Thomas F. Parkinson; Poet, Authority on Beat Generation

Thomas F. Parkinson, 71, a poet and authority on the Beat Generation. A retired professor of English at UC Berkeley, Parkinson was the author of “A Casebook on the Beat,” analyzing San Francisco’s North Beach poets. He also wrote two books of criticism on the more traditional poet William Butler Yeats. Parkinson had been injured in 1961 by a shotgun blast fired by a religious fanatic who said God told him to kill “Communist” professors. On Thursday in Berkeley of a heart attack.