Charles Foster 1922-1967
Contents:
Selected Bibliography:
Books
- Victoria Mundi, selected poems (The Smith/, New York/Salt Lake, 1973)
- Outrider for the Lady, poems (Rainbow Resin Press, Karl Kempton, Sacramento, 1974)
- Dial Artemis, poems (Aldebaran Review/Galactic Approximation Press, John Oliver Simon, Berkeley, CA, 1975)
- Peyote Toad, poems (, Salt Lake, 1975)
Periodicals, broadsides, and anthologies:
- "The Troubled Makers" Evergreen Review, #4, 1957, Grove Press
- "The Troubled Makers" reprinted in Writers in Revolt: An anthology of the most controversial writing in the world today, edited by Terry Southern, Richard Seaver, Alexander Trocchi, Berkeley Medallion, New York, 1963
- "Genesis" Wild Dog #16, edited by Gino Clays, Ed Dorn, and Drew Wagnon, April, 1965
- "Notes from a Journal" "Ninety and Nine" and "One Hundred Years and a Day" Illuminations #1, Edited by Norman Moser, 1965
- "O Dear Lady…" and "No Name Easter Song" Out of Sight #3, edited by Gino Clays and Pamela Millward, San Francisco, August, 1966
- "Magpie 1964" Croupier, edited by James Morris, 1966, (reprinted in Black Ace, edited by Frank Rios, in 1994)
- "Form, that is the focus…" Illuminations #2, edited by Norman Moser, 1966
- "The Breakers" Illuminations #3, edited by Norman Moser, 1966
- Evergreen Review Reader, Grove Press, 1968
- "How Everything Was in the End Resolved in California" "Public Announcement" , Edited by Charles Potts, Salt Lake, 1971
- "Victoria Mundi" , edited by Charles Potts, Salt Lake, 1972
- "Doom" Litmus #12, edited by Charles Potts, Salt Lake, 1972
- "Victoria Mundi" and "How Everything Was in the End Resolved in California" in Pacific Northwestern Spiritual Poetry, edited by Charles Potts, Walla Walla, 1998
- "How Everything Was in the End Resolved in California" The California Anthology, edited by Robert Mezey, 2005
Charles Foster was born in Newton, Massachusetts (near Boston) on February 3, 1922. He was reborn in 1957 in Venice, California, after a life changing theophanic experience. He traveled widely in Mexico and the American West, being part of the Venice scene in the 50s and 60s along with Stuart Perkoff. LA in those days included Thomas McGrath and Charles Bukowski and is one of the great neglected fields of study. A heavy drinker, Foster's body apparently succumbed to cirrhosis of the liver and was found on the beach at Sonoma, California in July, 1967.
Charles Foster was born in Boston in 1922, abandoned a career in advertising in 1957 to being writing poetry, and died in 1967, forty-five years old… Foster got precious little attention while he was alive, and it is sobering to think of all the mediocrities who were winning prizes and constructing glittering careers while Foster was sitting in an old trailer on a ranch in California, writing… Foster was a poet of anger. He saw deep into the machinery of the Social Lie, he saw our world betrayed into the hands of the money-men, the time-servers and connivers, the "hi-armed fuzz" who kill Christ over and over, and he was outraged…Foster was obsessed with images of light and blindness, the light at the heart of everything, light of stars and light in human eyes, and the blindness of poor dumb creatures who seem to prefer to live in darkness, and he warned in every tone of voice he knew, hard, weary, outraged and shouting, or tersely and grimly funny… He wrote a good deal and his work is uneven but at his best, he was a eloquent as Patchen.
Western Humanities Review, Spring, 1975
