for William Harvey Ryan
“Bill Ryan, whose Contact magazine attracted international attention in the ‘60s, drove his car over a cliff nr. Stinson Beach and was found only last wkend. A longtime emphysema sufferer, he had just enough strength left to end it all . . . “
--Herb Caen, San Francisco Chronicle, October 22, 1986
Indestructible Bill Ryan, now destroyed.
“Who’s the best American poet today?
you asked. And when I said Lowell,
you were incredulous: “Jesus, Lowell!”
Supper on Stockton Street,
then off to Ginsburg’s Irish Pub.
Why on earth did we argue about
Dobermans and fire engines?
At some point Herb showed up.
The San Francisco Fault,
Esquire, then Swank . . .
Well, a good time was had
you drank your way down
“Hikers found the
flamboyant editor’s Cadillac
at the bottom of a 200-foot cliff
off Highway 1 . . . ”
The mind wanders:
I think for some reason
of Keats and Hunt
Sitting in the garden
in the Vale of Health,
writing sonnets. Getting drunk.
Note: The legendary San Francisco columnist Herb Caen died of inoperable lung cancer on February 1, 1997.