Glen Coffield
Glenn Stemmons Coffield was an American poet and conscientious objector. He was born in Prescott, Arizona, and received a B.S. degree in education from Central Missouri State Teachers College in 1940. During World War II, he served in Civilian Public Service Camp #7 in Magnolia, Arkansas, and then was transferred to the Camp Angel CPS camp near Waldport, Oregon in 1942.
Coffield is sometimes called Oregon's first hippie.
The artist Kemper Nomland was at Camp Angel, and attempted to capture Coffield's creativity in a painting donated to the Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon.
Coffield's first collection of poems Ultimatum was a one-man operation since he was author, typist, designer and illustrator, as with most of his subsequent works.
His anthology Horned Moon was published by Everson's Untide Press in 1944. In the poem Indivisible he describes the world as more loosely strung than a nation, feeling pain more slowly "as when wild horses stampede on broken hooves".
Some of his poems were also published in the Untide Press magazine Illiterati.
After the war Coffield did some acting in San Francisco with a repertory called The Interplayers led by Kermit Sheets. From 1947–1954 he ran the Grundtvig Folk School at Eagle Creek in the Mount Hood wilderness in Oregon, where he published numerous small poetry journals and newsletters. In the 1960s Coffield moved back to San Francisco, where he was severely injured in a hit and run accident. Coffield spent the rest of his life in Missouri, and died in Mt. Vernon.
Selected bibliography
Songs for the winds 1941 – 74 pagesUltimatum: Untide Press – 1943 – 10 pagesThe horned moon 1944 – 29 pagesA pewee's note: 1946 – 16 pagesThe modern problem 1946 – 14 pagesPoetics 1946 – 8 pagesThe horse of summer 1946 – 26 pagesWe think too much 1948 – 22 pagesThe citadel 1948 – 14 pagesThe waldport dilemma: 1948 – 12 pagesThe Grundtvig Folk School in Oregon: a creative experiment in education Free schools – 1949 – 8 pagesThe night is where you fly: poems 1949 – 35 pagesSelected poems 1951 – 56 pagesThe silent waters 1950 – 53 pagesThree songs Rounce & Coffin Club – 1951 – 12 pagesLove and reason Reason – 1953 – 44 pagesSilence and slow time : a poem for Christmas 1953 – 8 pagesNorthwest poems 1954 – 36 pagesCriteria for poetry 1954 – 45 pagesThe old man who liked cats: 1954 – 14 pagesNorthwest prints 1954 – 10 pagesHomage to King Lear: 1954 – 34 pagesThe metaphysics of wrong numbers 1955 – 22 pagesRational power 1955 – 39 pagesChristmas tide, 1954–1955 1955 – 4 pagesNew age anthology of poetry 1955 – 104 pagesTea leaves and transit lines: poems of prophecy and technic 1956 – 14 pagesSea climate and other poems 1956 – 14 pagesThe Grundtvig experiment Free schools – 1957 – 58 pagesThe Grundtvig poems 1957The bridge editorials 1957 – 36 pagesBridge anthology 1957 – 22 pagesTwelve selected poems 1958 – 12 pagesBay area poems 1958 – 8 pagesGlenn Stemmons Coffield's art coloring book 1958 – 24 pagesDefinition of God, and other poems 1960 – 12 pagesCreative method: technical essays 1960 – 110 pagesThirty poems: The return and other poems 1963 – 37 pagesPoetry workshop: 1963 – 30 pagesThe merry-go-round: 1969 – 32 pagesThinking: 1975 – 30 pages