BARRY
MCKINNON
INTERVIEWS
GEORGE
STANLEY
Barry
McKinnon: I was thinking this morning that there is
a point where a young person becomes a writer or
calls himself a poet . Do you remember when
that happened with you?
George
Stanley: I can remember
when I started writing poetry, but I cannot
remember when I started calling myself a poet . I'm
not really sure if I call myself a poet now, but to
go back to that--sixteen years old I had an English
teacher who required everyone in the class to--this
is third year high school--to write poetry, and his
name is in San Francisco's
Gone, Edward Dermott
'Ned' Doyle.
B: Yes, and, "for
Gerald, much love ..."
G: That's my
brother.
B: The complete
dedication reads, "and the memory of Edward Dermott
'Ned' Doyle who taught me poetry and gave me reason
to travel north of California Street".
G: California
Street when I was growing up was the farthest north
in the city that anyone in our family would have
any reason to go.
B: Was it like a
boundary line?
G: It was kind of
like the experience of a boundary line. It runs
over Nob Hill and it isn't higher ground all the
way through the city--it was a cable car line that
ran at one point all the way from Market Street to
Presidio Avenue which is about two thirds the way
across the city and on California Street, or just
south of it ,were doctor's offices, big hospitals--
and that was one reason you might want to go to
California Street was to visit a doctor but no
other reason and I think this probably has to do
with ethnic background; that is, my family is
Irish and north of California Street would be
either rich people of English descent or it was
Chinatown and North Beach, so going north of
California Street--Doyle as I said, gave me
reasons, two reasons: one was that when I
eventually came back from the army in 1956 I went
up to North Beach which is north of California
street and that's where the poets were. And the
other was that Doyle was gay, so that appealed to
me too-- anything that was oppositional or contrary
to accepted morality was also happening in North
Beach. So that's really what I meant, but to get
back to writing poetry when I was sixteen--and all
wrote poetry and he told three of us later on that
we had some talent for writing poetry. Now one of the three was my friend
Manuel Teles and the other was a boy named John
Tsimis. Manuel was writing John T's poems for him
for money [laughter] so we can leave John out of it
. But Manuel and I had some talent. I lost track of
Manuel many many years ago. I don't know if he's
still writing poetry.
B: So literally,
your first writing came out of an assignment in
high school?
G: Came out of an
assignment, in literature, in English class. So
then I wrote poetry that year and then I stopped
and then I wrote some poems again when I was at
university in Salt Lake City and again stopped and
then I wrote some poems as a matter of fact--now
that's not quite right because in between high school and going to Salt Lake
City I was one year at the university of San
Francisco and I know I wrote there because they
were published in the University of San Francisco
literary magazine, and then at Salt Lake City I was
at the University of Utah and it's interesting
that--this is before North Beach--this is 1952 so
it's before the beatnik era began and so going to
Salt Lake City--which is one of the most repressive
cities in America, from San Francisco which is one
of the most liberal--that when I got to Salt Lake
City I found myself in the counter culture for the
first time because
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