Lew Welch

Lew Welch’s Followers (17)

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Lew Welch


Born
in Phoenix, Arizona, The United States
August 16, 1926

Died
May 23, 1971

Genre


Lewis Barrett Welch, Jr. is an American poet associated with the Beat generation of poets, artists, and iconoclasts.

According to Aram Saroyan who wrote Genesis Angels: The Saga of Lew Welch and the Beat Generation, Welch decided to become a writer after reading Gertrude Stein's long story "Melanctha." Welch published and performed widely during the 1960s, and taught a poetry workshop as part of the University of California Extension in San Francisco from 1965 to 1970.

On May 23, 1971, he walked out of poet Gary Snyder's house in the mountains of California, carrying his 30-30 rifle and leaving behind a suicide note. His body was never found.
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Average rating: 4.15 · 640 ratings · 57 reviews · 38 distinct worksSimilar authors
Ring of Bone: Collected Poe...

4.25 avg rating — 231 ratings — published 1973 — 8 editions
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Selected Poems

4.43 avg rating — 47 ratings — published 1976 — 3 editions
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How I Work as a Poet and Ot...

4.40 avg rating — 47 ratings — published 1973 — 7 editions
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How I Read Gertrude Stein

4.27 avg rating — 22 ratings — published 1995 — 4 editions
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I Remain: The Letters of Le...

4.70 avg rating — 20 ratings — published 1980 — 3 editions
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I, Leo

4.29 avg rating — 17 ratings — published 1977
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Hermit Poems

4.77 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 1965 — 6 editions
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I Remain, Vol. 2: 1960-1971

4.36 avg rating — 14 ratings — published 1980 — 3 editions
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I Remain: The Letters of Le...

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4.67 avg rating — 6 ratings4 editions
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On Out

really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1965 — 2 editions
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More books by Lew Welch…
Quotes by Lew Welch  (?)
Quotes are added by the Goodreads community and are not verified by Goodreads. (Learn more)

“I am a Beginner. What the others are I don't really know. All I know is I am wiped out every six months or so. I die. I have died hundreds and hundreds of times. It is always the same death. I do not know what dies. Why must I always begin again and again – always the same high hopes, the identical death?”
Lew Welch, I, Leo

“Living is made up of these little things - a day to day business punctuated with things seen, seen best when we weren't looking for them, or things that just happened to us while we were walking "dully along" and that we ought to notice these things. It is very easy to bandage the eyes and tell everyone that life is dull. But I am called odd by these people because I really don't think so. I try to make the day have a THING in it, and it usually does whether I try or not. And that makes the day. Period. But I am purposeless.
I am talking of this far too seriously, but it rather hurts when I think that I was once very vulnerable to the charges that come my way. I have tried so damned hard to put a thing as simply as it appeared to me, and tried too damned hard not to let myself blow up a simple happening into a symbol of unrequited love but to leave it as it is. shit.”
Lew Welch, I Remain: The Letters of Lew Welch and the Correspondence of His Friends, Vol. 1: 1949-1960

“Christ, will I ever find someone who is not crying inside?”
Lew Welch, I Remain: The Letters of Lew Welch and the Correspondence of His Friends, Vol. 1: 1949-1960