The Wichita Group is a trio of artists: Michael McClure fs ’53, Bruce Conner fs ’55 and David “Dave” L. Haselwood ’53. In the early 1950s they studied (and played) at the University of Wichita.
After leaving Kansas, each of them, independently, made art history: McClure as a poet and playwright, Conner a filmmaker and visual artist, and Haselwood as a publisher.
During his student years at WU, Haselwood majored in English and was editor of the Sunflower Literary Review. He then spent a year as a graduate teaching fellow in WU’s English department, before enlisting in the U.S. Army, serving as a journalist and photographer stationed in Europe from 1955-57.
In 1958 Haselwood founded the Auerhahn Press (named for a rare European grouse) in San Francisco to publish the poets and artists of what came to be known as the Beat Generation. Auerhahn Press publications were noted for their physical beauty. The press grew to be influential in the avant-garde, but never quite became solvent and was ended in 1964.
Haselwood went on to bring out other titles under the imprint of Dave Haselwood Books, but by the early 1970s had embraced a second career as a landscape architect. He retired in 2007 after drawing plans for businesses, homeowners, the city of Cotati’s planning department, Burbank Housing, and others.
Haselwood, who began the practice of Zen in 1963, was ordained as a Zen priest in 1996. Joko Dave Haselwood died Dec. 30, 2014 in Cotati, Calif.
