Imagist Kevin Opstedal's work is informed by a west-coast avante-garde lyric sensibility filtered through random hard knocks and modifed by a sweet, real-life-derived, fuck-you attitude. The poetry's resultant gentle toughness is consistently astonishing. Kevin publishes, with Michael Price, Blue Press Books and Blue Book poetry mag. His most recent books include Nine Palms (Aurthur Klang & Sons, Boulder, 2002) and Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, San Francisco, 1999), ISBN 0-9672929-0-5, order from Small Press Distribution.
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In his own words, Kevin Opstedal is:
" born & raised in Venice, California. Although I am a typical American
mongrel, the last name's Norwegian. A retired US Army colonel at a
reading I gave in La Jolla said that I had 'eyes crazed by 1,000 years of
killing whales' -- I took it as a compliment."

Bio lifted from webzine JACK Magazine, (founded and edited by Mary Sands and Michael Rothenberg):
Kevin Opstedal is . . . currently living near San Francisco. He has edited several little magazines, including GAS, Blue Book, and Augustus Truhn's Magazine. His book reviews, essays, drawings and poetry have appeared in CoEvolution Quarterly, The San Francisco Chronicle, Kerouac Connection, Poetry Flash, Exquisite Corpse, Rolling Stock, Log, and Prosodia, among others. He has read his poems in San Francisco, Venice, La Jolla, Hollywood, New York, Santa Monica and Berkeley. He has six books of poetry to his credit, the most recent of which is titled Crush (surfZombie, Santa Cruz, 2000). A new chapbook titled Beach Blanket Massacre will be published in the spring of 2001.

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