Thomas Parkinson

Thomas F. Parkinson (1920–1992) was an American poet and professor of English at the University of California, Berkeley. He specialized in the poetry of W. B. Yeats, and was one of the first academics to write about the Beat poets and novelists of San Francisco in the 1950s and 1960s.

Parkinson was also a political activist for much of his life. He survived an assassination attempt in 1961 by a former student who sought to "get someone who was associated with Communism." He attended Lowell High School and a junior college.

When World War II began, Parkinson enlisted in the Army, but was eventually discharged due to his height. In the years that followed, Parkinson worked a variety of jobs, including as an insurance agent, a ship's outfitter, and a lumberjack.

Early career While at Berkeley in the 1950s, Parkinson became involved in political activism. He was involved in KPFA-radio Berkeley when it was a free-form West Coast anarchist collective. Parkinson made a number of public statements criticizing the lack of funding for student scholarships, including those for women students. Farmer was found to be insane and was committed to a mental hospital.

Later career

After the murder attempt, Parkinson continued to promote liberal causes, served as campus Ombudsman, and chaired the Berkeley chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). He published his Casebook on the Beats in 1961. He became part of the circle of writers, including Lawrence Ferlinghetti, that helped evolve the San Francisco literary culture of the 1960s. He also published on the correspondence of Hart Crane and Yvor Winters. His last book, Poets, Poems, Movements (1987), was a collection of essays.