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Mel Weisburd (1927– ) is an American writer and air pollution control pioneer whose work began bridging the divide between science and the humanities just as C.P. Snow identified the chasm in his 1959 “Two Cultures” Rede Lecture.

Born in St. Paul, MN, Weisburd moved to Los Angeles when he was 13. He received a B.A. in English (1950) from the University of California, Los Angeles. Soon after, he became a senior engineering air pollution inspector for the Los Angeles County Air Pollution District (now the South Coast Air Quality Management District). Weisburd wrote the first air pollution control field operations manual that incorporated legislation and enforcement. From 1962-1966 he worked at the American Medical Association where he authored articles on the medical effects of air pollution, helped formulate the AMA's a position citing air pollution's adverse health effects as a basis for governmental action, and lobbied for the passage of the 1963 Clean Air Act. In 1971, he founded the environmental engineering firm Pacific Environmental Services and served as its president until retirement in 1985.

Weisburd’s experience in environmental engineering and interest in science are reflected in his poetry and other writing. He published the first literary account of an LSD experience, which was reprinted in Best Articles and Stories. Weisburd was a protégé of the poet Thomas McGrath who was blacklisted during the McCarthy Era. In 1955, Weisburd co-founded and served as Editor of the Los Angles-based literary journal Coastlines with another McGrath student Gene Frumkin. Weisburd and Frumkin were at the forefront of a literary conflict with poet Lawrence Lipton who called for writers to drop out of society by quitting their jobs, political affiliations and middle class mores. In contrast, Weisburd and Frumkin believed that writers could deal with social issues such as McCarthyism, the military industrial complex and the nuclear threat while still being engaged in the mainstream. Instead of disaffiliating, they were seeking ways to overcome the alienation they felt living in Los Angeles, which they called “The Non-Existent City".  The rift was precipitated by Allen Ginsberg’s first reading of Howl in Los Angeles at the house where Coastlines was produced.  Heckled by a drunk audience member, Ginsberg challenged the man to strip and then proceeded to take off his own clothes. Lipton's account of this incident characterized the Coastline editors as square because they asked Ginsberg to put his clothes back on.

Weisburd's poetry and essays have appeared in The California Quarterly, Coastlines, Midwest, Poet Lore, Transatlantic Review, Epos, San Marcos Review, Blue Mesa Review, Lummox and other journals and in the anthologies Poetry Los Angeles:I edited by James Boyer May, Thomas McGrath, and Peter Yates (Villiers Publications, Ltd., 1958), Poets of Today: A New American Anthology edited by Walter Lowenfels (International publishers Co., 1964), Eating the Pure Light: Homage to Thomas McGrath by John Bradley (The Backwaters Press, 2009) and Women in Metaphor: An Anthology of Poems Inspired by the Painter Stephen Linsteadt (Natural Healing House Press, 2013).

Weisburd was married to the deceased artist Gloria Weisburd and is the father of the poet Stefi Weisburd.

Works

 * "A Life of Windows & Mirrors" (Conflux Press, 2005)
 * "The Gloria Poems" (Conflux Press, 2009)