Glen Coffield was an American poet and conscientious objector. He was born in Prescott, Arizona

Prescott, Arizona

Prescott is a city in Yavapai County, Arizona, USA. It was designated "Arizona's Christmas City" by Arizona Governor Rose Mofford in the late 1980s....

, and received a B.S. degree in education from Central Missouri State Teachers College in 1940. During World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he served in Civilian Public Service

Civilian Public Service

The Civilian Public Service provided conscientious objectors in the United States an alternative to military service during World War II...

 (CPS) Camp #7 in Magnolia, Arkansas, and then was transferred to the Camp Angel

Camp Angel

Camp Angel was Civilian Public Service camp number 56, one of many camps across the United States where conscientious objectors were given unpaid jobs of "national importance" as a substitute for World War II military service....

 CPS camp near Waldport, Oregon

Waldport, Oregon

Waldport is a city in Lincoln County, Oregon, United States. The population was 2,050 at the 2000 census. The city is located on the Alsea River and Alsea Bay, south of Newport and north of Yachats.-Geography:...

 in 1942.
Coffield is sometimes called Oregon's first hippie.

The artist Kemper Nomland

Kemper Nomland

Kemper Nomland Jr. was a modernist architect in Los Angeles, California and part of a father-son architectural team with his father Kemper Nomland. He was also a painter and printer of poetry and arts publications....

 was at Camp Angel, and attempted to capture Coffield's creativity in a painting donated to the Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon

Portland, Oregon

Portland is a city located in the Pacific Northwest, near the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers in the U.S. state of Oregon. As of the 2010 Census, it had a population of 583,776, making it the 29th most populous city in the United States...

.
Coffield's first collection of poems Ultimatum (1943) was a one-man operation since he was author, typist, designer and illustrator, as with most of his subsequent works.
His anthology Horned Moon was published by Everson's Untide Press

Untide Press

The Untide Press, founded in 1943, attempted to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format.It was founded by writer William Everson, architect and printer Kemper Nomland, actor Kermit Sheets and editor / librarian William Eshelman, in a camp of conscientious objectors in...

 in 1944. In the poem Indivisible he describes the world as more loosely strung than a nation, feeling pain more slowly "as when wild horses stampede on broken hooves".
Some of his poems were also published in the Untide Press magazine Illiterati.

After the war Coffield did some acting in San Francisco with a repertory called The Interplayers led by Kermit Sheets

Kermit Sheets

Louis Kermit Sheets was an actor, director, playwright and an artistic partner with poet James Broughton.-World War II:...

. From 1947-1954 he ran the Grundtvig Folk School at Eagle Creek in the Mount Hood

Mount Hood

Mount Hood, called Wy'east by the Multnomah tribe, is a stratovolcano in the Cascade Volcanic Arc of northern Oregon. It was formed by a subduction zone and rests in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States...

wilderness in Oregon, where he published numerous small poetry journals and newsletters. In the 1960s Coffield moved back to San Francisco, where he was severely injured in a hit and run accident. Coffield spent the rest of his life in Missouri.

Selected bibliography

• Songs for the winds 1941 - 74 pages
• Ultimatum: (from the unforgettable) Untide Press - 1943 - 10 pages
• The horned moon 1944 - 29 pages
• A pewee's note: (poems: 1944) 1946 - 16 pages
• The modern problem 1946 - 14 pages
• Poetics (a summary) 1946 - 8 pages
• The horse of summer 1946 - 26 pages
• We think too much 1948 - 22 pages
• The citadel (of the mind) 1948 - 14 pages
• The waldport dilemma: (a second look) 1948 - 12 pages
• The Grundtvig Folk School in Oregon: a creative experiment in education Free schools - 1949 - 8 pages
• The night is where you fly: poems 1949 - 35 pages
• Selected poems (1943-1950) 1951 - 56 pages
• The silent waters 1950 - 53 pages
• Three songs Rounce & Coffin Club - 1951 - 12 pages
• Love and reason Reason - 1953 - 44 pages
• Silence and slow time (a snowscape): a poem for Christmas 1953 - 8 pages
• Northwest poems 1954 - 36 pages
• Criteria for poetry 1954 - 45 pages
• The old man who liked cats: (or Abra-Ki-Dabra-Ki-Boodle-Ki-Zam) 1954 - 14 pages
• Northwest prints 1954 - 10 pages
• Homage to King Lear: (a limerick sequence in five acts) 1954 - 34 pages
• The metaphysics of wrong numbers 1955 - 22 pages
• Rational power 1955 - 39 pages
• Christmas tide, 1954-1955 1955 - 4 pages
• New age anthology of poetry 1955 - 104 pages
• Tea leaves and transit lines: poems of prophecy and technic 1956 - 14 pages
• Sea climate and other poems 1956 - 14 pages
• The Grundtvig experiment Free schools - 1957 - 58 pages
• The Grundtvig poems 1957
• The bridge editorials 1957 - 36 pages
• Bridge anthology 1957 - 22 pages
• Twelve selected poems 1958 - 12 pages
• Bay area poems 1958 - 8 pages
• Glen Coffield's art coloring book 1958 - 24 pages
• Definition of God, and other poems 1960 - 12 pages
• Creative method: technical essays 1960 - 110 pages
• Thirty poems: The return and other poems 1963 - 37 pages
• Poetry workshop: (thirty exercises in poetics) 1963 - 30 pages
• The merry-go-round: (poems) 1969 - 32 pages
• Thinking: (poems) 1975 - 30 pages