Craft: Lew Welch
Lew Welch (1926-1971?) was a poet of the Beat Generation / San Francisco Renaissance and a close friend of Gary Snyder (b. 1930). On May 23, 1971, Welch walked into the woods of the northern Sierra and was never seen again. He left a note in his car that said:
I never could make anything work out right and now I’m bretraying [sic] my friends. I can’t make anything out of it—never could. I had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used it all up. It’s all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor—use MSS at Gary’s and at Grove Press. I have $2000 in Nevada City Bank of America—use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don’t owe Allen G. anything yet nor my mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch.
Welch, per Snyder’s description, was: “handsome, talented and charismatic man who spoke eloquently on many topics.” Though he mainly worked in advertising, Welch also briefly drove a taxi (one reason for my interest in his work) after he was fired from middle-management at Montgomery Ward. He was in a long-term relationship with Magda Cregg and was stepfather to her two sons, the older of whom was the ‘80s pop star Huey Lewis. (I believe the name change to “Lewis” from “Cregg” was an homage to Welch.)
Welch’s poems are almost an amalgam of the best of his Beat compatriots: the freewheeling masculinity of Jack Kerouac, the wacky creativity of Allen Ginsberg, the Zen fortitude of Philip Whalen, and the environmental morality of Gary Snyder. But Welch’s daemonion was driven by alcoholism and self-doubt.
A later poem, written between 1969-71, “Song of the Turkey Buzzard” demonstrates most of these combinations.
