Dan Propper
Dan Propper was an American poet and a significant figure in the Beat Generation, known for his fusion of poetry and jazz. Born in 1937 in Brooklyn, New York, he had an early connection to the arts, influenced by notable figures like writer Stanley Kunitz. Propper's career began in the music industry with Decca Records, which exposed him to the vibrant jazz scene. He gained recognition for his most famous poem, "The Fable of the Final Hour," published in 1958, and participated in significant jazz readings alongside renowned musicians like Thelonious Monk and Dizzy Gillespie.
Throughout his life, Propper's work reflected gritty realism and themes of everyday life, paying homage to the losses of friends and artistic influences such as Lenny Bruce and Frank O'Hara. While he published several collections, including "The Tale of the Amazing Tramp, and Other Poems," much of his poetry remained unpublished at the time of his death in 2003. In addition to his literary pursuits, Propper worked as a teamster and became a respected voice in the Woodstock poetry scene. His legacy is intertwined with the cultural revolutions of his time, offering a unique perspective on the interplay between jazz and poetry.
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Dan Propper
Poet
- Born: April 15, 1937
- Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York
- Died: November 22, 2003
- Place of death: Saugerties, New York
Biography
The son of Stanley and Ruth Dreisin Propper, Dan Propper was born in 1937 in Coney Island Hospital in Brooklyn, New York. He was educated at a public school in Brooklyn and briefly attended the New School for Research, where he met writer Stanley Kunitz who advised him to drop out. In 1957 he got a job with Decca Records as an assistant sales promoter, and this position gave him entry to the jazz world. In 1957 he became aware of the San Francisco literary renaissance, and he became prominent in the movement to combine poetry with jazz to produce bebop.
Propper’s most famous poem, “The Fable of the Final Hour,” was published in a chapbook of his verse in 1958 and was later included in Seymour Krim’s influential anthology The Beats (1960). The poem adopted apocalyptic cartoon imagery but presented it with a cinematic flourish. In 1958 Propper presented a major jazz reading with musician Thelonious Monk in New York City and another in Houston with musician Dizzy Gillespie. In 1960 he appeared with the Jazz Quartet on a nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS) program broadcast out of St. Louis.
Propper lived in San Francisco from 1960 to 1963. Although he always acknowledged the influence of Alan Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” on his own work, he belonged to the second generation of Beat poets and thought of himself as a jazz or bebop poet. Propper published a number of prose pieces when he was book editor of Nugget and Swank from 1961 until 1964. A volume of his poetry, The Tale of the Amazing Tramp, and Other Poems, appeared in 1977. This volume collected selections of his poetry from 1959 to 1976 and established Propper as a leader in the Beat tradition. He uses a realistic style and images with gritty language to present jazz poetry derived from, and close to, everyday life. He pays tribute to the deaths of his friends and heroes, comedian Lenny Bruce, writers Frank O’Hara and Pablo Neruda, and artist Pablo Picasso, and includes poems on jazz and films. In 1979 he published translations of twenty-three poems by Pablo Neruda. In 1980 he published another chapbook, For Kerouac in Heaven.
Propper made his living as a teamster. In the 1990’s, he became an elder statesman of the Woodstock, New York, poetry scene. Like many of his peers, he indulged in the drugs popular with the Beat Generation; he described himself as “wailing on whites. . . those little white Bennies,” a reference to Benzedrine. Propper continued to smoke cigarettes even after he had undergone surgery for lung cancer, but he stoically accepted the consequences of his bad habits. He never promoted his own work; much of his poetry remains unpublished and in the possession of his son Willie. He died in Saugerties, New York, in 2003.