Dark Day, Dark Night

Jonah Raskin is the author of six poetry chapbooks published by Running Wolf Press, Jaxon's Press and the Alexander Book Company. The author of American Scream: Allen Ginsberg's Howl and the Making of the Beat Generation, he has written about the poetry of Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman and T. S. Eliot. Regent Press published his literary and cultural study, A Terrible Beauty: The Wilderness of American Literature, a sequel of sorts to The Mythology of Imperialism. An ex-New Yorker, Raskin lived and worked for 40 years in Sonoma County, taught literature and media at Sonoma State University and performed his poetry with jazz musicians, Steve Shain and Steve della Maggiora, in Santa Rosa, Graton, Healdsburg, Cotati, Petaluma and the town of Sonoma. For a decade, he worked at Don Emblen's Clam Shell Press, printing his own broadsides and working with artist, Bobette Barnes. Since 2021, he has made his home at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, where he reads at Black Bird Books and Sealevel, both on Irving Street. He belongs to the Write If Your Dare writing group and co-edits the magazine, Caveat Lector. He has written about The City's poet laureates, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Diane di Prima and Tongo Eisen-Martin, and has published interviews with those Beat poets, Michael McClure, Joanna McClure and Lawrence Ferlinghetti.