"Philip Lamantia, 1928–2005:

Literary Prodigy Influenced Beats"

Jesse Hamlin, San Francisco Chronicle

Philip Lamantia, the blazing San Francisco poet whose embrace of
Surrealism and the free flow of the imagination had a major influence on
the Beats and many other American poets, died Monday of heart failure at
his North Beach apartment. He was 77.

A San Francisco native born to Sicilian immigrants, Mr. Lamantia was a
widely read, largely self-taught literary prodigy whose visionary poems —
ecstatic, terror-filled, erotic — explored the subconscious world of
dreams and linked it to the experience of daily life.

"Philip was a visionary like Blake, and he really saw the whole world in a
grain of sand," said poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti, whose City Lights Books
published four of Mr. Lamantia's nine books from 1967 to 1997. "He was the primary transmitter of French Surrealist poetry in this
country," said Ferlinghetti, who first met Mr. Lamantia here in the early
1950s. "He was writing stream-of-consciousness Surrealist poetry, and he
had a huge influence on Allen Ginsberg. Before that, Ginsberg was writing
rather conventional poetry. It was Philip who turned him on to Surrealist
writing. Then Ginsberg wrote 'Howl.' "
That epochal poem made Ginsberg's name and set off a revolution in
American poetry and culture. Ginsberg first read it aloud at San
Francisco's Six Gallery on Oct. 13, 1955. The other four poets on the bill
that night were Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Philip Whalen and Mr.
Lamantia.

Rather than reading his own works -- his first book, "Erotic Poems," had
been published in 1946 -- Mr. Lamantia read the prose poems of his friend
John Hoffman, who had recently died in Mexico.

"Philip was one of the most beautiful poets I've ever known. He was a poet
of the imagination," said McClure, who lives in Oakland. "He was highly
original -- I'd call his poetry hyper-personal visionary Surrealism -- and
he was thrilling to be around. Everybody would sit around and listen to
him all night. The flow of his imagination was a beautiful thing. "

A man of ecstatic highs and deep, deep lows, Mr. Lamantia suffered from
depression, friends said, and had become a recluse in recent years, rarely
leaving home.

But in his younger days, he was a dashing figure who conversed brilliantly
on a wide range of subjects. An omnivorous reader, he delved into
astronomy, philosophy, history, jazz, painting, ornithology, Egyptology
and many other subjects that informed his expansive vision.

"He was very handsome, like a real Adonis," Ferlinghetti said. "He was a
brilliant talker, a nonstop associative talker like Robert Duncan (the
late San Francisco poet with whom Mr. Lamantia was associated on the
pre-Beat San Francisco poetry scene of the late 1940s and early '50s). "He
would talk in a continuous stream. One word would set him off in one
direction, and another word would get him on another trip. He was a real
polymath. And he had an encyclopedic memory."

Born in San Francisco's Excelsior District, Mr. Lamantia worked as a boy
in the old produce market on the Embarcadero, where his Sicilian-born
father was a produce broker. He began writing poetry in elementary school
and fell under the spell of Surrealism after seeing the paintings of Miro
and Dali at the old San Francisco Museum of Art on Van Ness Avenue.

He started reading the poetry of André Breton, the so-called pope of
Surrealism, and other writers in the movement. In 1943, when he was 15,
some of Mr. Lamantia's poems were published in View, a Surrealist-leaning
New York magazine. Breton gave the young poet his blessings, describing
him as "a voice that rises once in a hundred years."

Some months later, Mr. Lamantia dropped out of Balboa High School and
moved to New York City, where he lived for several years. He associated
with Breton and other exiled European artists such as Max Ernst and Yves
Tanguy, and he worked as an assistant editor of View.
Returning to San Francisco after World War II, Mr. Lamantia took courses
at UC Berkeley in medieval studies, English poetry and other subjects
while continuing to write and publish poetry. In 1949, he began traveling
the world, staying for extended periods in Mexico, Morocco and Europe.

Coming back to the United States every few years, Mr. Lamantia became part
of the underground culture blossoming on the east and west coasts. Like
other poets who felt estranged from mainstream culture in the atomic age,
"he found in the narcotic night world a kind of modern counterpart to the
gothic castle — a zone of peril to be symbolically or existentially
crossed," wrote Nancy Peters, who later married Mr. Lamantia in 1978 and
edited some of his books for City Lights. "The apocalyptic voice of
'Destroyed Works' is witness to that experience."

Published in '62 by Auerhahn Press, "Destroyed Works" was Mr. Lamantia's
fourth book. The San Francisco house had also published the poet's two
previous collections, "Narcotica" and "Ekstasis," both in 1959.

Ever searching to expand his vision, Mr. Lamantia spent time with native
peoples in the United States and Mexico in the '50s, participating in the
peyote-eating rituals of the Washoe Indians of Nevada.

The poet, who
taught for a time at San Francisco State and the San Francisco Art
Institute, also embraced Catholicism. In later years he attended the
Shrine of St. Francis in North Beach.

"He had a vision of the world that was completely unique," said Peters,
who later separated from Mr. Lamantia, but they remained good friends. She
edited three of his books for City Lights, "Becoming Visible" (1981),
"Meadowlark West" (1986) and "Bed of Sphinxes: New and Selected Poems,
1943–1993."

Andrei Codrescu, a poet and NPR commentator who knew Mr. Lamantia well,
called him "one of the great voices of our subconscious for the last 50
years.

"He was a very pure poet in the sense that he was one of the very few
American poets who continued to pursue the Surrealist investigation of
dreams and the unconscious — and he connected those explorations to civic
American life."

A memorial is pending.