Legendary Poet and Activist Jack Hirschman has Passed Away

Photo by Christopher Michel via wikipedia

Sad news broke today that legendary poet and activist Jack Hirschman has passed away at 87 years old. This is a particularly heavy blow to the San Francisco arts community as Hirschman is the third former SF Poet Laureate to pass away in 2021. Lawrence Ferlinghetti passed away in February and Janice Mirikitani died in July.

While news of Hirschman’s death spread on Instagram and Facebook Sunday morning, it was confirmed to me via FB messenger this afternoon by his friend, poet and painter Francisco Orrego. Hirshman purportedly passed peacefully in his sleep and is survived by his wife, poet and artist Agneta Falk.

Jack Hirschman accomplished a lot in his time on Earth. Among his many accomplishments, besides previously being the Poet Laureate of San Francisco, is the fact that he wrote more than 50 volumes of poetry and essays. His biography on the City Lights Books website reads:

Jack Hirschman is a San Francisco poet, translator, and editor. His powerfully eloquent voice set the tone for political poetry in this country many years ago. Since leaving a teaching career in the ’60s, Hirschman has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, “America’s most important living poet.” He is the author of numerous books of poetry, plus some 45 translations from a half a dozen languages, as well as the editor of anthologies and journals. Among his many volumes of poetry are Endless Threshold, The Xibalba Arcane, and Lyripol (City Lights, 1976).

While I have a number of fond memories of seeing Jack holding court around a big table full of poets, artists, and weirdos at Specs, my favorite memory is of having him on the San Francisco pilot for my travel TV show Young, Broke & Beautiful. He is the perfect embodiment of a life devoted to asking big questions and delivery wise art. Check it out below:

I have been a fan of Jack’s work for many years, but of all the stuff he wrote, my favorite piece may not actually be in any of his books. It’s a poem written for Lawrence Ferlinghetti called “The Ferlinghetti Arcane” that I heard Jack read at a Litquake event honoring Ferlinghetti in his 90th year back in 2010. The event was spectacular and had everyone from Patti Smith to Steve Earl to Tom Waits playing songs in honor of Ferlinghetti, but it was Jack Hirschman and his poem that stole the show.

Photo of Jack’s wonderfully expressive face by Marco Cinque.

Because I love the poem so much, Jack emailed it to me a few years ago and I thought I’d share it with you below. It’s a beautiful, tender piece of art that shows the love and admiration that existed between these two giants of poetry for over 50 years:

The Ferlinghetti Arcane

Caro compagno, let’s see,how many years since wefirst touched base?

Fifty-eight, I believe (unless AlZheimer’s already begunplaying tricks on me):

You’d come east earlyin ’61, riding the crestof the Beat wave Jack

and Allen were out theredrumming on as a NewAmerican Poetry,

but you’d already beeninternationaled inboth Atlantic and

Pacific ocean theaters,

chasing submarinesin the War, and after

North Carolina U. onthe GI Bill, getting

your PhD in Paris

at the Sorbonne.That’s one of thesynharmonies always

reverberant between us:you the consummateconsonant and vowel

uttered, and I the samevowel at the end ofthe nextmsyllable but

only an unsoundedecho barely heard,still being in the university.

You’d gotten your degree and got out of it early on, and I gotta hand it to you,you never did go back to boujyville but stayed as independent as you could,creating the first paperback bookstore in the land, opening a bunch of doors so thatworlds of peoples could realize San Francisco as one of the most priceless cities on the planet,still a city small town like a kid at a window somewhere dreamed of, way back when.And of course got into trouble with the law after you published Ginsberg’s Howl, becomingactivist poet-publisher in defense of language, your own poetic voice with its liltingwhine of a drawl, distinctive in its way, memorable and therefore imitable.Ah, fratello, you shouldhave been at those manytables in Vesuvio’s, Specs

and the Caffe Trieste when yourpoet-biographer Neeli Cherkovskihad us all doubling over,

as you would have also,at his almost perfect,always slightly envious,

but ever affectionateimpersonation of you.Because you already werea legend by the ‘70s,

encircled by a transparentbut unbreakable wallof image with a capitol “I”,

which only Jack and Allenotherwise possessed.Populist in poem, paint and

motion, you critiqued my workfor being too arcane and esoteric,while you stole from all the poets

you loved, giving their phrasesnew contexts. A master huskerof American corn, ironic

deconstructivist of the rhythmsof patriotic cliché, you hada dream and would not go gentle

into that war-zone. Even afterI joined the CLP in 1980and you’d be chuckling calling me

black Jack Stalinski, till the USSRfell under the U.S. threatsa decade later e l’Italia cominciava

ad entrare nelle nostre vite fisicamente e poeticamente, we kept that synharmonic

glyph of friendship intactthrough the editions of Artaud,the death of my son David,

your populist manifesto, eruptionsof Central American poetrythat the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade

translated, which you published forthat ongoing cause of liberation. If therewere any brushes between us, they were paint.

These later years, this millennial decade when we’ve become closerout of brotherly need in a time of great anti-semitismagainst salaam alekem as well; and with Allen gone, who was a light—and also I imagine a heavy—cargo for you, we know there’s no Godto judge or forgive us, there’s only this singing to life whatcomes from the human immensity of Death. And that’s why, puttinginto the computer file of the Revolutionary Poets Brigade Anthology,“At Sea”, the finest poem you’ve ever written—and you wrote itat the age of 90! —I have a sense of the greatness of the victoryover Time and Despair an authentically true poetry embodies.So write-on, young timer, you who opposed the wars in Vietnam,the Gulf, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.Write on, first-baseman in your ninth decade, with legs still able togive my vodka-leaden ones a run for the bases.“Well, sure, because I ride my bicycle every chance I get.”To see you a few days ago in your Francisco St. flat after a bout withStaph Infection, who drilled you one in your heart-socketwhen they were fitting a pacemaker in, though the antibiotics make youtired your complexion’s still rosy, and I know all you wanna do is get upand go down-stairs and drive to your China Basin studio where aloneyou never are.