He attended Horace Mann School, and graduated in 1970 from Yale College, where he became friends with poets Steve Benson, Kit Robinson, Rodger Kamenetz, and Alex Smith and studied literature with A. Bartlett Giamatti and Harold Bloom and poetry with Ted Berrigan, Peter Schjeldahl, and Bill Berkson.
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He continued his association with the New York School poets and the St. Mark's Poetry Project for several years, and moved to San Francisco in 1976, where through Benson and Robinson he met other writers—such as Rae Armantrout, Carla Harryman, Lyn Hejinian, Tom Mandel, Ted Pearson, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, and Barrett Watten -- who would soon become known as the San Francisco Language poets.
Alan Moore | Alan Lomax | Alan Alda | Alan Jackson | Alan Shearer | Alan Turing | Alan Greenspan | Alan Autry | Alan Ayckbourn | Alan Jay Lerner | Alan Ridout | Alan Bennett | Alan Arkin | Alan Thicke | Alan K. Simpson | Alan Keyes | The Alan Titchmarsh Show | Alan Whiticker | Alan Jones | Alan | Alan Watts | Alan Rickman | Alan Freed | Alan Clark | Alan Price | Alan Hovhaness | Alan Bleasdale | Alan Titchmarsh | Alan Dershowitz | Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke |
She was acquisitions manager, then executive director of Small Press Distribution from 1977 to 1989, developing close associations with many Bay Area writers and publishers, including Lyn Hejinian, Bob Perelman, Steve Benson, Johanna Drucker, Barrett Watten, Alan Bernheimer, Kit Robinson, Laura Moriarty, and Tom Mandel.
In 1974, he published the one-shot poetry magazine Streets and Roads, where for the first time work by such poets as Barrett Watten, Ron Silliman, Rae Armantrout, and Bob Perelman appeared alongside that of Alan Bernheimer, Steve Benson, Carla Harryman, and Merrill Gilfillan.
In 2000 he revived the Adventures in Poetry imprint with Cris Mattison, publishing books by John Ashbery, John Godfrey, Kit Robinson, Alan Bernheimer, Jean Day, Carla Harryman, North, Coolidge, Kenward Elmslie, and others.