After his graduation from Black Mountain College, Michael Rumaker made his way to the post-Howl, pre-Stonewall gay literary milieu of San Francisco, where he entered the circle of Robert Duncan. Contrasting Duncan's daringly frank homosexuality with Rumaker's own then-closeted life, Robert Duncan in San Francisco conjures up with harrowing detail an era of police prosecution of a clandestine gay community struggling to survive in the otherwise "open city" of San Francisco.
This expanded edition includes a selection of previously unpublished letters between Rumaker and Duncan, and an interview conducted for this edition, in which Rumaker provides further reflections on the poet and the period.
"This is a wonderfully revealing account of a series of lifechanging collisions between a young writer (Rumaker), an older writer (Duncan), a still older mentor for both (Charles Olson), a city (San Francisco), and an important era in American literature (the 1950s), when it was being turned upside down by these individuals and their friends. It's also a tender and intelligent account of a young man's coming to grips with being gay in the midst of this upheaval. Much more than memoir; it's history."—Russell Banks, author of Cloudsplitter
Robert Duncan in San Francisco offers a surprising portrait of a mentor in all his witty, wicked, luminous, and vulnerable complexity. Straddling the lines of memoir and cultural history, Michael Rumaker gives a rare and delightful view of Duncan at home in the gay community while also documenting the struggles of that community in 1950s America."—Lisa Jarnot, author of Robert Duncan, The Ambassador from Venus
"In this fine memoir of this 16 months in San Francisco, Rumaker learns many lessons about being at home with who he is, in what he calls 'Robert's city.'"—Joanne Kyger, About Now: Collected Poems
Michael Rumaker has written several novels and short story collections, as well as the memoir Black Mountain Days. He was born in Philadelphia and is a graduate of Black Mountain College—where Duncan served as his outside thesis advisor—and Columbia University. He taught at City University of New York and the New School for Social Research.
Robert Duncan (1919-1988) was an American poet and well-known as a key figure in the San Francisco Renaissance. City Lights published a book of his poetry titled Selected Poems.

Robert Duncan in San Francisco (City Lights/Grey Fox)

Biographies & Memoirs

Rumaker, Michael

Arts & Literature

City Lights Publishers

Michael Rumaker centers his memoir in 1957 San Francisco, where many fellow Black Mountain students are migrating since the close of the College. Allen Ginsberg, after the notorious readings of his poem HOWL in 1956, has departed for Tangier, but the young Beats are invading North Beach and a dope scene is blooming. The Place is where the poets and painters hang out and Jack Spicer directs the Blabbermouth nights. This is the summer of the famous HOWL trial where Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Shigeyoshi Murao, of City Lights, are prosecuted for selling Allen Ginsberg's book. Meanwhile the police are stepping up their hassling of hippies on upper Grant Avenue and arresting gays on Polk Street. Rumaker positions his in-depth, eloquent portrait of Robert Duncan against this turbulent city background, and contrasts Robert's open gay life as a poet with his own painful covert sexuality.

Robert Duncan in San Francisco

Grey Fox Press

The dates are important to mention in order to put the open sensuality in the novel inperspective., that is, pre-AIDS, when male-male sexuality was being liberated from itscenturies-long subterranean hiddenness into a visibility if only, in this instance, of thetwilit and claustrophobic “freedom” of a bath house.  (M.R. from the intro)The baths will never be a footnote to our history but rather an integral part of it and what is interestingis that many men who would never set foot in a gay bar would visit the bathhouses. Communicationfor the most part was non verbal and sex ruled. This was our past and long before the internet and email,for many this is how and where we met.   Amos LassenRumaker an original prose creator of great shamed heroic sensitivity has taken up his penagain to describe a hidden psychological & physical reality. As an old sex fiend from thebaths myself I’m grateful & relieved to see thru his eyes and feel thru his body.      Allen GinsbergRumaker gives us something much more than a well-crafted elaboration on a special moment in time.He looks beyond the twelve hours his character spends at the baths. He imagines man’s lusty tribalpast reawakened into being by a messy mass orgy and offers some possible futures for eros in a culturethat seems determined to harness it for any purpose other than pleasure and rob it of its vitality. A Dayand a Night in the Baths is smart, curious, unsentimental, and yet quite endearing. This reprinted editionis a welcome reminder that even in the era of AIDS, where caution and precaution are advisable,being especially promiscuous can be liberating, instructive, beautiful, invigorating, thrilling, andneed not be tagged as addictive, compulsive behavior.        Rob Stephenson, author of Passes Through

A Day and a Night at the Baths

LGBTQ+ Books

Literature & Fiction

My First Satyrnalia

United States

Grey Fox Pr

From cover: "Michael Rumaker is our guide on this winter tour of Greenwich village. He takes us down busy Christopher Street... Then we travel across town to a lower Eastside loft to join in a Fairy Circle's celebration of the Winter Solstice, with chant and dance, wine and grass", etc.

Gringos and Other Stories: A New Edition

Short Stories & Anthologies

North Carolina Wesleyan

New York Times “111 Held in St. Patrick’s AIDS Protest” December 11, 1989 While some 4,500 people demonstrated outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral yesterday, several dozen disrupted the Mass at 10:15 A.M. to protest John Cardinal O’Connor’s recent statements on abortion, homosexuality and AIDS. Some of the protesters chained themselves to pews inside the cathedral, while others shouted or lay in aisles. The police said 111 people were arrested, including 43 inside the church. Many of the protesters were carried out on stretchers after refusing to stand up. Dozens of protesters blocked traffic on Fifth Avenue by lying in the street.   Michael Rumaker’s witty fable blends the marvelous and the murderous as it takes us on a grown-up children’s crusade across Manhattan. The object of their pilgrimage—to destroy the malefactors of the Church. The result—one grand surprise after another. The Canterbury Tales in reverse for the furious queer 80’s and 90’s.

To Kill a Cardinal

Small Pr Distribution

In Black Mountain Days, Michael Rumaker has written a touching, poetic memoir of Black Mountain College from 1952 to 1956. What were for the college its final four years were for Rumaker a sequence of journeys of creative and personal discovery that

Black Mountain Days

Black Mountain College Museum & art

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rumaker, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Rumaker, Michael

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Rumaker, Michael. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Robert Duncan in San Francisco (City Lights/Grey Fox)

Robert Duncan in San Francisco

A Day and a Night at the Baths

A Day and a Night at the Baths

My First Satyrnalia

My First Satyrnalia

Gringos and Other Stories: A New Edition

Gringos and Other Stories: A New Edition

To Kill a Cardinal

Black Mountain Days