How I Work as a Poet and Other Essays

by Lew Welch

Welch's talk on his practice as a poet, plus his prose writings.

Genres: Poetry, Essays

106 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1973

About the author

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.

Reviews

[Richard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lew Welch annoys me probably more than any other person I have never met. He is rude, dismissive, doctrinaire, and conceited. Much of what he has to say about poets and poetries other than those he knew and those he formulated himself is absurd and demonstrably untrue. He is tiresome about Westerners vs. Easterners (Easterners are all zenny and wise and so on, while Westerners are all slobs without a thought in their heads - standard beat/hippy/leftist doctrine nowso old it's moldy) as well as "the Academy". Yet he was deeply serious about writing poetry and very smart about it (within his sealed world) and there is much of value here for anyone else serious about poetry. He also wrote some fine poems.

I think he was also bi-polar, a condition not understood during his lifetime and no doubt a cause of his suicide.

[Mat · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, this is a nice collection of poet Lew Welch's prose.
Many of the essays are in fact transcriptions of talks that Welch gave during the 60s and early 70s before he took off into the wilderness, in a fit of depression, just with his .22, never to be seen again. We assume he commit suicide and wanted to feed his body to the birds (based on one of his final poems); and what a way to go out too, but his body has never been found.

A previous reviewer said that he found Welch annoying and at times I can see what he means - to me, he comes across as preachy but hip, if that makes sense. He appears to have had a good sense of humour, and looks like someone who probably would have laughed at himself, as much as at anybody else.

What struck me most while reading this book is how much of a hippie Lew Welch was, although he was also undoubtedly a beat. He is one of those few artists, like Richard Brautigan (about whom he writes a review in this book), who is a bit of both (although Brautigan would have scoffed at being called either).

Although he was obviously a bit of a 'tortured artist' type, Lew Welch was undoubtedly a brilliant poet at times. Just check out some of his gems like "Ring of Bone" or "The Basic Con" and tell me that's not good poetry. His poetry might come across as prosy to some but it has a definite rhythm and attention to sound in it, which shows the hallmarks of his mentor, William Carlos Williams. The only thing I don't like about Lew Welch is his fondness for Gertrude Stein, although I must say, in all honesty, after reading this book, Welch has convinced me to give Stein another chance. (Except for The Making of Americans - one of the very few books I've seriously wanted to pour oil all over it and burn the minute I finished it....)

I did not like the short plays or the 'leather prunes' as he calls them, in this book. They reminded me of McClure's weak plays (admittedly, McClure did write some good plays).

I really loved the final two short stories he wrote, which I believe were failed or abandoned attempts at writing a novel. The last story in the book, "The Late Urban Love of Peter Held" is a great short sad but poignant story that I thought could be turned into a nice short film.

Welch is undoubtedly extremely talented, especially at poetry, and as this collection How I Work as a Poet and Other Essays shows, sometimes very good at prose too, because he speaks in everyday language, or what he would call 'the American idiom'. I think it would be okay to start here, if you are new to Welch's work (and there isn't a lot that has survived as he disappeared when he was 44), but make sure you check out his collected poems, Ring of Bone - THAT book is full of sheer poetic treasure, that glints and sparkles on every page.

A strong four stars. Thank you Lew - you are well-missed. I get the impression that you were a deeply troubled, conflicted but humorous and beautiful human being. I can see why Kerouac loved you as well. (Note: One of the main characters of Kerouac's stream-of-consciousness second-final great novel, Big Sur, [the final great novel, in my opinion, Kerouac wrote, was Vanity of Duluoz] who goes by the name of 'Dave Wain' is based on Lew Welch and the times he had with Jack).

[Brandon Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Once, on the way to Oregon, I stopped at a California winery to get free wine from the tasting room. Just at that time a tour was starting so I decided to go along. A young man of about 23 was the guide and began that strange kind of language guides use, almost a chant: “And on the left a 1,500-gallon redwood barrel containing Burgundy kept always at the temperature of” and then he said “Whose kid is that?”

The force of whose kid is that caused everyone to pay attention to the real moment we were all in. A small child was about to fall in a very deep vat of wine. I vowed, at that moment, that every statement in my poems should at least have the force of “whose kid is that.” It is an impossible standard, but a good one. Few really bad lines can stand against it.

The guide was chanting remembered lines to a vapid audience. The distance between his Mind, our Minds, and the subject of wine-making simply was not being bridged. But the endangered child called words to his mind which were immediate and un-premeditated—it was organic, as a leap would be if one were frightened by a truck.”

-Excerpt from "Language is Speech"

[Meg · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a little gem of a book. Welch's "Language is Speech," which I first read in the new edition of Ring of Bone that came out in 2012, is also included here, and still feels like it has something to teach me about what it means to be a listener to and a user of language—language, not just "the written word" as we often call it, and what Welch might think of as the type of writing that comes from spending too much time in libraries and not enough out among people.
The treasure of this collection is the transcription of a talk he gave at Reed ("How I Work As a Poet") in which one really does get a sense of what he is trying to do, and all the musicality at play. His argument on the need to take poets literally is both apt and hilarious.
My favorite piece, though, might be the short review of On Bear's Head, "Philip Whalen as Yellowstone National Park." If that doesn't get you reading both Whalen and Welch, well, what are you messing around with poetry for anyhow?

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

A nice window into the mind of Welch. As he says, though, "language is speech" and "anything else is a translation", so it would be ideal to see him read these essays in person (if we can follow the lost trail in the Sierras). The major essay here comes close: a transcript of a live lecture given at Reed College (missing only, as Welch has pointed out, "gestures and the face").