A backward glance oer traveld roads : a reminiscence and a presentation of the various forms i have employed throughout my long

California poet Jack Foley has been called "a brilliant critic and a unique poet whose work energetically records the disintegration of the patriarchy" and a writer of "genuinely avant-garde poetry." His collaborative, multimedia poetry performances are both seminal and shamanic, evolving from the linguistic musical tradition of the original San Francisco Beat poets and extending their eye, ear and voice of penetrating clarity into a modern mythology. "A Backward Glance Oer Traveld Roads" - a title from Walt Whitman - is a spiritual history, an attempt to show, as Wordsworth put it many years ago, "the growth of a poets mind." Where did I begin? What forces moved me in what directions? What is the result of the effort to create art in a medium that is currently simultaneously respected, misunderstood, and discredited? What kind of poetry is possible in a dark time? "A Backward Glance Oer Traveld Roads" throws light not only on Foleys life and work, but also on the history of twentieth-century poetry, and on the efforts, successes, and failures of Modernism.