WAVING TO NORMAL
    BEDOUIN-KIN
    BARBARIC
    A GLANCE

Jack Marshall was born in 1936 in Brooklyn, New York; after graduating from public high school, worked in the New York garment district, then traveled in the Mid-West and South, taking various odd jobs along the way. At 19, shipped out as a deckhand on a Norwegian freighter to West Africa. Returned to New York, worked on 42nd Street, attended night classes in poetry with Stanley Kunitz and Robert Lowell, and moved to the Lower East Side taking part in the growing poetry scene there. Married, then in 1968 moved with family to San Francisco. First book, "The Darkest Continent" published in 1967 by Donald Phelps's For Now Press; followed by "Bearings" (Harper & Row, 1970) and "Floats" (Cedar Creek Press, 1971). Was invited to teach in the Iowa Writer's Workshop from 1969-1971; then at the U.S. International University in San Diego, 1972-1974. Returned to San Francisco; "Bits of Thirst" published by Blue Wind Press, 1976; "Arriving on the Playing Fields of Paradise" (Jazz Press, 1983), winner of the Bay Area Book Reviewers Award; the next three books published by Coffee House Press: "Arabian Nights" (1987); "Sesame" (1993), winner of PEN West Award and finalist for National Book Critics Circle Award; and "Millennium Fever" (1996). "Chaos Comics," a chapbook, published by Pennywhistle Press, 1994. "Gorgeous Chaos; New & Selected Poems" will appear from Coffee House Press late fall 2002. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

All poems copyright © 2002 Jack Marshall. All rights reservered.
Photograph by Naomi Schwartz.