LAMANTIA, Philip 1927–2005

OBITUARY NOTICE—See index for CA sketch: Born October 23, 1927, in San Francisco, CA; died of heart failure March 7, 2005, in San Francisco, CA. Author. Lamantia was a respected surrealist and mystic poet associated with the Beat generation. Though he had a promising start as a young poet, drugs and depression, as well as an unwillingness to promote his work, relegated Lamantia to relative obscurity among the Beats. He started writing verses in high school, and found early success at age sixteen when one of his poems appeared in the magazine View; not long afterwards, another piece by the poet was accepted and printed in the journal VVV. Strongly influenced at a young age by surrealist painters such as Joan Miro and Salvador Dali, whose works he had a chance to see at the San Francisco Museum of Art, Lamantia was more interested in pursuing the literary life than staying in school. He dropped out of high school to work as an assistant editor for View in New York City, where he met such literary figures as Andre Breton. Returning to California in 1947, he attended the University of California at Berkeley for two years, but dropped out again before completing his degree. It was at this time that Beat poets such as Allen Ginsburg were making their debut, and Lamantia befriended Ginsburg and other Beat writers, including Jack Kerouac. He worked on his poetry and participated in the famous 1955 live reading at the Sixth Gallery in San Francisco that many consider the official launch of the Beat movement. Having by this time published the collections Erotic Poems (1946), Ekstasis (1959), and Destroyed Works: Hypodermic Light, Mantic Notebook, till Poems, Spansule (1962), Lamantia established himself as a surrealist who was also preoccupied with religion and mysticism. A recluse, he shied away from publicity and often disappeared from the literary limelight altogether. At one point, he lived with the Cora Indians and experimented with peyote in an effort to get in touch with his spirituality. Drugs, unfortunately, were a long-lasting bane for the poet, and this, compounded by fits of depression, severely limited his output. Eventually, however, he managed to get off drugs, finding steady work in 1978 as a lecturer at the San Francisco Art Institute. Among his other collections are Selected Poems: 1943–1966 (1967), Becoming Visible (1981), and Bed of Sphinxes (1997).

OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Chicago Tribune, March 20, 2005, section 4, p. 9.

Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2005, p. B11.

New York Times, March 21, 2005, p. A16.