Bruce Boyd — Collected Poems
Bruce Boyd moved through the Berkeley Renaissance, Jack Spicer’s San Francisco circle, and Venice West without settling into any one group’s story. A philosophy graduate who was remembered as “our Zen poet,” he wrote tidal lyrics, erotic songs, Buddhist meditations, philosophical arguments, comic pageants, and long spatial sequences in which thought seems to change direction while it is being spoken. His poems appeared in Evergreen Review, Beatitude, J, Yūgen, The Floating Bear, The Mendicant, Donald Allen’s The New American Poetry, and Writing 3, but no book appeared during his lifetime. Friends remembered a tall, elusive poet moving between Bay Area and Los Angeles communities; archival records now supply the life’s basic outline and correct the birth date repeated in some later accounts. This edition resets every verified print work in the project archive, including the complete Toward Morning, Canticles for the Hours: Prime, Thread, and Flowerpot Sutra. It preserves Boyd’s hard line breaks and changing indents within a six-by-nine-inch page, corrects unmistakable transcription damage, and separately documents poems heard on his surviving 1958 recording whose texts cannot yet be verified in print.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Bibliography
Boyd, Bruce. “Aubade.” Evergreen Review, vol. 2, no. 6, autumn 1958, p. 57.
———. “After Midnight.” J, no. 1, 1959.
———. “Introduction,” “Proem,” “Toward Morning (Some Apotropeia Instead of an Alba),” and “Envoy, with Angelic Orders.” J, no. 3, 1959.
———. “This Is What the Watchbird Sings, Who Perches in the Lovetree,” “Sanctuary,” and “Venice Recalled.” The New American Poetry, 1945–1960, edited by Donald Allen. Grove Press, 1960, pp. 158–60.
———. “Summer Nightmusic,” “This Is How the Wind Sings, Lover, on the Beach,” “A Quarrel of Minstrels,” “Water,” “Song,” and “Poem.” Yūgen, vol. 7, 1961.
———. Canticles for the Hours: Prime and Thread. The Floating Bear, no. 15, 1961.
———. Flowerpot Sutra and “Scratching.” The Mendicant, vol. 1, autumn 1961.
———. “NOW.” Writing 3: 12 Poets & 1 Painter, edited by Donald Allen. Four Seasons Foundation, 1964, p. 32.
———. “Introduction.” Adventures in Poetry, vol. 11, spring 1974. Reprint of the prose opening of Toward Morning.
———. Toward Morning: Selected Poems. Edited by Bill Mohr. Magra Books, 2026. ISBN 979-8-9926955-1-9.
Primack, Ronald, Jack Spicer, Bruce Boyd, and George Stanley. “Epithalamium.” Beatitude, no. 6, 1959.