St. Louisan Paul Thiel pursued a doctorate in geology before deciding he’d rather be a minor poet than a major scientist. He lived the artist’s life for 20 years, writing poems and brushing across some of the great writers and artists of his time while living in Hawaii, San Francisco, New York and elsewhere.

Thiel’s book “Snapshots” is his memoir-in-poems. They describe his run-ins with Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, Andy Warhol and other writers and artists — and how he accidentally influenced a budding rock legend. After returning to St. Louis in the 1980s, Thiel organized a popular, annual tribute to the Beat poets he once lived among.

Thiel, 87, will read poems from “Snapshots” at 2 p.m. Saturday at Kirkwood Public Library.

St. Louis Public Radio’s Jeremy D. Goodwin asked Thiel about the stories behind the poems.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and length.

Jeremy D. Goodwin: You were well on your way to a doctorate in geology when you abandoned your dissertation and moved west. Why’d you do that?

Paul Thiel: I realized that I’d rather be a minor poet than a world-famous geologist. Before I moved there, sometimes I would go to New York, and there was a theater group called the Living Theatre. I went to their performance, and basically their concept was that there was art in just living. So I said: ‘I’ll do this. I’ll live.’ And so I lived.

Goodwin: You moved to San Francisco, home of the City Lights bookstore, sort of the headquarters of the Beat poetry movement. What did you do out there?

Thiel: Just wandering around, exploring. Exploring people and the city. I was writing some but not a lot.

Goodwin: There’s a poem about the house where you lived on Page Street in San Francisco. What was that scene like?

Thiel: It was an old Victorian that had been an Irish rooming house. The guy who bought it had his nephew populate it with people, and his nephew was a folk singer, so he populated it with people who he felt were artists of some sort. I was a poet, so I was an artist.

And then his little brother, Peter Albin, moved in too. And then he formed a group, Big Brother and the Holding Company. They found a singer who turned out to be Janis Joplin, and they’d jam in the basement. I would turn on “Don Giovanni” full blast to drown her out. I didn’t appreciate rock music at the time.

Goodwin: It was just some really loud band playing downstairs.

Thiel: Yes. Eventually I learned to appreciate her, but at that time, I didn't. I found an old 45 by Garnet Mimms, “Cry Baby,” and I played it over and over. I thought it would be offensive to her.

Goodwin: That was your little message you were sending to Janis through the walls?

Thiel: Yes, and she got the message: She wound up recording it, and it was one of her hits.  

Goodwin: Did you have any contact in those days with other writers you admired?

Thiel: During the hippie days, I would see Allen Ginsberg bopping along the street with his black beard. He just was a familiar part of the scene. Years later I saw him in Venice. He was sitting on a monument. I hadn’t spoken English in three months and was excited to find someone who spoke English. We chatted for about a half-hour, and he excused himself to go over to Ezra Pound’s house, where he was staying.

One time in City Lights I came across a book by Charles Bukowski, and I was very impressed. I went to a Bukowski reading feeling very tired. It’s weird — most poets take energy from you. They want energy from you. Bukowski gives energy out. It was amazing. I remember leaving there and sort of floating on air up Van Ness Avenue.

William Burroughs was in exile, living in Tangier, so I sent him a postcard and told him I was also a writer from St. Louis. He wrote back. So we sent postcards back and forth for a while. I’ve moved around a lot and at some point I lost them.

Goodwin: By 1969, you’d moved to New York, right? 

Thiel: Yeah, and that’s when the Stonewall thing occurred. I’d been out in the East Village and came home to the West Village. There were all these people in the street, throwing coins at the Stonewall because the police had raided it, and they were barricaded inside. Then the gay people finally fought back.

Goodwin: When you were in New York you were friends with a lot of artists and writers. You have a poem about an outing with Gregory Corso. And there was an Andy Warhol connection?

Thiel: I saw him many, many times. Once I had heard from a friend of mine who was one of his superstars that Andy was thinking about making me one of his superstars. But then he saw me selling poems on the street like a common beggar, and he thought that was tacky. It wasn't, actually. And so he didn't make me a superstar, which is probably just as well because a lot of them died of heroin overdoses, including some of my friends.

Goodwin: There are also poems in your book about clubs you went to around East St. Louis in the ‘50s and ‘60s and the short-lived Gaslight Square scene in St. Louis. When you moved to Kirkwood full time in the ‘80s, how did you stay in touch with the literary world?

Thiel: Being in real estate and not doing all that well, I had a lot of extra time.

So I would hold poetry readings and teach. I taught creative writing in Washington University’s Lifetime Learning program for seniors. I would bring in different writers from St Louis so that they could talk about their work.

When Allen Ginsberg died, my good friend the late Michael Castro, who was a poet, suggested we sit shiva for Allen. I contacted a bunch of writers and each one selected a poet to read from. This was at Left Bank Books. It was pretty successful. So the next year we started doing it at the Focal Point. It continued a couple years after that and somebody else took it over.

Goodwin: What are you dealing with these days?

Thiel: I've got two fatal diseases which, if they start blooming, will kill me. I figure right now I've got at least a couple months. And then we'll have really hot weather, and I don't know if I can survive another hot summer. I gave up my car, which is like giving up your life. I don’t like being dependent on everyone.

Goodwin: Do you have friends who are still in the area?

Thiel: Yeah. Years ago, I decided that your family is something you wind up with, but you select your friends, or they select you. And that's what counts. So my friends have always been more important to me than my family, and I see them regularly.

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