Lew Welch
Lew Welch was born on August 16, 1926 in Phoenix, Arizona. He was born into a wealthy family, but when he was three, his parents split up and his mother moved the family to California. For the rest of his childhood, his family moved all around California, he finished high school in Palo Alto.
Welch went to Reed College in 1948, where he met and lived with Gary Snyder and Phillip Whalen. Within a year, he was Editor of the school's newspaper and he graduated after only two years in 1950.
After college, Welch moved to Chicago and worked in the advertising industry where he came up with the slogan, "Raid Kills Bugs Dead." Welch continued to write poetry after college, but didn't recieve any national attention until the arrival of the Beat movement, when Snyder and Whalen became famous. Welch got his job moved to Oakland so he could join the Beat movement, but in 1958 he was fired and divorced his wife.
About that time Welch's poems began to recieve attention. He got one of his poems published in The New American Poetry, which was published in 1960, the same year his first book, Wobbly Rock, was published. During this time, Welch was having issues with his drinking and moved in with his mother in Reno. He moved back to San Francisco in 1963 and published three books in 1965.
After another breakup in 1971 with Magda Cregg, Welch moved back into the Sierra Nevada mountains. On May 23, 1971, Gary Snyder stopped by Welch's campsite and found a suicide note in his truck, but Welch's body was never found.
Welch's Suicide Note:
"I never could make anything
work out right and now I'm betraying my friends. I can't make anything
out of it - never could.
I
had great visions but never could bring them together with reality. I used
it
all up. It's all gone. Don Allen is to be my literary executor- use MSS
at Gary's and at Grove Press. I have $2,000 in Nevada City Bank of America
- use it to cover my affairs and debts. I don't owe Allen G. anything
yet nor my Mother. I went Southwest. Goodbye. Lew Welch."