The exhibit, on display through April 16 at the California Historical Society in San Francisco, features more than 100 original works -- many never exhibited publicly -- by more than 80 people. Curated by Poetry Center Director Steve Dickison, the exhibit features art created by poets, poet-artist collaborations, and works by artists in poetry circles.

"In many ways, this exhibit is a tribute to the poet-artist galleries that had short but significant lifespans in San Francisco of the 1950s and '60s -- King Ubu Gallery, the Six Gallery, Batman Gallery, Borregard's Museum, Buzz Gallery and the North Beach coffeehouses and bars that did double duty as art-spaces," Dickison says. "The San Francisco of this period served as a geographic confluence of radically realized individual and collective visions. Poets and artists together as friends, lovers, rivals and audience to one another's practice, creatively imagined a city perched on the country's far coast, and worked together to bring that city into being."

A broad spectrum of artworks, beginning in the 1950s with original pieces by prominent poet-artists close to the Poetry Center, leads to contemporary work that continues the Bay Area's interactive poet-artist traditions.

Earlier pieces on display include:

Highlights of recent pieces in the exhibit include works by Bay Area painters Carlos Villa, Amy Trachtenberg and Gustavo Ramos Rivera. Photo-portraits and historical photos accent the painted, drawn, hand-printed and constructed artworks.

"Poetry and its Arts" also features "Collective Memory," a multimedia installation by San Francisco poet and visual artist Norma Cole.

The exhibit wraps up a yearlong celebration of the Poetry Center's 50th anniversary. The center hosts 25 to 30 public poetry readings and events each year featuring a diverse range of artists from around the world. Its archives hold more than 2,000 audio and videotapes of writers performing their own works, dating to the Beat era. Professor Ruth Witt-Diamant founded the center, with encouragement from her friend Dylan Thomas and a gift from W.H. Auden, in 1954.

The galleries at the California Historical Society, located at 678 Mission St. (at Third Street), are open noon to 4:30 p.m. Wednesdays through Saturdays. Admission is $3 for adults, $1 for college students and free for high school students.

-- Matt Itelson
Image: Courtesy of of The Poetry Collection of The University Libraries, State University of New York, Buffalo