Robert Hawley and Stevens van Strum started the Oyez Press in Berkeley, California, 1964.
Robert Hawley was born in 1929 in Stockbridge, Wisconsin. He was a student at Black Mountain College in 1956, shortly before that institution closed its doors. By 1957, Hawley was working as a bookseller specializing in Western Americana at the Holmes Book Company, in Berkeley, California.
Through Oyez Press, Robert Hawley and Stevens van Strum published numerous American poets, initially producing a series of broadsides. A poem by David Meltzers, The Blackest Rose, was one of the earliest broadsides published by Oyez, and Meltzer's The Process (1965) was the first book published by Oyez Press.
American poet and musician David Meltzer was born February 17, 1937, in Rochester, New York.
In 1957, Meltzer moved to San Francisco and became part of a circle of writers based around Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan. Meltzer’s poetry was included in the anthology, The New American Poetry 1945-1960 . Considered a poet of the Beat generation, Meltzer is also a jazz guitarist, and the author of more than fifty books of poetry and prose, many of which have been published by small presses, such as Robert Hawley’s Oyez Press.
Oyez Press Records. Archives and Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries. http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/Oyez/MSS19980208.html (accessed September 2011). "David Meltzer." Contemporary Authors Online (reproduced in Biography Resource Center). http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioR (accessed September 2011). "David Meltzer." Wikipedia. Http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Meltzer (accessed September 2011).
From the guide to the Robert Hawley letters to David Meltzer, 1964-1966, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)
Robert Hawley was born in 1929 in Stockbridge, Wisconsin. By 1957, Hawley was in Berkeley, California, working as a bookseller specializing in Western Americana at the Holmes Book Company. In 1964, Robert Hawley and Stevens van Strum started the Oyez Press by soliciting poems from noteworthy American poets to be published in a series of broadsides. In 1978, Hawley opened his own book shop, the Ross Valley Book Company, in Albany, California. Dorothy Hawley is Robert's wife.
Archibald Hanna, Jr., was the first curator of the Yale Collection of Western Americana. He joined the staff of the Yale University Library in 1949, when he was hired to help catalog the books and manuscripts given to Yale by William Robertson Coe. In 1952, he was named the inaugural William Robertson Coe Curator of Western Americana.
Richard Hugh Dillon was born January 16, 1924 in Sausalito, California. He served as an assistant librarian (1950-1953) and librarian (1953-1979) at the University of California, Berkeley and the Sutro Library, San Francisco. Dillon authored many articles and books on California.
From the description of Robert Hawley correspondence : Kensington, Calif., 1970-2011. (University of California, Berkeley). WorldCat record id: 759515636
