Celebrating Andrew Hoyem and His New Poetry Collection

We recognize Andrew Hoyem, an at once formal and witty gentleman, and, as if in near contradiction, a distinguished poet of the funky Beat Generation who performed in San Francisco’s readings and events at the renowned City Lights Bookstore in the mid 1960s. Hoyem is a publisher of artists’ books, a sophisticated supporter and judge of fine art, and a dedicated ink-stained printer. 

In 1974, he was also the founder of Arion Press in San Francisco. The press began as a true rarity—initially a one-man show. Hoyem learned to set type himself as a way to produce notable works from an assortment of writers drawn from the past, such as Herman Melville, with various poems up through the more recent and hip writings of pulp fiction king Jim Thomson. Among the wilder figures are Allen Ginsberg and the weird Edgar Allan Poe (with art by Arikawa). The texts by an international cast of writers, including Juan Rulfo and Alban Berg, were often paired with contemporary fine artists ranging from Enrique Chagoya to William Kentridge. Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities is visually interpreted by Wayne Thibaud, Emily Dickinson by Kiki Smith, and Porgy and Bess by Kara Walker. 

Among the assembled celebrants were such expressive notables as the artist Julie Mehretu, whose intense abstractions grace the works of Hoyem’s newest collection of poems, with images of his fellow Beat poets of the 1960s. This book is aptly titled Resurgence and indeed represents a refreshingly revitalized and original period in Hoyem’s creative and personal life. Mehretu’s dynamic, vividly colored abstraction brings the poems into the present, as did her images for his edition of Sappho. 

Under Hoyem, Arion Press showcased writers as far-reaching as that of the 19th century Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, translated by Alfred Mac Adam and illustrated by Carroll Dunham, and then the philosophical speculations in On Certainty by Ludwig Wittgenstein, with an introduction by the late philosopher-art critic Arthur Danto and art by Mel Bochner. 

Tom Stoppard’s play Arcadia (2001) was produced along with an introduction by Hoyem’s wife, design and architecture writer Diana Ketcham, who collaborated with Stoppard in a limited edition artist's book of his play Arcadia in 2001 with four watercolor illustrations by artist William Matthews, evoking backyard English landscape tropes.

The late, venerable critic Helen Vendler wrote a letter to the poet, addressing his mastery in Resurgence, writing, “You take in everything from boredom to grief to a dandelion salad, self-gathering in a gathering of self.” Enough said. Time to celebrate.