francEyE the bearded witch of Ocean Park, was born Frances Elizabeth Dean in San Rafael, California, on St. Joseph’s Day, 1922. Without consulting her, her parents whisked her off to the East Coast where she grew up, beginning to publish in the 1930s in school newspapers and Scholastic. She studied verse writing with Grace Hazard Conkling at Smith College in 1941, had a villanelle published by William Rose Benét in his column The Conning Tower in the Saturday Review of Literature in 1942, but then wrote little and published nothing until about 1963, when she finally returned to California. She has been writing, attending poetry workshops, and publishing here and there ever since.

Her work has been included in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry, in L.A. Woman (published in Germany), in two British periodicals, in The Chiron Review, among many others and will be included in the forthcoming anthology of California poets to be published by Tebot Bach next month. Her book of poems, Snaggletooth in Ocean Park, was published in 1996 by The Sacred Beverage Press. Pearl #25 contains a 21-poem sequence called “Why Steal Fire?” Blue Satellite Final Issue contains a 27-poem sequence called The Asteroid Poems

Known as the bearded witch of Ocean Park and the female Charles Bukowski (with whom she had a child), francEyE has been a fixture in the Southern California poetry scene for more than four decades. She writes prolifically in a style compared to Ron Koertge and William Carlos Williams, and frequents poetry readings in both Los Angeles County and the San Francisco Bay Area. Continue reading →