Foley. Pamela Grieman wrote of Foley's book, Gershwin: "Foley's poetry teems with multifarious voices, none of which take precedence. The poet doesn't privilege one particular voice or so much as hint at one specific meaning. There are multiple possibilities of meaning...The jumble of voices that inhabit "Chorus: Gershwin" speaks of night, sleep, frost, death, fire, sexual desire, and the creation of poetry, among other things...The possibilities and resonances are endless..."
Foley's poetry has been described by Heaven Bone magazine as "evolving from the linguistic musical tradition of the original S.F. 'Beat' poet/performers and extending that eye, ear and voice of penetrating clarity into a modern mythology." Dana Gioia called Foley's poetry "that rare commodity -- genuinely avant-garde poetry...experimental poetry with depth and intelligence as well as intensity" and Michael McClure referred to Foley as "our firebrand experimentalist." Recently, Foley has worked with traditional forms, though his work there always maintains some sort of experimental edge -- as when he writes "between the lines" of other poets' poems -- and an emphasis on performance. This is his poem, "Bukowski," a response to a poem by Charles Bukowski. The words in the first, third, fifth, etc. lines are Bukowski's poem; the words in italics are by Foley. When Foley performs the poem, he speaks the Bukowski portion in his "normal" voice; he speaks the italicized words in a whisper.the mockingbird had been following the catthere was this catall summerand I only saw himmocking mocking mockingonceteasing and cocksure;when he gave athe cat crawled under rockers on porchesreadingtail flashingand burpedand said something angry to the mockingbirdat the audiencewhich I didn't understand.yesterday the cat walked calmly up the drivewayand he read this poemwith the mockingbird alive in its mouth,about a catwings fanned, beautiful wings fanned and flopping,and a birdfeathers parted like a woman's legs,and he was bothand the bird was no longer mocking,the cat andit was asking, it was prayingthe birdbut the catand he was devouringstriding down through centurieshimselfwould not listen.through the poem.I saw it crawl under a yellow carAnd I listenedwith the birdletting him dieto bargain it to another place.summer was over.Bukowski.
Since 1988, Foley has hosted a show of interviews and poetry presentations on Berkeley radio station KPFA. For a number of years, "Foley's Books," a review column, appeared weekly in the Gazebo section of the online magazine, The Alsop Review. Foley is also a contributing editor of the Berkeley journal, Poetry Flash. His poetry books, all of which feature accompanying CDs or cassette tapes, include Letters/Lights -- Words for Adelle, Gershwin, Adrift (nominated for a Northern California Book Reviewers Association award), Exiles, and (with Ivan Arguelles) New Poetry from California: Dead/Requiem. His Greatest Hits: 1974-2003 appeared from Pudding House Press -- a by-invitation-only series.
Two companion volumes of Foley's essays and interviews appeared from Pantograph Press: O Powerful Western Star and Foley's Books: California Rebels, Beats, and Radicals. O Powerful Western Star, which has the distinction of being the only book of critical essays to include a CD on which the author performs some of the work in the book, received the Artists Embassy Literary/Cultural Award 1998-2000. Foley's most recent collection of essays, The Dancer and the Dance: A Book of Distinctions, appeared from Red Hen Press in 2008. "The self of this book," Foley writes, "is not a unity but a multiplicity...Clarification is required as to how the concept of the self as multiplicity affects literary criticism, how it affects our actual reading of poems. It may be that the self we postulate as we read a poem contradicts the self we experience in the world; it is also possible that familiar poems may be experienced anew by being read in the light of multiplicity."
Foley is also the editor of ALL: A James Broughton Reader (White Crane Books, Wisdom Series, 2006), voted number one gay book of the year by AfterElton.com. Another book Foley edited, The "Fallen Western Star" Wars (Scarlet Tanager, 2001), is a compilation of responses to Dana Gioia's controversial essay, "Fallen Western Star." Foley's translations from the French include poems by Mallarme and Baudelaire as well as a selection of songs by the French songwriter, Georges Brassens. Foley's play, The Boy, the Girl, and the Piece of Chocolate, was made into a film by Alabama filmmaker Wayne Sides in 2006. Foley is currently at work on a 1,150-page time line history of California poetry from 1940 to 2005; the book will be published by Pantograph Press.
