Alden Marin

Alden Marin (born August 4, 1956) is a poet and painter based in Pacific Palisades, California. He has written more than twenty books, including Let's Face It!: Selected Poems 1974-2015.

Early life Marin's family moved to Malibu in the 1920s, becoming one of the first residents of the new Malibu Movie Colony. A sensitivity to the beauty of nature, learned while hiking and surfing in this rural suburb of Los Angeles, has been a great influence on Marin's work, as have trips taken in his youth to countries like France, Switzerland, Greece and India. He has worked as a wine distributor since the 1980s, and wrote a wine column for LA Style magazine from 1986 until 1989. Cartoonist Rube Goldberg is his great uncle.

Poetry

Marin majored in American Studies, with a minor in Creative Writing/Poetry and French, at Stanford University (class of '78). He worked at the university's literary journal Sequoia, edited by fellow student Dana Gioia, who later served as a chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts. Among his professors were notable poets Timothy Steele, Alan Shapiro, and Donald Davie. Marin focused his studies on the works of Gary Snyder, Richard Brautigan, and Ezra Pound.

The colloquial style of Marin's poetry is easily accessible—and, at the same time, spontaneous and visceral. His poems often connect daily minutiae to existential dilemmas, as in The Problem with Oxnard, which he wrote from the perspective of Chicano farm workers.

In books like Little Nuts (Brass Tacks Press, 2008), he champions a new form of short poem that seems to forgo all poetic devices:

Marin's image entitled "Riven Rock" is now a wine label for Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon wine being sold under a private label of the same name at the grocery chain Whole Foods Market.

Marin's apartment has been dubbed "The Palisades Art House" because of the thousands of paintings that crowd its walls, shelves, and floor. He hosts private tours to showcase his apartment as an art piece in itself.

His art is handled by bG Gallery, Daniel Rolnik Gallery, and the Blooming Art Gallery. Additionally, it is on display at several Malibu businesses including SunLife Organics, Vitamin Barn, D’Amores Pizza, Kaishin, Malibu Farm and Pacific Coast Greens.