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The City's Best Hidden Park, Russian Hill
It is sadly appropriate that a park dedicated to Ina Coolbrith is nearly as forgotten as the poet herself. This lovely park that overlooks North Beach and downtown memorializes the leading women poet of her day – perhaps the leading poet of either sex. As the "first white child to enter California by wagon," Coolbrith would end her life as California's first poet laureate, and the first poet laureate in the nation. She was at the center of a literary circle that included Mark Twain, Bret Harte, Ambrose Bierce, and Joaquin Miller, all who were said to have fallen in love with the beautiful Coolbrith. Later as the head librarian at Oakland's Public Library she was an early influenced on Jack London and Isadora Duncan. Coolbrith survived the Great 1906 Earthquake and Fire and spent her last years overseeing a literary salon here on Russian Hill.
[ MAP D-12 ]


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