David Meltzer Needs Your Help!

This just in: David Meltzer needs your help! The beat-generation poet and former poetics professor at San Francisco's New College is struggling with liver cancer and subsequent medical bills as he heals. Please help!

David Meltzer, in his seventh decade, continues to be one of the major figures of the Beat generation and of American poetry. David is the author of more than 50 books—poetry, fiction, essays, interviews, and anthologies (see below).

For the past three years, doctors have been watching a lesion on David’s liver. Despite a healthy liver, for people with hemochromotosis, the blood disease that David's dealt with for most of his life, a lesion can be problematic. Recently, the lesion changed. This past summer, he underwent several tests and finally a biopsy, which was positive for liver cancer.

On September 22, David had surgery at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland. The plan was to remove a portion of the liver. A successful surgery would mean David's hospital stay would be relatively brief, a couple of days. He'll be cared for during the healing process by his physicians and his wife. Any unexpected complications down the road will be closely watched for. Due to his other physical issues also caused by hemochromotosis, such as the need for routine phlebotomies and lab work, his chronic osteo-arthritis, and Type 1 diabetes, he will continue to need and receive ongoing medical care, both conventional and natural/alternative.

Though Kaiser does cover some costs, David still has monthly bills and now larger co-pays. There will be ongoing tests, doctor appointments, and the repair of his stairway chairlift to pay for. He'd also like to continue with alternative medicines and there's no insurance for that.

Though David Meltzer was a humanities and poetics professor at New College in San Francisco for thirty years, when the school folded several years ago, he received no pension and his main income is social security. This is one reason why fundraising is needed.

Thank you so much for being there for David—he is a treasure and has selflessly given to the literary and educational communities of the San Francisco Bay Area and across the United States for decades. The support of family, friends, and those who have met him through his work will help to ease the current difficulties and provide means to benefit him in the future. David just wants to continue writing and creating, and those who know him or his work will agree, he's extraordinarily gifted and loved. [...]

Be sure to visit his Give Forward page for more info! To remind yourself of some of the great things David wrote for Harriet back in 2013, go here.