Jack Foley (poet)

Jack Foley is an American poet living in Oakland, California.

Jack Foley is a widely published San Francisco poet and critic. Born in Neptune, New Jersey (1940), raised in Port Chester, New York, and educated at Cornell University, Foley moved to California in 1963 to attend U. C. Berkeley. By 1974, deeply influenced by Charles Olson's Maximus Poems, he had dropped out of graduate school to pursue a career as a poet and writer.

Foley is well known throughout the Bay Area and elsewhere for his spoken-word performances—performances which often involve "choruses" (multi-voiced pieces) presented jointly with his wife, poet Adelle Foley. Pamela Grieman wrote of Foley's book, Gershwin:

"Foley's poetry teems with multifarious voices, none of which take precedence. The poet doesn't privilege one particular voice or so much as hint at one specific meaning. There are multiple possibilities of meaning...The jumble of voices that inhabit "Chorus: Gershwin" speaks of night, sleep, frost, death, fire, sexual desire, and the creation of poetry, among other things...The possibilities and resonances are endless..."

Foley's poetry has been described by Heaven Bone magazine as "evolving from the linguistic musical tradition of the original S.F. 'Beat' poet/performers and extending that eye, ear and voice of penetrating clarity into a modern mythology." Dana Gioia called Foley's poetry "that rare commodity -- genuinely avant-garde poetry...experimental poetry with depth and intelligence as well as intensity" and Michael McClure referred to Foley as "our firebrand experimentalist." Recently, Foley has worked with traditional forms, though his work there always maintains some sort of experimental edge—as when he writes "between the lines" of other poets' poems—and an emphasis on performance. This is his poem, "Bukowski," a response to a poem by Charles Bukowski. The words in the first, third, fifth, etc. lines are Bukowski's poem; the words in italics are by Foley. When Foley performs the poem, he speaks the Bukowski portion in his "normal" voice; he speaks the italicized words in a whisper.

the mockingbird had been following the cat
there was this cat
all summer
and I only saw him
mocking mocking mocking
once
teasing and cocksure;
when he gave a
the cat crawled under rockers on porches
reading
tail flashing
and burped
and said something angry to the mockingbird
at the audience
which I didn't understand.

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Wikipedia