A Short Biography of Allen Cohen:
Allen Cohen was born in Brooklyn
New York in 1940 to a working class family. He graduated Brooklyn
College in 1962 and began his search for the Holy Grail on a
cross-country trip, ending in San Francisco the following year.
In search of the remnants of
the Beat Generation he first lived in North Beach and then moved
to the Haight Ashbury, a then working class neighborhood in the
West of San Francisco. Soon, the Haight Ashbury became a flourishing
Bohemia and Allen dreamed of a new newspaper that would entail
both the alienation of American youth and the vision of a new
world. He became editor of the San Francisco Oracle which flourished
from 1966 to 1968 and became a leading voice in the nationwide
underground press movement. He also helped originate the community
rituals of the Love Pageant Rally and then the Human Be-In.
In 1968, he started a commune in
Northern California to explore a non-material self-sustaining
and creative community. Out of necessity, he became a mid-husband
and in 1970 wrote and published Childbirth is Ecstasy, the first
book on natural child birth in a community environment (with
photographs by Steven Walzer). He returned to San Francisco in
1975, joined the Peace and Environmental coalition and published
The Reagan Poems in 1980, examining this critical phase in American
politics. He also during this time sought to recreate the now
legendary psychedelic San Francisco Oracle so as to preserve
it for posterity. In so doing he did performances, slide shows
and lectures on the Haight Ashbury in the 60's which finally
resulted in the publication of the San Francisco Oracle Facsimile
Edition with Regent Press in 1991. In 1993 he authored the CD
ROM Haight Ashbury in the 60's. Critics said it was almost like
being there. Throughout this period he was reading his poetry
at colleges, museums, coffee houses, bookstores, and other venues
throughout the United States and Europe. After September 11,
2001 he edited with Clive Matson an anthology of poetry An Eye
For An Eye Makes The Whole World Blind: Poets on 9/11 published
by Regent Press, a collection of over 100 poets, which received
a 2003 PEN Oakland National Literary Award. He lives in a basement
apartment in Oakland where he receives improbable impulses to
save the world and celebrate life.