Joel Oppenheimer

Joel Oppenheimer
Beauty and the Beast, Oppenheimer with Francine du Plessix Gray at Black Mountain College, 1951. Photograph by Jonathan Williams.
Born	February 18, 1930 Yonkers, New York
Died	October 11, 1988(1988-10-11) (aged 58)
Pen name	Jacob Hammer
Alma mater	Cornell University Black Mountain College
Genre	Poetry
Literary movement	Black Mountain poets

Joel Lester Oppenheimer (Jacob Hammer) (February 18, 1930 – October 11, 1988) was an American poet associated with both the Black Mountain poets and the New York School. He was the first director of the St. Marks Poetry Project (1966–68). Though a poet, Oppenheimer was perhaps better known for his columns in the Village Voice from 1969 to 1984.

Oppenheimer was born in Yonkers, New York, attended Cornell University for one year in 1948, spent less than one semester at the University of Chicago, and in 1950 enrolled at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. At Black Mountain, he studied with Paul Goodman and poet Charles Olson, became friends with Fielding Dawson and Ed Dorn, and worked in the school's print shop.

In his earliest poetry, Oppenheimer shows clearly the influence of William Carlos Williams, but he soon developed his own style. While at Black Mountain, Oppenheimer met and married his first wife, Rena Furlong. He left the school in January 1953 without taking a degree, eventually settling in New York and working in a print shop while continuing to write poetry.

His first publications were The Dancer (1951), as Jargon, no. 2, 1951, by The Sad Devil Press/Black Mountain College; The Dutiful Son (1956) by Jonathan Williams's Jargon Society, reprinted by LeRoi Jones's Totem Press in 1961, The Love Bit and Other Poems (1962), again with Totem. His satiric Western drama The Great American Desert was the first play produced by Robert Nichols, directed by Lawrence Kornfeld, who had been with the Living Theatre, at the Judson Poets' Theatre. It opened on November 18, 1961.