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Steve Abbott (December 21, 1943 - December 2, 1992) was a Nebraska-born poet, author, cartoonist and critic of
primarily LGBT literature. He was also a highly regarded editor. Abbott edited
the Bay Area periodical Poetry Flash for many years and the influential SOUP
Magazine. In SOUP, he coined the term "New Narrative" to describe the work of
Bay Area writers Robert Gluck and
Bruce Boone and, with Boone, he organized
the historic Left/Write conference in 1981. He was also a single father and
many of his early poems reflected on his relationship with his young daughter.
In 2013 Alysia Abbott published Fairyland: A Memoir of My Father.
Abbott died of AIDS in San Francisco in 1992.
Steve Abbott was raised in Lincoln, Nebraska, where he later studied
literature at the University of Nebraska. Abbott dabbled in poetry, but
eventually he stopped because his university studies did not encourage this.
After graduating in 1967, he went to a Benedictine monastery for two years.
Abbott then left the monastery, which he found corrupt, and drifted around
France with a wealthy English friend.
By 1971, he had married and moved to Atlanta, where he began graduate
studies at Emory University. In Atlanta he lived in a commune, had a daughter,
and became involved in the civil rights and antiwar movements. With his wife's
encouragement, Abbott "came out" and became involved in the gay liberation
movement. In 1972, his wife was killed in a car accident. The same year Abbott
also lost his first gay lover, who was killed by an AWOL marine.
Abbott started to write again after he and his daughter moved to San
Francisco in 1973, where he was introduced to the poetry of
Jack Spicer.
Spicer's work showed Abbott that poetry was a way to get in touch with his gay
identity. Abbott said that it was like being reborn. Poetry was his raison
d'etre.
Photo by
Robert Giard, Rights Notice: Copyright Jonathan G. Silin (jsilin@optonline.net)
1666 Page St, San Francisco, CA
.JPG)
545 Ashbury St, San Francisco, CA
The first poet he admired was Aaron Shurin. Shurin introduced Abbott to
Robert
Duncan's poem "Torso", which is about the poet's feelings for his lovers.
Abbott was deeply moved and responded by writing a poem called "Wrecked
Hearts". The poem was later to become the title poem to his first book of
poetry, which he self-published in 1978. His second collection of poetry,
Transmuting Gold, was published in the same year.
In 1979 Steve Abbott
began to establish a reputation for himself both as a poet and as a critic. He
founded Poetry Flash, a monthly poetry magazine that showcased the San
Francisco Beat poetry scene. Shortly thereafter, however, Abbott began reading
the work of Dennis Cooper, Kathy Acker, and other writers who excited him more
than the Beat poets. Their writing, which grew from the avant-garde poetry and
art scenes of San Francisco and New York, prompted Abbott to start Soup
magazine in 1980 to showcase their work. Abbott later wrote about this growing
group of writers called the "New Narrative Movement" in an article in Soup, an
article that was subsequently published in his collection of essays, View Askew.
This new narrative writing, which Abbott had characterized as "speaking to
and creating community" while agonizing over those responsabilities and as
employing "deconstructive writing techniques and popular culture to show how
personality is constructed" (a letter to the author dated 10 February 1991),
became influential in Abbott's subsequent works. After publishing his last
collection of poetry,
Stretching
the Agape Bra, he started to write a pastiche-style prose, first
introduced to him by the work of Kathy Acker. Like other new narrative
writing, Abbott's fiction arised from a grid of autobiographical snippets.
During the 1980s he also wrote essays and book reviews, as well as
conducted interviews for The Advocate and The James White Review. Abbott's
work had also been published in numerous gay 'zines like Homocore and the Dear
World. Abbott had published two chapbooks,
Lives of
the Poets and
Skinny
Trip to a Far Place, and a novel,
Holy
Terror. An excerpt from his novel,
The Lizard
Club, appeared in Dennis Cooper's anthology, Discontents. His work also
appeared in several anthologies including Homeless, not Helpless, An Ear of
the Ground, and Men Confront Pornography.
Steve Abbott's collection of
essays,
View Askew, could be seen as his best work. The book's informal essays are
often as much about him and his life in San Francisco as they are about their
subjects. In approach
View Askew
is similar to his novels. However, Abbott here explicitly addressed his
questions and concerns about art, life and community.
In that book,
Abbott also revealed his HIV-positive status in the last section of the
epilogue, where he recounted caring for a friend with AIDS:
Because I'm antibody positive, I know I'll be in J.D.'s position myself
someday - still alive but fading with little control of body and mind. We
all die differently, just as well all live differently. I don't know what
it will be like for me but I'm no longer afraid. I still feel angry,
frustrated or self-pitying sometimes - often over the most trivial
incidents - but when I'm with J.D. these feelings drop away. And I'm
filled with such a profound gratitude to be alive, to be Gay and to have
the friends I have and have had that I cannot explain it.
My published books:
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