Poets

Born October 29, 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio, d. a. levy (as he chose to scribe his name) achieved both fame and notoriety in his brief career as a non-comformist, people's poet, pamphleteer, and counter-cultural icon. He published no books commercially while he was living, yet his "beat" poem, "Suburban Monestary Death Poem" (which he was most famous for) received critical acclaim. His influences were the European Surrelaits but more often than not, levy wrote like the "beat poets" of the fifties and sixties. It was easy to see elements of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, and Neal Cassidy in his poetry.


Levy was the son of a Cleveland shoe salesman, and graduated from high school in 1960. Soon after graduation he joined the U.S. Navy, and was discharged in less than a year, diaignoised as being a "manic depressiant". For several years he was a nomad of sorts, wandering about the country and Mexico. In 1963 in Mexico, levy discovered that he was a poet. He made this statement; "... in June 1963, i became a poet ... a man stopped hating me because i was an American and listened to me because i was a poet - it left me awed to receive for a few moments the respect my country had denied me."



levy made it his mission to enlighten the sub-culture in Cleveland, and created the Renegade Press, feverishly working 16 to 18 hour a day to publish booklets and pass them out to anyone he would meet on the street. He was also known to read to strangers, whether the..