(Evan Karp)

Come to think of it, a lot of things we might consider “authentic” do not have a home. Authenticity doesn’t have a comfort zone. Perhaps you read Benjamin Wachs‘ SF Weekly writeup of our last show (and if you’re following along—whether in your comfort zone or somewhere on the road—perhaps you read his writeup of our previous show). supperclub was something of a risk. Parts of it were incredibly successful, and parts of it—as Benjamin noted—were less so. Everything about our 15 Romolo show was a triumph, though we took a different kind of risk.

To go somewhere you’ve never been for the express sake of sharing your soul takes a certain amount of bravery only troubadours and rock stars and circus performers and homeless people know. It has nothing to do with business. To take a chance when you don’t have to, when you could lose everything, and this everything is invaluable … to jeopardize your legitimacy for strangers’ entertainment … that is a dangerous and exciting thing. But it is always worth it if you truly have something to say. But you also can’t be afraid to say it.

At showtime it was loud. I didn’t think anyone would be able to hear me. We’d never used The Beat Museum‘s PA before (thank you, Beat Museum!), and it was only just barely loud enough with the entire bar silent. Capacity there is 100; we had 130+ in there easily, and probably more (if you are reading this and have something to do with the fire code, I am using hyperbole).

But something amazing happened. It was like that famous passage in the Old Testament (yes, I’m going there) in which the Jews are fleeing the Egyptians’ captivity, and “it was so peaceful that not even a dog barked.” Graham Gremore calmly commanded the crowd, and it shutup. We were going somewhere, and it was important. There was no looking back, either. To continue this metaphor (against all better judgment), let’s call all the people who were in the bar for Quiet Lightning “Jews;” alternately, all those who were already there are “Egyptians.” There was no distinction. The readings blurred the lines, wiped the slate clean. Married the contraries. Created … a humanity.

The only thing that went wrong during the entire evening was that we couldn’t hear our busking friend Leo play his cello. Don’t worry, though; he’ll be back.

And so will you, I hope. We’ve got some very exciting announcements over at our website, which I hope you’ll check out. We’re talking directly to you, I think.

Enjoy the show.

Graham Gremore

Renee Nelson

Sean Taylor

Rob McLaughlin

Russell Dillon

Shideh Etaat

Clive Matson

Elise Hunter

Chris Cole

James Warner

Maureen Duffy

Susan Browne

Maureen Blennerhassett

(Seth Fischer)

Why Activists Should Study Fiction: Lessons from Bring the War Home!

I can’t recommend Barry Willdorf’s Bring the War Home! as a piece of literature. But I can recommend it. I can recommend it for anyone who has been an activist and is trying to write fiction. I can especially recommend it for anyone who is about to go into activism, regardless of their interest in fiction. Because by reading it, and by watching the legally trained Willdorf, as the novel progresses, learn to understand how to best tell the protagonist Eric Wolfe’s story, you can learn a lot about the enormous gap between the way a novelist and a lawyer sees the world.  It becomes very clear very soon that activists need the skills of novelists just as much if not more than they need the talents of lawyers.

This isn’t to say the book reads like a legal brief, or that it’s a failure. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of a lawyer working in Camp Pendleton to defend active-duty Marines. Shortly before he took that job, the house he was supposed to be working in was machine-gunned by pro-war activists. I briefly worked with vets, but I never did anything even remotely as brave as he, nor as extreme. It’s hard to imagine any book with this kind of story as a failure.

To top it off, Willdorf was struggling with one of the biggest problems that have ever faced writers: how do you convey the left-wing activist mind? How does one capture a logic that is convoluted, rational to the point of absurdity and self-deluding while also being, in general, the closest thing to a just worldview that the protagonist, the author, and this reviewer can imagine? And then, to make things more complicated, how do you do that artfully?

At first, Willdorf’s answer was a little too simple. He tried to explain all the complexities of the anti-war movement through legal-sounding expository dialogue. “As long as there is a draft and young men know they are going to be forced into some military organization or another,” Eric’s wife Emma explains to a reverend they’re trying to recruit to their cause, “then there is no truly, noncoercive volunteering going on.” As it is, as dialogue, in this scene, this information about a legal problem many Marines faced—that they volunteered for a war they then wanted out of—seems cold and stilted and extraneous. It’s Willdorf the lawyer talking, and it’s awkward.

Sometimes, though, when the dialogue told a specific story, he was able to succeed in getting important information across without unnecessary exposition. Take, for example, the Eric’s story about getting out of serving in the military in his pre-induction physical. The story is told in three paragraphs of dialogue to a black GI Eric is trying to help. “Something short circuited,” he tells the GI, “I puffed up and yelled right back into (the doctor’s) shocked puss. ‘I’m not wearing any fucking underwear. What kind of doctor are you, anyway? Freakin out when you see a pair of balls and a dick?’” This scene conveys tons of information about the way the draft works, about Eric’s attitude, and about the sexual mores of the time. It’s an example of how a story can get the reader the information she needs without ever needing to explicitly tell the reader what’s going on.  It’s Tim O’Brien’s advice in “How to Tell a True War Story,” but Eric never had to go to war.

But then, when the GI says, “all you white boys gotta do to get out of the service is to yell at the fucking man,” Eric—and Willdorf—revert to a form of expository thinking that does not belong in a novel. “Woods putting my experience in a racial perspective,” he writes, “caused me to wonder about just how many of my experiences I had simply accepted at face value.”

Is this a valid concern for someone to have in this situation? Yes. But the reader should already be thinking this, should already hear this tension in Eric’s words and the way he’s holding himself and his actions. They should be having this epiphany on their own. A novel should lead the reader to its theme, not tell them what it is.

The novel’s strongest point is it’s climax, when Eric gets a deserter named Jumpin Jack the opportunity to tell his story on the record in front of a court-martial. Jack’s story is absolutely devastating, in the best possible way. The Marine—despite the prosecutor’s attempts to keep all testimony relevant to the desertion charge—tells the story of how he committed a war crime by jumping on a VC prisoner’s torso until his guts exploded, while a young VC watched to get some intelligence. “I can feel the air go out of him. Stuff explodes out of his mouth and ass. Shoots up at me like a geyser, and for a minute I’m not sure what it is.” This all masterfully conveyed the terror of war through the details of war, and the full story also lets us know all about the tunnels and the torture and fear and the social expectations of these Marines without actually laying it all out for us in so many words. In this section, this novel is doing everything that a novel should do. And as a result, it is so much more effective in relaying the horrors of war and racism and hatred and the pitfalls of the justice system.  So few words are needed, and we can still feel it and hear it and smell it. And now we want to know what we can do to stop something like this from ever happening again.  Now we will listen to long explanations.

And while this is a great lesson for every writer, this is especially a great lesson for every political activist. If we want to change minds, if we want to communicate the evils of imperialism and homophobia and racism and misogyny and capitalism, we need to stop using the words homophobia and racism and imperialism and misogyny and capitalism, at least at first. What wins people over is stories, specific stories, stories that bring home the terror of the time in which we live. Bring the War Home! helped bring that lesson home for me. I hope it can do the same for you.

(Evan Karp)

A.D. Winans, 75, is a serendipitous poet. He found himself in North Beach in 1958 and fell in with Bob Kaufman and Jack Micheline, who remained lifelong friends and inspirations; he found himself writing, and never looked back. He has now published 52 books, the latest of which—Drowning Like LiPo in a River of Red Wine (Bottle of Smoke Press), is a beautiful limited collection of his life works—all the way through 2010. He is still putting out several small volumes a year; having just traveled 4 decades via this collection, I can attest that his writing is only becoming more lucid with the passage of time.

Winans also founded Second Coming Press and published many accomplished poets—including Bukowski—well before they were widely known. We spent a leisurely hour together over a cup of coffee, and to retain the flow of our conversation I have not doctored the syntax or altered our statements in any way. Part 2 of a 2-part conversation, this is published in conjunction with a profile @ SF Weekly, which you can read here. Read the first part here.

Evan Karp: I wanted to ask you a question about the demons in your head. I’m interested in where you think politics fit in poetry, especially in light of this idea.

A.D. Winans: Well I’ve written a lot of political poems. Because I felt deeply what I was writing about. But most political poetry I’ve read—a lot of it is just ranting. You know rants—it’s not really what I would call a cohesive poem. … I would say the most difficult poems to write are political and love poems. The Love – Zero book I did I’m quite proud of that book because it took a long time to write it after I broke up with a woman and, without even seeing the book—which you knew how evil she really was—she felt I was going to really slam her, and write this terrible book about her, and was writing friends of mine, publishers, threatening lawsuits about a book she hasn’t even seen, for Christ’s sake. So I waited five years and said “Now nobody’s going to identify you.” So five years. But it’s really like one epic poem, sort of different segments of the relationship, you know. And other than that I’d say I’m only pleased with about 3 love poems I’ve written, and people really like those poems.  So I’m going to start reading them at readings.

EK: What are the names of those?

AW: They were just for people … like one is “Poem for Annie” and one was, I think for Patti. Just on relationships but pleasant, pleasant parts of the relationships. Whereas with Love – Zero I don’t even have titles … I just use 1, 2, 3, 4. But yeah, love and political. Very hard to write a good poem. Kenneth Patchen wrote a lot of good love poems. I don’t know why Ferlinghetti doesn’t publish Patchen’s work. He’s falling out—people don’t know him because … it’s funny to think about, you know. Boy in his day—considered a great poet; 30 or 40 years later nobody knows … well, the ones who know him are going to die. And then who’s gonna know unless somebody picks up in the academic community and starts writing a book on him? That happened for Spicer. Somebody wrote The House that Jack Built, which was all on Spicer and his work. Spicer only had a couple of smaller books published in his lifetime; he didn’t have a lot of books published. I probably had too many poems. But politics—I all but shy away. I mean I’m sure a good one from Egypt will come out, from someone, but it has to be heartfelt and you really got to feel what you’re writing. I wrote a poem 20 years ago called “The System” I was amazed I pulled it out and it applied to today with our economic recession. Everything I have in that poem 20 years ago could have been written a week ago. So I should maybe read that again. But my best political poems it took me over 35 years to put them down on paper was “This Land Is Not My Land,” my poems on Panama, where I served in the military.

EK: How long were you in Panama again?

AW: Three years. Grew up fast there. The President got assassinated within months when I was there. That one was a Josephine Miles PEN award. And I mean I finished that book I had only done about 6 of them or 8 and I ran into Harold Norse on Valencia Street coming out of Abandoned Planet bookstore and I said “Can I show you the poems,” and he said “I’ll write a foreword if you make that into a book.” He said “You must put this into a book!” So I went home and within weeks I finished the book. That was 2006. Last year I got a PEN lifetime achievement award from Oakland. The only other award I think was SF Arts and Letters Foundation in the 80s.

EK: Wow. Tell me more about Second Coming.

AW: Second Coming. I was hanging out with poets who were doing publications, presses, Kell Robertson Desperado Review, Ben Hiatt, Grand Rhonde Review, and I decided ‘Well hell I’d like to do it too.’ I thought poetry was moving in a different direction from the 50s and the 60s  and I wanted to bring it kinda back there. The first issue was kinda timeless—had no date on it, you had to be invited to be in it because I didn’t know if there was gonna be a second issue. And then I got into it and some of the issues I actually typed myself on an IBM Selectric, we snuck into a print shop where a guy worked and did it at midnight—put out a real nice issue there. And they just kept on going much longer than I thought—17 years. But it expanded into a press, into book publishing also in about 75. And then I was getting a lot of grants from the NEA, the California Arts Council, so I was able to put out real nice perfect-bound books. And then around 89—actually it was 88—I had a real bad neck injury and I was laid up for a year, and then I didn’t have any money after that so I said ‘Well, it’s as good a time as any to, you know, let somebody else pick it up and do it.’ Couple people are still around from that era. … and then Brown University approached me and asked if they could buy my archives.

EK: When was that?

AW: 86. I didn’t know what to ask because I needed money then and so I just picked a figure out of my head. I was amazed: I had 3,000 letters that I had written from those 17 years of Second Coming. Because anyone wrote me a letter I wrote back. And some of them were real good exchanges. So those were good days. I did a lot of broadsides and some postcards and two key—well one real key anthology: California Bicentennial Poets Anthology. That one actually sold. I think we got 700 library orders … 3,000 copies. Even the guy from Harpers came over at a fair and he said “We couldn’t have done a better job with that”—it was a nice compliment. It’s a landmark one. We did a SF Poets anthology and it was good, but nothing that would distinguish it like the California one. And then I had a New Zealand anthology of New Zealand poets because New Zealand was doing a lot back then. But nobody gave a shit. So I couldn’t give the copies away. The only ones that made money was the CA anthology, my own North Beach poems, and the Bukowski issue—all three of those turned a profit.

EK: How early was that in his career?

AW: He wasn’t famous then but he was big in the small presses. First poem I published of his I think was 74, 73. And after he made it his letters became smaller and smaller and shorter and shorter and I think the last one I got from him was something like 2 or 3 lines, like take care of your neck or something like that. The injury and then … he did that with all his friends. Sooner or later he would dump you. I don’t know why. Harold Norse had a poem on that: the worst thing you can say to him is “I love you.” Because if he ever thought you were getting too close to him he found an excuse to push you away. And I found that quite interesting.

EK: I wanted to know a little bit about the SF Arts Commission and the Neighborhood Arts Commission and what you did for them.

AW: That was in 75. They were hiring 200 artists—poets, writers, musicians, puppeteers, everything—and there was 2,000 applications, and out of 2,000 I was one of 200 that got hired. Oddly enough not so much for my literary work but because they had a law—it was federally funded—that said if you had a police record they had to hire you over someone else, so I actually got hired—most people get not hired, and I got hired [laughs] because of it, which I thought was totally amusing, and that’s too long a story to go into on the arrest … maybe you can get it in the library; it’s in my memoir, Charles Bukowski and the Second Coming Revolution. It’s really a book worthwhile for reading because it’s not just on Second Coming and Charles Bukowski, it’s on small presses and Kaufman and Wantling—there’s a section on Wantling—on how they tied in with us. …

The one arrest was for, politely put, driving an auto without permission from the driver. It’s a long story—someone slipped LSD in a drink I was drinking and I was getting real paranoid and wandered outside and having hallucinations and there was a double parked cab there and I had to get out and I just jumped in the car and drove off, and I had the police chasing me through the streets of San Francisco [laughs]. Part of it’s amusing but it wasn’t amusing then, believe me. You don’t want to be in a felony wing with those guys. They finally reduced it to a misdemeanor, but yeah.

So anyway with the Arts Commission. I was supposed to be hired as an editor and writer, but I really just used the time to pursue Second Coming. I did put some poetry readings on in N Beach, and the biggest event I put on was 1980 Poets and Music festival, [for] which we honored John Lee Hooker for music and Josephine Miles for poetry and it was a 7 days, 7 nights, and 3 county event. I don’t know anybody that’s every done a 7 day consecutive thing in three counties. When it was over, Wilfredo Castano and I were so burned out—I don’t think I did much of anything for 3 or 4 months. I was just totally wiped out. But mainly it allowed me to continue the Second Coming and do my activities. Peter Coyote was there, and he was serving on the CA Arts Council. The person in charge of it was pretty meek; she pretty much let us do what we wanted to do. Rather than say … well she once asked me if I would teach in San Francisco and I said no. [laughs] And then I went out and taught in a junior high in San Mateo, and she said, “Well … you’re hired in San Francisco.” And I said “It doesn’t matter; poetry’s experienced everywhere!” And I said “besides, no one had ever taught in the junior high school in the poets and schools program.”

Me and Paul Fericano went in there and taught as a team. And then I published a book of their poetry under Second Coming. And we had one class of creative writing students who were almost all white, did very mediocre poetry; and we had a class of primarily minorities—two years behind in English, and they were damn good because they were writing about their lives: grandfather that committed suicide, you know, an alcoholic mother; whereas the white creative class was just writing about love poems and what do they know at 15, 16 about love or anything? I mean it was like they were given an assignment in their class and that’s what they were giving us. And we told them not to do that. Write about your experiences. Unless they didn’t have any experiences. But those were great years. I had a good time—pay was poor, but I had a health plan, and sometimes I would only work 4 hours a day; sometimes I would work 1, 2 times a week. There was no time clock. Nothing to punch in on. So those were definitely great times.

(Maureen Blennerhasset)

The last thing I expected when I went to the Luggage Store Gallery was to see someone take a shit on stage. Not a metaphorical shit, not a bad performance, but a literal release of feces-from-rectum shit.

I was there on Tuesday for The RADAR Show, hosted by Michelle Tea, with featured big name guests like Daniel Handler (a.k.a. Lemony Snicket), Matt L. Rohrer (editor in chief of Small Desk Press), Kirk Read (author of How I Learned to Snap), Erin O’Briant (author and founder of Lit Books press), Sharon Barnes (documentary filmmaker commissioned by Barack Obama), and Lisa Brown (author and illustrator of several parenting guides and children’s books).

So like I said, the last thing I expected to see was someone take a shit on stage. After recently moving to the Tenderloin here in San Francisco, I’ve certainly seen my fair share of public defecation—but for the sake of art?  Well no, this was the first.

RADAR is a literary based local non-profit founded by Michelle Tea that “gives voice to innovative queer and outsider writers and artists whose work authentically reflects the LGBTQA community’s diverse experiences.” In other words: a vital lifeline for creativity in the queer community.

The show’s performers each used a different medium for their art. First, the readers: Erin O’Briant read from her novel in progress, Friendly, and Matt L. Rohrer, a Brooklyn high school English teacher, read a collection of poems inspired by his day job.

Then the evening shifted from readings to everything else. Daniel Handler fielded audience questions about everything from “I’m in my early 30s and want kids, should I wait for a partner or go it alone right now?” to “How do I go about being a successful writer?” If you’ve never met Handler, you should know that he is the type of person who is absolutely hilarious without trying to be (my favorite type!). His deadpan delivery style cuts through the fluff and reveals a glaring why didn’t i think of that? truthfulness. In the process of answering these questions, he told an anecdote that has stuck in my mind since I heard it. I’ll paraphrase:

One time, I had this day job that I drove to each day. Once I was running late and couldn’t find parking, but I saw this lot across the street riddled with signs that read, ‘TOW AWAY ZONE: NO PARKING!’ So I parked there anyway. Before leaving my car and running into work, I wrote this sign in all capital letters which simply said, ‘DO NOT TOW THIS CAR!’ and stuck it on my windshield. After work that day my car was the only one there.”

That is certainly a wisdom I respect.

Sharon Barnes, a renowned filmmaker who caters to the likes of Calvin Klein and President Obama, presented a tantalizing excerpt from her short film Fighter. It’s about a girl who enters an anti-gay Christian conversion therapy program only to break her girlfriend out of it. After seeing a clip at the show, I had to watch the whole thing when I got home. Definitely check it out here.

Sticking with the visual arts medium, Lisa Brown unveiled a new cartoon for The Rumpus, “Welcome to the Ten in One.” The series will feature ten different circus acts under one tent, one by one on the website; at the show Brown called upon some audience members to read the dialogue for The Wild Boy.

So, about that shit…

The last act of the evening was Kirk Read, an author and performance artist. Inspired by Yoko Ono’s Grapefruit, an instructional book in conceptual art, Read appeared before the audience as naked as the day he was born. Then he mounted a podium with his rear facing the bewildered faces, squatted above a Tupperware container and defecated inside. That’s not art, you say! When he finished, Tupperware in hand, Read approached a blank canvas and painted “ONE” using nothing else but his fingers and the contents of the container. Despite the audience’s nervous giggling and whispers, Kirk bravely applied more feces to the canvas, smoothing out the word, until the Tupperware was empty. With one last glance at his accomplishment, he slowly turned to exit (hopefully to wash his hands!)

So that’s how RADAR ended. Now I will end this article the same way, leaving you with your thoughts.

(Rick Kleffel)

“Esmerelda is in an underground extreme food training ground compound in Marin …”

—Matt Stewart

“This will not help your appetite, whatsoever…”

—Josh Mohr

Prepare to be shocked. Trust me, it will happen. In fact, I’m warning you now, if you are easily offended, then be cautious with Joshua Mohr’s reading. It’s raw stuff. But, like Matt Stewart’s reading, it is tear-jerkingly hilarious. These are the kind of readings that sell books, and they did sell books at the Capitola Book Café. So, wherever you are, please hold off on buying these books long enough to go to a local bookstore and get them, or order them. I know what you will want to do for that immediate gratification.

Gratification is indeed the topic of these two live readings. In the first place, it was gratifying for the audience to hear such great performances. Both writers are natural actors and their readings are beyond lively. Matt starts things off with an appropriately culinary episode from The French Revolution. To my mind, this passage really captures the anarchic feel of the book, the way that Stewart’s prose mirrors the chaotic lives of families. And I will dare to say that you will laugh out loud, often, as you hear him read. Try not to embarrass yourself.

You can leave the embarrassment up to Joshua Mohr, who reads a passage from Termite Parade. This is a hilarious book; but it is also a bad book, bad in way of bad behaviour, bad attitude, the kind of snarky smart-ass that gets you thrown out of class in school or dirty looks in business meetings. I have to admit that as I heard Mohr start reading his passage at the Book Café, I sort of cringed. I knew what was coming, and I just hoped my audience at the Book Café was as open-minded about this as I was. Happily they were, because you can hear them laughing when they are supposed to and imagine the cringing as well.

I’m happy to report that it is still perfectly legal for those of you who listen while you drive to both laugh and cringe while you drive. I’m guessing you will do both early and often when you follow this link to the MP3 audio files.

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Rick Kleffel’s reviews of The French Revolution by Matt Stewart and The Termite Parade by Joshua Mohr

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The French Revolution

Let Them Eat Laughter

We usually think of families as collections of people related by birth, marriage or long acquaintance. Our mothers and fathers, our husbands and wives, our children, the friends we’ve known forever, individual humans you can put in a room so that they will fight, make love, argue or watch television together with a vacant look in their eyes and as a companionable silence settles. But families consist of more than just the humans who have the same or different names and addresses. In many ways, families are not people; they are stories.

When you think about family as story, you begin to realize the common thread that unites all families, because the humans and their lives fall all over the map. Any family is made up of humans who could not be more different, humans who may be utterly in love or bare able to tolerate one another. But family stories unite us; because every family, without exception, has a weird story.

Matt Stewart distills the particular weirdness that is Northern California, and more specifically, San Francisco in his novel The French Revolution (Soft Skull Press; June 15, 2010 ; $15.95). His family epic begins in 1989, with Esmerelda Van Twinkle, an eccentric example of Northern California culture. She’s destined to give birth to twins on Bastille Day, and names her children Robespierre and Marat. And thus begins the French Revolution—a family story.

Stewart drives his family story with great family stories, written in prose that captures the essence of family storytelling. There’s a baroque, detail-stuffed feeling to the writing here. It’s like opening up the junk drawer in your parents’ kitchen, and having all the wildest stories about your family and their excesses spill out at once. Stewart knows how to turn the American family up to eleven. His sentences have that shaggy-dog, what-the-heck quality that the best family stories have. He has an uncanny ability to surprise the reader with words.

Stewart’s plot echoes the odd arc of family epics; one sibling is straight and normal(ish) the other bent out of true, but both seem to reflect their parents. What Stewart does amazingly well is to capture the feel of an American family and turn it into gripping reading. Artists, entrepreneurs, stunning successes and spectacular failures strut the stage in Stewart’s stylish prose. And he never loses track of the idea of family as story and history, which he cleverly tracks but does not mirror. One of the characters in here becomes a musician, and there’s a very loose, jazzy sort of musical feel to the story.

There’s a phrase that is often used to describe old, close friends—”the family that we choose.” But that’s a lie. Stewart’s knows that family is destiny, whether it is the family you are related to or the family you simply relate to. The French Revolution shows a free-wheeling family spinning out a wild story as America moves from one century to the next. They’re really odd and might seem like the sort of people you’d hear about but never meet. Stewart’s real achievement is not just the creation of a family you will never forget. This is also the family and the novel that feel like home.

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TERMITE PARADE

The Enemy Within

Most of us, at some point in our lives, learn what it means to be your own worst enemy. The key word in the previous sentence is learn. Because if we learn, then we do not repeat the mistakes that wrap themselves around the phrase “your own worst enemy.” If we do not learn, then we get to experience something that is happily not quite so common—the personal apocalypse.

Joshua Mohr’s Termite Parade is indeed a parade—of mistakes that do not serve as teaching moments, of compound interest that accumulates daily, of men and women who do not see themselves or others clearly—or all too clearly. These are small lives in San Francisco, the sort of people you know or meet who are friends of friends. Joshua Mohr takes you up close and personal with the people whom you hope will not enter your life. Unless of course they are already there. Or, you are one of them.

Termite Parade is told in three points of view; there’s Mired (rhymes with wired), who starts the novel telling us, “My life was in the toilet. I was right where I belonged.” This is a woman with some pretty serious self-image problems, who has a bad time at a party, with Derek, her boyfriend. Derek, who tells us most of the story, is a mechanic, and probably not such a bad guy after all. But a single decision can turn not-such into a real shit. And once in a while, you get to hear from Frank, Derek’s brother. He’s a video editor with delusion of artistry. Or if not delusions, inclinations towards artistry where none is required. It causes problems.

Told in short, staccato chapters, Termite Parade is a grotesque evocation of dissolution and redemption, of lies and truths, and of people who are pretty much all their own worst enemies. None of these people will ever be famous, and none of them are likely to be rich. These are some of the most realistic characters ever to walk off the printed page and into your life. Mohr’s episodic style is consistently hilarious. There’s pretty much an unstoppable laugh in every chapter, on every page. Whether it is his characters’ deeply-seated badness, or the awful situations they manage to work themselves into or the shocking honesty with which the book is written, you’re going to laugh.

Of course, some readers may find this book a bit too raw for their tastes, and that’s understood. You were warned, not of the rawness, anybody can handle that, but of what you might miss. Mohr has a penchant for making smart observations about our stupidest behaviour. He can write a sentence that will knock a couple of teeth out, then put it in a scene that will kick you in the face. He’s an expert at using blue language to make you laugh to make you really, really see these people.

This is not a book of comfort, though there is a lot of joy. Mohr clearly loves life, even at its roughest, lowest point. Termite Parade is a novel that you will rip through in a few moments, with scenes you’ll never forget. Mohr writes with authority about really awful things you just might experience, if you have a really bad night followed by a worse day. Reading Mohr’s evocation of this kind of reality might be the only thing that could compensate for this kind of reality. Reading about it is much, much better.

(Nicole McFeely)

On Sunday February 20th, I joined Jonathan Hirsch and an audience of about 40 at Viracocha to enjoy the first installment of his inspired seasonal reading series The Clattering Loom. I had met Hirsch, who is also founder of the groundbreaking Tenderloin Reading Series, by chance the night before as I was leaving Writers with Drinks and was struck by his enthusiasm for the project; it was infectious. He seemed an incredibly voracious soul, capable of finding inspiration in details most people dismiss or ignore. He told me a bit about his inspiration for the series, which came from this anonymous Japanese love poem translated by Kenneth Rexroth:

Her bracelets tinkle

Her anklets clink

She sways at her clattering loom

She hurries to have a new

Obi ready when he comes.

He said the significance he found in these lines struck while contemplating the type of work writers do as we attempt to find inspiration and create. “We work towards our love; we prepare ourselves for it,” he explained. “There’s a passion and inspiration that arises from that process.”

Pondering this, he decided to see what might happen if a diverse set of writers could take part in the experience together by selecting a dynamic line-up of poets and prompting them to consider conjoining ideas. Selected writers are asked to dig into the spirit of the season in which the reading will be held while simultaneously focusing on an idiom or phrase chosen from another language that captures more than ours can express—without the use of whole paragraphs or, in this case, entire poems.

For this installment, participants paid tribute to the ephemeral nature of Spring while considering the Japanese phrase, “mono no aware” which loosely translates to the feeling of nostalgia or yearning we experience as a result of life’s transient nature. As they say, nothing lasts forever. I, however, left immersed in a slew of hastily scribbled quotations, many of which have continued to sneak up on me delightfully, days later.

Creativity is contagious. Catch all of the night’s readers plus part of a mesmerizing performance by the evening’s musical guests, The Devotionals, below:

Joanna Lioce (read by Tyson Corvidae)

Nicole De Aroya

Valerie Chavez

Michael Warren Grant

Jonathan Hirsch

Charlie Getter

The Devotionals

(Evan Karp)

A.D. Winans, 75, is a serendipitous poet. He found himself in North Beach in 1958 and fell in with Bob Kaufman and Jack Micheline, who remained lifelong friends and inspirations; he found himself writing, and never looked back. He has now published 52 books, the latest of which—Drowning Like LiPo in a River of Red Wine (Bottle of Smoke Press), is a beautiful limited collection of his life works—all the way through 2010. He is still putting out several small volumes a year; having just traveled 4 decades via this collection, I can attest that his writing is only becoming more lucid with the passage of time.

Winans also founded Second Coming Press and published many accomplished poets—including Bukowski—well before they were widely known. We spent a leisurely hour together over a cup of coffee, and to retain the flow of our conversation I have not doctored the syntax or altered our statements in any way. Part 1 of a 2-part conversation, was published in conjunction with a profile @ SF Weekly, which you can read here.

Evan Karp: What makes someone a writer?

A.D. Winans: Well, the only thing I can say is I didn’t choose to write. I’d have picked another field if I wanted a career, but it’s just something that I started taking in poetry readings in 58 and 59 in N Beach and other places, and then I got hooked on City Lights on the books down there, just started writing, you know. It’s sort of like a disease almost. I don’t really know what else to say: I don’t think you choose writing I think writing chooses you. I can’t understand these people who say they write a poem a day; I just can’t write that way. I write when something comes to me that I feel like writing. Might see something on TV—like this Egyptian thing—I’m sure I might get a poem out of that. But it comes on its own time; I can’t just sit down, you know, and compose a poem.

EK: I have a friend who says poetry is an affliction.

AW: Well it is. Disease, affliction—that’s basically what I feel.

EK: Do you remember the first reading you went to? Who turned you on?

AW: Well actually one of the first ones wasn’t billed as a reading—it was the old Co-Existence Bagel Shop where Bob Kaufman sort of held court. He used to jump up on the table and start reciting poetry—not only his own but Blake, Eliot, Pound—a lot of the masters he just had memorized by heart. So that probably was the first, if you want to call it that … wasn’t a staged reading, something you went to because poetry … people went there in the hope that they would catch him doing that. You know Ginsberg and those people gave readings; Bob sort of owned the bagel shop. That was his talent. Then I heard Jack Micheline—he read somewhere I can’t remember the name of it. That was in the 60s though, that was Malvina’s. Jack and I became really close friends until he died in 98. Him and I—I don’t consider myself having a mentor but he’s the closest thing I would have to a mentor. We had so much in common: he was born premature I was born premature, we write about the same topics, subject matter, we feel the same way about poetry business, which it’s become somewhat, with a lot of these people trying to make it a … well, they get into the poetry world and they don’t really have that much talent but they’re great organizers and they get in with the right crowds and they make a name for themselves, whereas Jack … or Bob. Bob was every bit as good as Ginsberg. In fact I think his overall body of work was better than Ginsberg’s. Phil Lamantia was another surreal poet. But I’d say Bob was my [first]. And then I got into Bukowski because I was publishing Second Coming. I wrote him and asked him for some poems and he wrote back and he said, Well, I had a second coming myself last night—because he’s always into sex. And anyway we met and I published the second issue—the Charles Bukowski issue—and then we became friends for 17 years, exchanged about 83 letters I wish I’d hung onto rather than giving them to the Brown University archives because they’re very valuable. Some of them are hand-written and they’re all artwork on each one, you know.

But there’s a misconception about him. If you were with him when he was sober, he was actually a very pretty much shy guy; it was only when the drinking things that he had the persona of the drunken, you know, guy. But if you saw him in person sober you’d find an entirely different person. Ferlinghetti I know but I never got that close to. I met most of them: Ginsberg, Burroughs, Snyder. Snyder got me a nice grant when I hurt my neck in 89. He wrote a letter to the Academy of American Poets on my behalf and I got 5000 bucks I really needed. Of course I had to sign it that I wouldn’t tell anyone because they didn’t want to be handing out a lot of grants to people. I mean now I can talk about it. But then they didn’t want it. So, what else?

EK: I don’t know! I mean I’m fascinated by the life experiences you’ve had. I usually talk to younger poets; I usually talk to people I already know. So … you’re from N Beach originally, right?

AW: Well I was born in SF but I lived in the Haight Ashbury through high school, and actually moved to Glen Park in my senior year. And then I went to Panama in the military from 54 to 58. When I got out in 58 I was going to school so I lived with my parents for a while, back in Glen Park, but that’s where I hung out in N Beach all of the time. In fact I hung out in N Beach until about 1989. And then things really began to change after the Reagan years. All the art things they were disappearing; most of the poets were leaving. They still have poets out there—maybe Hirschman is the oldest—but he didn’t come until about 73. So I was probably the oldest from that era still around. Except Ferlinghetti. But he doesn’t really hang around the scene much at all. He doesn’t drink—well if he does he doesn’t do it in public—so he would hang out at Trieste and I would hit with Jack and all the others hit all the bars, from Vesuvio to 1232 Club, Coffee Gallery. Gino and Carl’s was the biggest because Jack Spicer and Richard Brautigan hung out there—they were always drinking there. And then up on Upper Grant there was a place called The Place, which Spicer co-hosted. And that was called Blabbermouth night where you could get up and espouse anything you wanted to talk about. And those were wild days.

I still remember my first night in N Beach—1958, February. The sexual revolution—people think that started in the hippy era—bullshit. Way before that. I went into a hotel down from City Lights, I forget what its called … and I was ordering a beer, and I hadn’t been there about maybe 10 minutes, and I feel this tap on my shoulder, turn around it’s a nice looking French woman, she looks at me and I said “What?” She said “Would you like to fuck?” [laughter] Blew my mind. I said “Of course!” So we went upstairs to where she was staying at one of the rooms, and then she took me down afterwards to Big Daddy Nort’s place on the old produce district—that was an old warehouse. Bob Kaufman used to hang out there and blacks would be shirtless with bongo drums dancing with white women, which in 58 was still sort of iffy outside of that area. So I wandered up to the roof, I get up to the roof and they have all these mattresses strewn around on the roof and all these people are fornicating in open view. I mean—I had seen a lot in Panama, but I didn’t expect to see that in my hometown, I mean that was my first initiation into North Beach. Oh yeah, it was a hell of a night. I wrote a piece about it. Then I was just hooked to going up there after that.

EK: I was going to say I’m sure that wasn’t your last visit up there.

AW: Oh I didn’t hang out at Eric’s pad that often. Maybe a half dozen times. But it was a place to go after hours when the bars closed—that’s where people gathered. Except Kaufman would sometimes go to Aquatic Park with two black guys I guess they were musicians and one would be playing the congas, Bob would be chanting poetry, and then he’d be passing a jug of wine around and smoking grass, you know, So grass was fairly plentiful too, but you got caught it was a felony. And I remember Herb Caen the columnist—I met him—Charlie McCabe, you know he was a great guy … so they were exciting times. I don’t think anyone will see anything quite like that again. It just isn’t likely to happen. They had jazz around, and it was just a camaraderie—everybody was friendly. I remember Marlon Brando was photographed in the window sitting in Vesuvio—I think that was before 58. And then they started moving to Venice Beach and Mexico, and William Margolis used to co-edit the Beautitude magazine with Bob, and I don’t know I guess he tried to commit suicide, jumped out a window and all he got was paralyzed, which was sad, because to me I’d rather be dead than paralyzed.

The Post-beat era was pretty exciting too. Gene Ruggles, Kell Robertson, Kaye McDonough, Janice Blue—we were probably, you know, it was just as wild as the other times. It started from Vesuvio’s all the way to Upper Grant. If you went up to Filbert that’s where it stopped. Filbert had the bread and wine mission run by some renegade father. You could go up there on Sundays and get free wine and spaghetti and watch the sunset. Watch the girls.

EK: Wow. Doesn’t take much more than that.

AW: No, and then after that it sort of I guess you could say coexisted with the hippies for a few years in the 60s but the only poet I remember being out there was Ginsberg, George Tsongas and Alan Cohen, who did The Oracle magazine. So I’d say about 80 it started to … all the ones who are still alive are in different places. David Plum’s in Florida, Kell Robertson’s on his last legs, he’s in New Mexico. Kaye McDonough is in Rhode Island. Janice Blue is … somewhere in California. But they’re not around here anymore. I’m one of the few holdovers who are still here. And Mel Clay, he’s in North Beach. And then some that came late to the scene. Hirschman lives off of Union Street, so that’s still North Beach. But he mostly hangs out at Caffe Trieste.

EK: Yeah I see him at Trieste sometimes.

AW: He used to go there at a specific time just about every day; you’d see him at the same time. I think he liked letting people know that he’d be there at that time.

…

EK: Talk to me about your writing. So I’ve read a decent bit of Drowning Like LiPo in a River of Red Wine; I started at the beginning even though you asked me not to.

AW: [laughs] I don’t like the beginning. People are really taken by the Crazy John poems. I have about 18 unpublished ones—I’m gonna put them in with the previous books and do one final series. Cause that was unique; it was different; you don’t see that subject matter floating around too much. And of course as you get further and further on you see a progression of where my writing went.

EK: Yeah I think I got through Crazy John and then I got wrapped up in my own life and as today got closer I skipped ahead and I wanted to be more hip to the newer stuff, so I … went all the way to the 2000s. What struck me is that a lot of your writing seems not conversational but very straightforward and open.

AW: I write for … to me, writing academic poetry, you’re writing for other academic poets; you’re writing for a limited audience. I try to write to an audience of people who may not have even been exposed to poetry. That’s why they like Bukowski—because he wrote in a language you don’t have to run to a dictionary to understand. And it’s not like all confessional; a lot of what I write about is observations. That’s why I had The Streets of San Francisco, because I’ve walked all these streets. I observe the homeless and whatever it is and I write poems about it. Something that moves me, or sometimes I’ll stop and talk to the guy, like I did with one I found out he was a homeless Vietnam vet—that brought about a poem. I’ve also written haiku, I’ve written surreal, I’ve written a couple of academic poems. I don’t try to stay in once place. Most of them are small editions—500 and 300 copies—but I’ve had about 52 books out. And this one I’m proud of because he did a really good job. …

I don’t want to be pigeonholed. Sometimes I’ll purposely write something totally different from what I normally write just to see what people’s reactions are. The Mexico poem—that’s not what I usually write.

EK: What would you say are some of the major changes you’ve seen as your poetics—as your style has evolved?

AW: I don’t know. I would think … it’s hard to answer because [for instance] I had a book of 13 jazz poems come out that were lyric poems. I don’t usually write lyrical poems. Micheline did a lot of lyrical poems. So that book. And then of course Crazy John was totally different. So I don’t know if it’s a style that’s evolving, because I still write the way I wrote before, but I just expanded into other forms. I never thought I’d write haiku, but I got into writing some haiku and they published the stuff, so I said well it must be fairly good. But I don’t think I’ll go back to haiku; I think leave that to the Japanese and Chinese. Chinese are masters at it and I don’t think Western haiku is anywhere as good as Asian haiku is. So I don’t know. I don’t sit down and say well I’m gonna write lyrical today. You know. The poem just came lyrical, and the other poems followed suit. …

I’ve often told people—because I’ve never said I was a poet; if it’s poetry, fine. Micheline never said he was a poet. I just feel like William Wantling said once, said “I’d give up writing and carry a lunchbox just like the rest of them, if only these strange mutterings would leave me alone,” and that’s how I feel. Except I use “demons” that dictate … like I’m kind of a caretaker for their voices. Jack Spicer sort of felt poems came that way too. Certainly not to a lot of poets, but they come that way with some people. And that’s how they come for me.

__

Our conversation continues in a second installment, to be published soon. But first, my favorite Winans poem (so far):

__

“For William Wantling”

Looking into the cracked lips of sorrow

I walk the harsh streets of tomorrow

The ghost of my fears demanding that

I face my destiny

But i am not a graveyard poet

In search of chilled bones

The words i speak hold no fear

For like you

I have tasted the laughter of life

Walked the sinister circus of reality

Playing out the game like

A chessmaster

Knowing there is no power

Strong enough to still

The song inside you

The long years of silence

The grave brings can only

Be broken by those who care enough

To take up the cause

There are those who seek

The underground warmth

Desire to be closeted in blackness

Moths of night with closed minds

And hardened hearts encased in stone

And then there are those like you

Who sense to be a poet

One must first die

Inspiration comes naturally

Expiration takes effort

It is not enough to passively die

You must expel life while living

This is the mark of the true poet

The night rolls back its wings

Teeth as cold as naked bone

But neither the night nor

The poet dies quietly

Only the flesh expires

The words linger on welcoming

The taste of ash

And morning comes as no loss

For wherever you are

You survived the pain

Refused to surrender

Earth’s flesh removed from reality

Here in the wakening of dawn

Where the mist smells sweetly

And one can hear the throats

Of birds singing like cannons

In the hour when the spirit

Collects its visions

Replaying them on old walls

Gatsby shots from another era

Stills to fill the void

In a world of runaway tongues

You are everywhere beneath

The wild grass

The silver star of night

The face of morning

The crystal clear sky singing

Your song

Gone with others

Who dared to hold

The sun in their hands

__

Read Part 2.

(Evan Karp)

This week’s pick is hilarious, notable not only for a mastery of timing and content but for its repetition and genius one-liners. Funnyman Alex Koll performed this set at Writers With Drinks last week. Jew jokes? Yeah, not going out of style. Also: “I’m intimidated by writers.” I have a friend who says comics aren’t poets, and while that might be true I think they often have a lot in common. A deliberate use of language for effect is artistic and even magical, even if constructed with conniving intentions. You’ve heard the term con-artist (the “con” is short for confidence). What about com-artists?

I made my 1000 dollars in gift cards at my Bar Mitzvah and got the fuck out of the business.

You could be on fire here, in this city, and people are like “Would you leave him alone—that’s his choice, goddamnit.”

Your friends get on the sports train, and they get real into it, and then that train leaves the station and you’re just a little chubby mystery running behind the train like, “Hey, my sandwich is on there, I think!” And I never got on it. And as an adult, there’s too much good shit on Netflix to catch up now. Like I got other things to do. I realize I’m missing a lot of great life metaphors, but fuck you. Six Feet Under is still good.

Anton! Anton! Anton! And then the Giants score a homerun and everybody in the bleachers is totally convinced that these two events are completely related.

Sleeping is broken! Is Rainbow Grocery open because I think organic figs and flax will fix this shit, but I don’t know.

And that’s what’s happening: people are going crazy and eating crickets at the ballpark.

Alex, along with Bucky Sinister, Sean Keane, and Chris Garcia bring The Business every Wednesday at 8pm until anywhere from 10-11:30, depending on how many guests they have. They now have a blog, too. At only $5 in the tucked away Dark Room, this is one of the best weekly events I know about. These guys have been doing this for almost ever now as a way to flesh out new material and they’ve really hit stride with it; already they were each talented and with loads of experience, but all together they’re a real grab bag of Ways To Laugh. You know how Munchies give you 4 ways to enjoy that salty crunch you sometimes crave? The Business is the Munchies of comedy.

(Alma Vescovi)

The genre of flash fiction gives us small glimpses, brief openings of a door onto a briefly sketched scene. It’s also a genre that lends itself to studies of sadness and disappointment, small throbs of pain that would overpower if extended into a longer form. Like a doctor who insists, “This will only hurt for a second,” Ethel Rohan leads us through disappointments both ordinary and extraordinary, sparing us nothing but length. The result is a series of painfully honest examinations of loss and confusion.

The Momentum of Sadness

Childlessness, loneliness, and botched plastic surgery are only a few of the quietly felt dissatisfactions in Cut Through the Bone (Dark Sky Books). Rohan is attentive to even the smallest manifestation of discontent: a tendency to break jars, an addiction to dry-roasted peanuts; she has a gift for recording the small changes that announce a greater complaint. Rohan has an especially deft touch with the momentum of grief: if flash fiction is the snap of a camera in the dark, then she is a master of the well-timed exposure; a mounting, dead-end sadness and the slow, sure build of an accident about to happen are well-captured in spite of the stories’ brevity.

Things That Go Wrong

Rohan’s all-female cast of characters might as well be one woman; the distinctions are evident only in the womens’ incompatible grievances and small, sometimes imperceptible shifts in time and location. The brevity of the stories doesn’t allow us much investment in Rohan’s vulnerable women, and the stories sometimes read like an anthology of Things That Go Wrong—explorations of the hypothetical ways in which life can fail any of us.

Just Enough

The characters are quickly introduced, their can of worms briefly opened, and then they are whisked out of sight. Fortunately, if Rohan’s characters lack a depth found in longer stories, her dogged treatment of her theme creates an almost medical portrait of injuries, following them through their cycle: infliction, infection, swelling, sweating, and scabbing. Scattered throughout the book are small solaces and the occasional victory, just enough to let a little light through the keyhole.

Check out the book trailer, below:

(Maureen Blennerhassett)

What with some great human injustices persisting in the news today, the last word I would use to describe our society is utopia.

Given the disparate handpicked talent representing each corner of the writing world that come together each month for Writers With Drinks, the last thing I would do in trying to write this article is attempt to link them together with a theme.

Well, patient readers, I propose a glimpse into utopia via the words of a bunch of writers with drinks. Think Greek isle, silver lamé, ouzos, seahorses, legalized pot, wholesome food, employee-owned businesses, and for some … a rotund lover riding you from above.

A utopia in which the Center for Sex and Culture would be fully funded and able to provide judgment-free, factual information across the sexual spectrum.

MC/ringleader/vamp/improvisational mastermind Charlie Jane Anders is working for it. Each month she chooses a non-profit to receive all the proceeds from the wildly popular variety show. This month (and the next three): the Center for Sex and Culture. To better understand the charisma that is Charlie, check out this video:

Each performer last Saturday illustrated scenarios of bliss. Well, except Alex Koll, who was absolutely hilarious in his self-deprecating comedy. Seriously, I thought I’d heard every fat kid/Jewish joke in the book, but he had the room in stitches.

Ernest Callenbach read from Ecotopia, his novel of a sustainable utopian society published in 1975. To preface the excerpt: the narrator is a corrupt journalist from New York who boards a high speed train bound for San Francisco and sees his first glance of ecotopian society. After reading portions of the novel, he engages the audience to evaluate how we are doing on our march to ecotopia in present day. Impressively, most concepts he predicted in 1975 have materialized today. Check it out.

Reading “Jackpot” (from her book Baby Geisha), Trinie Dalton took us to a honeymoon in the Greek Isles. She sets the scene, describing yachts coasting in and out of a private beach inlet and people wearing clothing that implied nudity.

Some standout quotes:

“’I was into boobs,’ I said, ‘because I like how the word in singular is a palindrome.’”

“I consider my best friend a sister, which means I don’t always like her … how would I know what to fix if she didn’t go everywhere with me and point out all my flaws?”

“Treading water, I knew I’d be a good wife if I could be half as brave as my girlfriend, who has stuck a wider variety of objects up her crotch.”

Jason Morris (Spirits and Anchors) was introduced by Charlie as being a “god among poets,” and “published in more than one universe.” During the sequence of poems he read, Morris quips, “If it’s not hard, you’re not doing it correctly.”

Anders’s self confessed hero, Hanne Blank, first provided the instructions for a big girl to experience utopia by getting over it and getting on top, straight from the handbook Big Big Love II.

“Ask yourself, if having a hot, fat lady getting on top during sex is even in your fevered imagination any more likely to be the cause of grievous bodily harm than jumping off a mother fucking bridge with a rubber band tied to your ankles?”

Then Blank describes orgasmic heaven in “The Man in the White Shirt,”

“…a scent like bourbon and rosewater rises from her flushed skin…”

“Satiny bra cups rasp on rough knuckles as he works his way up the outside curves.”

I confess, utopian ideals are still too lofty for our modern age. However, to quote Charlie Anders, “A lot of our problems are needing to do with people needing to have a fucking orgasm … Sexual awareness is a form of healthcare. Maybe if the people who’re trying to take away our basic amenities would have a fucking orgasm, they would have more respect for humanity.”