Paul Metcalf was an American writer. He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley

Robert Creeley was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school's. He was close with Charles Olson, Robert Duncan, Allen Ginsberg, John Wieners and Ed Dorn. He served as the Samuel P...

, William Gass, Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry

Wendell Berry is an American man of letters, academic, cultural and economic critic, and farmer. He is a prolific author of novels, short stories, poems, and essays...

, Guy Davenport

Guy Davenport

Guy Mattison Davenport was an American writer, translator, illustrator, painter, intellectual, and teacher.-Life:...

, Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn

Howard Zinn was an American historian, academic, author, playwright, and social activist. Before and during his tenure as a political science professor at Boston University from 1964-88 he wrote more than 20 books, which included his best-selling and influential A People's History of the United...

, and Bruce Olds. His many books include Will West (1956), Genoa (1965), Patagoni (1971), Apalache (1976), The Middle Passage (1976), Zip Odes (1979), and U.S. Dept. of the Interior (1980).

He was the great-grandson of one of his major literary influences, Herman Melville

Herman Melville

Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....

.

External links

• Description of Metcalf's collection of essays, Where Do You Put the Horse?
• Transcript of an interview with Metcalf by John O'Brien of the Review of Contemporary Fiction
• Review of Metcalf's Collected Works (Coffee House Press)
• New York Times Obituary; Paul Metcalf, 81; Wrote Experimental Tales
• Coffee House Press Editors And Writers On Indie Literary Publishing; Huffington Post
• John O’Brien: The Man Who Would Ban Happy Endings; The New York Observer

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