Poetry Sustained by Community: The San Francisco Bay Area Book Festival

Dateline: 11/12/98

The San Francisco Bay Area Book Council presented its 9th annual Book Festival, the last of its kind run solely on volunteer power (over 300), this past weekend of November 7 - 8. The event was overflowing with

overflowing with an anarcho, dedicated-to-lit energy

an anarcho, dedicated-to-lit energy that mirrors the City by the Bay’s centrality to US poetics history. Sure, sometimes there was spillage into turf wars, petty bickering re: site/time allocation, sloppy tech (Patti Smith had no lights at the top of her reading, and stopped three times to inquire about the poet from Youth Speaks holding forth down a floor and over, a mike where I’d been standing just a couple of hours before. . . then, an engineer had raced to the sound board to turn me down mid-syllable, completely drawing attention away from the poem). And there were some lulls when the mikes seemed to be watering a vegetable committee -- naught but quibbles. Poetry is sustained by community, and the single most effective scene, the broadest definition of poetry, and the deepest support of vox populi intersects in the tradition that is San Francisco poetry, manifested live at the Book Festival.

the single most effective scene

It was The Next Chapter: Youth Stage mike that burned hottest. Graced with the revolutionary grace and humor of St. June Jordan at the top, this po-mix of Poetry for the People, Youth Speaks, and

Writers Corps poets became a universal blender that spat out individuals who spoke like they were building a new world word by word, and guess what? They did. “Dress gay on Friday,” urged Jim Saliba, undercutting the gaybashers and the trendies with a single haiku. Michael Lamb asked for “some allowance for a non-native speaker” before launching into “Free Dem!,” a hiphop poem written in Black English -- no pc-correctitude in the revolutionary po-line! Yunjong Sun read a tight, phat poem that hushed the crowd. Several other Poetry for the People poets invoked Ruth Forman, author of the fine new Renaissance* (Beacon Press) and a graduate of the program. Maria Poblet condensed the whole Ernesto Cardenal-inspired exteriorismo aesthetic in her “Viet Cong Love Poem”: “like a 12-year old girl / with a gun on her hip / I wait for you.” Uchechi Malu read a T’ang influenced poem in support of Mumia. It was a cultural bash, a party where the whole world’s invited. June Jordan read from her crutches, strong and sure, a poem which my scribble-notes rendered as “Poem Against the Temptations of Ambivalence”: “Quicksave / Quicksave / SignOff / Cancel / Are you sure? / Are you sure?”

Next up was a Teen Adult Poetry Slam brought to you by Youth Speaks. Tim Arevalo, Jason Mateo, a young rapper by the name of Chineda Akobe, and the amazing gender- bender, 19 year-old Kassy Kayiatos (whose first chapbook, In the

the broadest definition of poetry

Beginning, has just been released) mixed it up with old foggies Justin Chin and Beth Lisick (who further confused things by reading each other’s work!), Russell Gonzaga, Thea Hillman and yes, Bob Holman myself. James Kass, the man behind the Youth Speaks scene, hosted, effectively and movingly, getting the slate of judges to go Green (for green team) or Blue. Green and Blue, I figure: that’d be Wallace Stevens! You will hear from these poets, the first in the decade since the Nuyorican reopened who are both indy, group, loud, proud, and READY.

the deepest support of vox populi

Youth Speaks is a two-year-old non-profit “combating the silencing effects of racism, sexism, homophobia and increased isolation young people face in today’s world,” and they do it via the Word, in a manner charged with idealism,

hard knocks, straight-ahead politics and speak for yourself. To these ends they join the slightly older poets of Poetry for the People (check out their amazing anthology*!), and the federally-funded Writers Corps (also in Washington, DC, and the Bronx), led in San Francisco by Jen Weiss. With these posses united, poetry has found a new home in the old heart of San Francisco Bay, and the Slam has grown legs that dance: check the National Teen Poetry Slam coming up in Albuquerque this summer. And watch out for the “Hoop Dreams-styled po-documentary, “Poetic License.” Youth Speaks is reclaiming Slam as a means to open poetry to new audiences and poets and, with a simultaneous kick, reenergizes the Slam movement as well.

Other poets bop by! Regie Cabico, editor of the not-quite-published US-Canada anthology Poetry Nation* (Véhicule Press) [disclaimer: Holman wrote the foreword]; Ellyn Maybe (“Needless to say / my team made the

intersects in the tradition

Solitaire Finals”), who will be at the Taos Poetry Circus in June 'cause Annie MacNaughton is sure she’s the long-lost daughter of Allen Ginsberg; Horehound Stillpoint, lashing out against stereotypes with the world’s hottest tongue at 1 in the afternoon; Margy Snyder, dear co-editor, reading her Londonpoem found here at MiningCo a couple of weeks ago; another MiningCo-ster, Juliette SofaSurfing Handbook* Torrez, holding down Last Gasp; urPoet Pagan; Kimi Sugioka, with a new job and new poems; and the angel himself, Jorge Argueta, emerging after a few years of woodshedding, with his book Las Frutas del Centro, “Fruit from the Center” (Canterbury Press).

that is San Francisco poetry

The big news all over was San Francisco’s new and first Poet Laureate, Lawrence Ferlinghetti. To celebrate the inauguration of Our Leader (hohoho, how Sr.

Ferlinghetti’s shrivels the pomp! shirks the hand that’d feed!) on October 13, 1998, City Lights published a delicious little chap, San Francisco Poems by LF. City Lights also made freely available Lawrence’s “Inaugural Speech,” in which he reprises his 1970s “Populist Manifesto”: “What I had in mind was for poets to stop mumbling in their beards to private audiences and say something important to the world.” His “outrageous wish-list” includes giving priority to bicycles and pedestrians over cars, painting the Golden Gate Bridge golden, and tilting Coit Tower -- “think what it did for Pisa!”

Other images in the ever-passing parade: Jen Joseph at Manic D Press was action central for me. One of the great new publishers in the US. . . the hilarious barK magazine, dedicated to work for, about, and I daresay by the canines among us. . . Guillermo

manifested live at the Book Festival

Castro, Argentinian poet making his first venture to San Francisco, reading from Toy Storm from the extraordinary Big Fat Press. . . Rich Ferguson, fresh from recording as Fuzzy Doodah. . . Alan Kaufman, in bowler and tie, heading off to be a Buddhist in the woodworks. . . Michael Lally, in town with cigars for new son and grandson, to read the Irish with Malachi McCourt. . . Whitman McGowan, unassumingly reeling off poem after memorized poem as if he just talks like that -- is it a commercial or a poem about capitalism’s downfall? only the Whit man knows. . . the amazing getups of the commune at The Sexuality Library -- they gave away more literature in the two days than there are genders in San Francisco!

lifting us all in sheer crescendo

The fittingest close ever was was Patti Smith with her just-published Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future* from Doubleday. Tickets were given out at 1 for the 4 o'clock show, and the single-file

line snaked through the complete Book Fair like some sort of open mike-conga line. There were plenty of disgruntled poet-types trying to talk their way in -- hell, we all wanted a taste of Patti, and the Book Fest peeps obliged by piping the PA into the lobby.

We were rewarded by a sudden heaven’s opening downpour directly onto the skylight above the Main Stage. Patti was so down-home and vulnerable, she had to stop and let the rain rain a bit. Her set, over an hour, included many greatest hits, poems

shaman doo-wop shaman doo-way

read and songs sung with her guitarist, Oliver Ray. A righteous way, Patti summed it up, to end the Book Fest. She opened with “Birdland” (from Horses), and when the Narrator starts to rise (based on a dream of Wilhelm Reich’s son, Patti had informed us), her “up up up up” ran together like a propeller blade, a human helicopter lifting us all in sheer crescendo (“I am helium raven”) shaman-doo-wop shaman-doo-way till “We like Birdland,” and we did, we were all up in the presence of she, poet, pure crossover poet, Patti rocking voice only lifting us all together now.

lifting us all together now

She gave humble thanks to indy bookstores and publishers. She read from “Rock’n’Roll Nigger.” She touched on Robert Mapplethorpe and Fred Sonic Smith. She explained to the 12-year-olds in the house why she uses bad words

in her poems (“All words are good but we have to know where to use them.”). She did “Heroin” with Ray and she played guitar too and somewhere in the epiphany he broke two strings, so we all knew that was the highlight. She did the new “Blue Poles” and urged those in the crowd who might find themselves in New York soon to see the Jackson Pollack show at the Museum of Modern Art (his last masterpiece of the same name: “Blue Poles infinitely winding / as I write”). She was in rare form. Her voice was a book open and reading itself to each of us. “Because the Night” shattered roof rafters, and we were suddenly all tossed outdoors, San Francisco, by the docks, fresh and shiny.

--Bob Holman

Libro, cuando te cierro
abro la vida.

Book, when I close you
I open life.

--Pablo Neruda

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