Bruce Isaacson: There’s even less tolerance of free speech and dissent than there was 20 years ago, even more pressure to conform, to publish what’s “acceptable.” Heck, I got 86’d from Barnes & Noble in Las Vegas, for saying aloud what was in the best of their literary books. On the one hand, this kind of midget-minded morality is good for poets, because the message of poetry and feeling becomes more important, more needed than ever. On the other hand, it’s a terrible development for society, and makes it harder for anything honest to break into the mainstream. It’s harder than ever to break into the chain stores, but some publishers have done it. Jenny Joseph’s Manic D Press has developed that kind of strong network, and she’s managed to mix outstanding poetry in with popular culture books. Like her recent collection of Eli Coppola’s Selected Works, Some Angels Wear Black. That’s an outstanding book that Zeitgeist would’ve loved to do, but Manic D is in a better position to get it into the distribution flow.
Poetry Guide Margy Snyder: Zeitgeist has published four books and one CD in 2004-2005, and you are also distributing two new books published by other imprints—what are your publication plans for the next year?
BI: I think the trend to distributing books is important. We’re helping with Eliot Schain’s Westering Angels, printed by Small Poetry Press. We’re also having a lot of fun distributing the Poets From Hell anthology (New American Underground Poetry, Trafford Publishing, 2005).
We have a CD compilation project in the works, in addition to having issued the Pirate Lerner CD. Our Web site is really a good vehicle for letting people know what’s going on, finding a community, trading information, and selling books.
MS: You have a once-a-year reading period at the Press (August). Can you tell us how many manuscripts you received last month and whether you are going to publish any of them?
BI: Right now, we’re still trying to do justice to the work and the authors that we’ve historically supported. I’d love to see new books by Joie Cook, Danielle Willis, Laura Conway, Kathleen Wood, Vampyre Mike, and I just can’t believe there’s not a standard edition of Jack Micheline’s work in wide distribution.
There have been some new things in recent years, in part connected with my time in Las Vegas, such as Harry Fagel’s two books, including his new one, Undercover. This is an author who’s unacceptable to whole sections of the literary world, but to me, that’s a reason to push forward. I’m leading some workshop classes in Vegas, did one in homage to Ginsberg, and one on Dostoevsky, and I’m working up one on Rimbaud. So I get interested in anything that genuinely feeds the Rebel.
We got a batch of manuscripts, and I’m still getting through them, but I am reluctant to strike off in new directions, no matter how good they are. I just feel there’s more to be contributed, for me, in doing justice to the milieu that nurtured my poetry. It’s a great open-hearted anti-commercial tradition, San Francisco poetry. I’m involved in Unitarian stuff as well, and I see the North Beach-SF-Mission literary scene as an extension of the pre-Civil War idealistic communalism that holds the best hope to turn the Titanic of American culture from the iceberg impulse to dominate the globe.
We’ll probably will do a series of chapbooks this year, that will include some great SF poets who haven’t been on Zeitgeist before, but these mostly come from knowing the authors’ work for a long while. Probably not from blind submissions.
MS: Zeitgeist is moving into new media, releasing CD recordings as well as poetry books. Tell us why you expanded in this direction, and what you’re planning. Will you be seeking new audio recordings?
BI: I mentioned the CD compilation project, which comes mostly from hundreds and hundreds of hours of live recordings done by David Gollub. We have all these classic recordings from the 1980s, from the era when the Babar was rocking the Mission. I’m still trying to catalog all I have, but there are things I’d love to find, like a good quality recording of Micheline singing his “Rock Song.”
The live voice is a tremendously powerful instrument—you don’t need studios and enhancements and beautiful mixing. If you can capture that live human voice, the way it reaches into the listener and awakens the impulse of poetry, the imagination of a better world, the dormant kingdom of sensible feeling, that’s really something. Sometimes the most interesting thing is the reaction of the audience, the catcalls and whistles or the way the whole room suddenly goes silent and you know that poet is connecting. When you hear these live recordings, you’ll know why we branched off that direction.
Read on for two poems Bruce has graciously consented to present here at About Poetry to accompany this interview:
- “For Julia” (written for Julia Vinograd)
- “The Young Warriors” (in our Poems for Peace collection)
