Silver, Sam; Szerlip, Barbara

Original Photograph: Barbara Szerlip at First San Francisco Poetry Festival (1976)

San Francisco, CA: Sam Silver, 1976. Original Photograph. “Barbara Alexander Szerlip was in San Francisco during the 1970s having just come from a stint as a student of [Kenneth] Rexroth’s at UCSB. She lived in a cottage on his property during her senior year in college and spent much time with Rexroth, having had full access to his extraordinary library. Some mentorship, this! Which served her in good stead, as she was in my opinion the most studied and mature poet of those of my generation to appear in print and at readings…Having heard her and having attended her book launch for her early book titled Sympathetic Alphabet in 1975, her poem “Calentura” was and still remains one of my favorite poems from the renaissance days, which I published in my editorial issue in Beatitude No. 25 and then in the Generations anthology with NNP [New Native Press] in 2015…Regarding all this she says: “Perhaps all this can be thought of as having stemmed, in one form or another, from Kenneth Rexroth’s mentorship. I certainly hope that he would be proud of my efforts.”--Thomas Rain Crowe, Thomas Rain Crowe Archive, pg 80. Barbara Szerlip, a noted and beloved student of Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982), found herself proselytizing and slinging dimebags of poetry throughout the cafes, reading rooms and publishers of San Francisco for the better part of the 1970s. Much like her mentors work, Szerlip’s writing is personal, revealing, confessional without being sentimental, and is injected with a lyricism that is as compelling as it is beautiful; this stylistic voice made Szerlip not only a frequent face in the San Francisco Renaissance/Baby Beat Generation scene, but also an iconic poetic figure throughout the 70s. Offered today is an original photo, Barbara Szerlip Reads at the San Francisco Poetry Festival (1977), taken by Sam Silver. The San Francisco Poetry Festival, like most poetry-centric events in the Bay Area throughout the 60s and 70s, was the brain-child of the SSFR/BBG and its cadre of creatives. As Thomas Rain Crowe describes it: “Lawrence [Ferlinghetti] felt that San Francisco needed a major festival to put it on the international map and that the timing was right, as we had more or less proven from the overflow attendance to all our previous events…Was it successful? Most definitely…The Veteran’s Auditorium held upward of 3,000 people. On the first night we filled the auditorium to capacity. On the next night, we not only filled it to capacity but had people standing in the isles and in the foyer and up on the stage, breaking the fire code with staff at the venue calling the backstage phone, threatening to call the marshals and close down the event. Luckily, this never happened…We made a lot of money and were able to pay the poets a nice stipend, raise money for Beatitude Press, and also leave a little in the bank for future ideas and events” (Thomas Rain Crowe Archive, pg 72). The festival, being spearheaded by the likes of Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949), Lawrence Ferlinghetti (1919-2021) and Neeli Cherkovski (1945-2024), was incredibly successful and came to define an era of poetic dominance and the literary dominance of the SSFR/BBG and cemented them as one of the most important literary movements in the canon of American Literature. This photo Barbara Szerlip Reads at the San Francisco Poetry Festival shows one of the premier poets of the SSFR/BBG, Barbara Szerlip in mid read; emanating a sort of radiance, and poetic zeal as the background is completely encased in darkness. Almost as if Szerlip and the reading of her arcane poetry are the only things that exist amongst a void of vanta-black nothingness. Although very little information is available on Sam Silver, it's safe to assume that he was one of several photographer-friends Crowe had in his Ginsbergian Rolodex that he employed or invited to capture the Renaissance action. From the archive of Thomas Rain Crowe (b. 1949), the legendary American poet and co-authorial founder of the Second San Francisco Renaissance. For more information on the Thomas Rain Crowe archive (assembled & curated by Third Mind Books), see our book Starting From San Francisco: Thomas Rain Crowe in Conversation with Third Mind Books (item #3071) & the catalog for the Crowe archive (see item #1010), which contains several excerpts and quotations from the book as well as a full listing of the archive’s contents, which are now being offered for sale individually on the Third Mind Books site. Original photograph (approx 10” x 8” including margins). On verso, in thin blue ink is an inscription (presumably in Silver’s hand) reads: “Barbara Szerlip / SF Poetry Fest, 1976.” As well as a faded blue stamp that reads: “Photo Copyright / Sam Silver / P.O. Box 2001 / Berkeley, Calif. 94702 / 415-848-0199 / One Time Use Only Unless / Otherwise Specified.” In relatively Very fine condition with minor wear to fine edges, slight smudging and scratching to front and back, and light streaking/staining at back. Very Fine. [Item #7886]

Price: $90.00