Craft: Laura Ulewicz

Laura Ulewicz (1930—2007) was a peripheral Beat Generation poet whose poems were as fine as Robert Duncan’s, Lew Welch’s, Gary Snyder’s, Philip Whalen’s, or any one else of that world you care to name. Though she only published one book, The Inheritance (Turret Books, 1967), it is as interesting today as it ever was. The main reason she isn’t talked about in the same breath is because she was excluded from the world of men. The only two who were friendly to her were Kenneth Rexroth and Allen Ginsberg.

Ulewicz’s name is known—if it is known to anyone—because in Jack Gilbert’s first book, Views of Jeopardy (Yale University Press, 1962)—as Gilbert’s lover and muse—she is named in the book’s dedication: “To Laura Ulewicz / a kind of dragon.”

Ulewicz, “variably orbited, placed”