Bob Kuntz, the editor of an anthology of YOUNG AMERICAN POETS, translated into Japanese and published in Japan in 1976, was a poet I met in San Diego in the fall of 1967. Both of us were studying in a class with Glover Davis, along with other poets such as Jack Thomas and Dennis Ellman. After getting a MFA from UC Irvine, Bob co-edited three issues of a magazine called FUSE, which published poets such as Rae Armantrout (who had moved by that time from San Diego to Berkeley) and Robert Bly. By the early mid-1970s, he had moved to Japan with his wife to teach English as a Second Language and edited an anthology that included both poets who had books out and those who were still working on their first manuscripts.
The year before Bob’s anthology came out, I had had a poem in Lawrence Spingarn’s anthology, POETS WEST, alongside poets such as Philip Levine, Gary Snyder, and Richard Hugo. Bob’s anthology, on the other hand, featured young poets who were well known on the East Coast: Louise Gluck, Charles Simic, William Matthews, and as well as West Coast poets such as Al Young. I was not yet 30 years old, and was still primarily focused on writing plays, but was very encouraged to find my work juxtaposed with other poets whose work I admired. Bob’s anthology, however, included the thrill of being translated into a language with which I had no familiarity whatsoever.
About Bill Mohr