Dick Gallup
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Dick Gallup (July 3, 1941 – January 27, 2021) was an American poet associated with the New York School.


Early life and education

Richard "Dick" John Gallup was born on July 3, 1941, in Greenfield, Massachusetts. In late 1949, the Gallup family moved to Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying a house across the street from the home of future poet
Ron Padgett Ron Padgett (born June 17, 1942) is an American poet, essayist, fiction writer, translator, and a member of the New York School (art), New York School. ''Great Balls of Fire'', Padgett's first full-length collection of poems, was published in 1969 ...
. The two boys became friends, and in 1958, while in high school, they founded (with artist and writer
Joe Brainard Joe Brainard (March 11, 1942 – May 25, 1994) was an American artist and writer associated with the New York School. His prodigious and innovative body of work included assemblages, collages, drawing, and painting, as well as designs for book ...
, also a classmate) a small literary magazine, ''The White Dove Review'', which published Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, LeRoi Jones (later Amiri Baraka), and Robert Creeley, as well as a new friend in Tulsa, the poet
Ted Berrigan Edmund Joseph Michael Berrigan Jr. (November 15, 1934 – July 4, 1983) was an American poet. Early life Berrigan was born in Providence, Rhode Island, on November 15, 1934. After high school, he spent a year at Providence College before joining ...
. In the early 1960s, Padgett, Brainard, and Berrigan moved from Tulsa to New York City while Gallup attended Tulane University. After two years at Tulane, he transferred to Columbia’s School of General Studies, where he received a BA, studying under the poet
Kenneth Koch Kenneth Koch ( ; February 27, 1925 – July 6, 2002) was an American poet, playwright, and professor, active from the 1950s until his death at age 77.) He was a prominent poet of the New York School of poetry. This was a loose group of poets inc ...
. In 1964, Gallup married Carol Clifford, with whom he had two children. Living in what became known as the East Village, Gallup and his friends took on the name jokingly bestowed upon them by
John Ashbery John Lawrence Ashbery (July 28, 1927 – September 3, 2017) was an American poet and art critic. Ashbery is considered the most influential American poet of his time. Oxford University literary critic John Bayley wrote that Ashbery "sounded, in ...
, the “Tulsa School of Poetry," a playful variation on the New York School of poetry.


Career

In the 1960s and 1970s, Gallup established himself as an important figure in the New York School of poets. He participated in the community around
The Poetry Project The Poetry Project at St. Mark's Church was founded in 1966 at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery in the East Village of Manhattan by, among others, the poet and translator Paul Blackburn. It has been a crucial venue for new and experimental poetry ...
at St. Mark's Church, where he taught a workshop in 1969-70 and gave numerous readings. He published widely in little magazines during these decades, including in ''C: A Journal of Poetry'', ''The Censored Review'', ''Lines'', ''Mother'', ''The World'', ''Big Sky'', ''Adventures in Poetry'', ''Tzarad'', and many others. In 1973, Gallup and his family moved to West Virginia, where he had been appointed the state poet-in-the-schools. He continued to teach poetry writing to children, sponsored by Teachers & Writers Collaborative in New York City and by state arts councils in New Jersey, Connecticut, Colorado, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and New York. Following these teaching stints, the family moved to Monte Rio, California, and soon after to San Francisco, where Gallup befriended poet and NPR commentator
Andrei Codrescu Andrei Codrescu (; born December 20, 1946) is a Romanian-born American poet, novelist, essayist, screenwriter, and commentator for National Public Radio. He is the winner of the Peabody Award for his film ''Road Scholar'' and the Ovid Prize for ...
. Separating from his wife, Gallup moved to Boulder to teach at
Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado, United States. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named after the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university ...
for two years, where he also served as interim director. A number of recordings of Gallup's readings and classes at Naropa are available to listen to at th
Naropa University Audio Archive
Starting in the late 1970s, Gallup began to withdraw from the poetry community. He returned to San Francisco where he drove a taxi at night, a job he continued for much of the rest of his life. During his career, he received grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fund for Poetry.


Poetry

Gallup is the author of five books of poetry, ''Hinges'' ("C" Press, 1965), ''Where I Hang My Hat'' (Harper & Row, 1970), ''Above the Tree Line'' (Big Sky Books, 1976), ''Plumbing the Depths of Folly'' (Smithereens Press, 1983), and ''Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things: New and Selected Poems'' (Coffee House Press, 2000), the pamphlet ''The Wacking of the Fruit Trees'' (Toothpaste Press, 1975), and the play ''The Bingo'' (Mother Press, 1966). His work appeared in anthologies such as ''An Anthology of New York Poets'' (1970), ''American Poetry Since 1970: Up Late'' (1987) and ''Out of This World: An Anthology of the St. Mark’s Poetry Project, 1966–1991''. Gallup also sat for portraits by
Alex Katz Alex Katz (born July 24, 1927) is an American figurative artist known for his paintings, sculptures, and printmaking, prints. Since 1951, Katz's work has been the subject of more than 200 solo exhibitions and nearly 500 group exhibitions through ...
, Joe Brainard, and George Schneeman and made collaborative art works with Brainard and Schneeman. ''The Bingo'' was performed in 1973 at Holly Solomon’s legendary 98 Greene Street Loft. A review of the play by Rich MangeIsdorff in Chicago’s alternative newspaper ''Kaleidoscope'' describes it as “already an underground classic,” a piece of theater that is “a written analog of Zappa’s ‘Let’s Make the Water Turn Black.’” Gallup's early poetry embodies the playful experimentation of his New York School peers, including examples of homophonic translation, collage, and adaptations of traditional forms like the pantoum. As Padgett has noted, the full range of Gallup's work exceeds a singular style with "its combination of graceful lyricism and everyday language, and a willingness to explore unexpected corners of the mind and yet maintain a sense of humor about it all." Similarly, Nick Sturm describes how "Gallup’s poems express a contemplative interiority and interest in descriptive vision that, as the jacket blurb for ''Where I Hang My Hat'' describes, 'exists in the oblique and lyrical light of a very personal sensitivity.'” Anne Waldman's blurb on the back cover of ''Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things'' describes Gallup as the "secret hero of the second generation New York School." Waldman continues: "Gallup’s lines, like his mind, full of sweet surprise, lift us higher, toward this kind, tremulous edge of beautiful ‘things.’ What a pleasure his jaunty wit, his sure ear, his radical American virtue.”


Works

* ''Hinges'', "C" Press (New York, NY), 1965. * ''The Bingo'', Mother Press (New York, NY), 1966. * ''Where I Hang My Hat'', Harper & Row (New York, NY), 1970. * ''The Wacking of the Fruit Trees'', Toothpaste Press (West Branch, IA), 1975. * ''Above the Tree Line'', Big Sky Books (Bolinas, CA), 1976. * ''Plumbing the Depths of Folly'', Smithereens Press (Boulder, CO), 1983. * ''Shiny Pencils at the Edge of Things: New and Selected Poems'',
Coffee House Press Coffee House Press is a nonprofit independent press based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The press’s goal is to "produce books that celebrate imagination, innovation in the craft of writing, and the many authentic voices of the American experience ...
(Minneapolis, MN), 2000.


References


External links


Dick Gallup author page at The Poetry Foundation"'The beauty of this world knocked me off my feet': The Poetry of Dick Gallup (1941-2021)" by Nick Sturm, ''The Brooklyn Rail'', February 2021.Obituary in honor of Dick Gallup by Ron Padgett, Woody Guthrie Center"Dick Gallup, Part of the 'Tulsa School of Poetry' That Thrived in NYC in the '60s & '70s, Dies at 79," ''Tulsa Public Radio'', February 18, 2021.Allen Ginsberg's introduction to a reading by Dick Gallup and John Ashbery at Naropa on June 23, 1976, ''The Allen Ginsberg Project''.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gallup, Dick American poets 1941 births 2021 deaths