The
West-Coast
Poetry Scene
The West-Coast writers I chose for this issue all have different backgrounds and writing
styles, but I believe they often share a common theme—keeping poetry socially relevant
while never finding it necessary to be overtly political. Though it is certainly hard to
generalize, since among this California group of writers are teachers, social workers,
performance artists, community activists, linguists, film makers, playwrights, musicians,
actors, crafts makers (and the list goes on), as a community, we are determined to make
our voices heard (in a society that has relegated poetry to the lowest form of art), and we
possess the open-mindedness to share criticism as well as ink: editing, writing reviews,
publishing each others books, etc.
In 2003, Nicole Henares, a San Francisco high school English teacher and writer of short
stories and poetry, introduced me to many of these writers, though as synchronicity
would have it, a few of us had known each other through the mail for many years prior to
this. In the summer of 2004, she chose a group of us to read at the North Beach Festival
in San Francisco, on the poetry stage that had been in existence there for nearly fifty
years. Though there were many established and well-known poets performing that day,
many of us, myself included, had never performed on stage before. On the second day of
performances, the microphone was unexpectedly cut off by the police due to complaints
from nearby vendors over “obscenity” (probably in part due to some very graphic and
comedic poems about the human experience by Oakland poet Joe Pachinko and some
incendiary anti-war poems by local poet Jack Hirschman). Needless to say, even without
the public address system, our group of Santa Cruz and Bay Area poets continued to read
to a fired-up crowd. It was then I realized that poetry in the twenty-first century can still
be a relevant, threatening, and enlightening tool for speaking the truth about our
neighborhoods, the ongoing war, and our economic struggles.
Later that year, along with Brian Morrisey (a Santa Cruz transplant from the East Coast,
and the publisher of Poesy), I started a weekly reading called the Wired Wash Open Mic
in a local coffeehouse/laundromat. He and I invited poets from Santa Cruz, as well as
from the Bay Area, to feature once a month. Eventually, poets came from as far away as
the East Coast and the Midwest for the paltry sum of twenty dollars for gas money, an
opportunity to sell their books, and all the wine they could drink at either my house or
Brian’s following the reading.
Over the years, the Wired Wash venue became a haven for street people, musicians,
academics, storytellers, college students, punk rockers, and local characters; and our
patrons ranged in age from seven to eighty-nine. Through technical difficulties, the
cacophony of espresso making and spinning washing machines, unexpected closings,
police patrols, blackouts, fist fights, high staff turnover, chaos, and magic, the Wired
Wash persevered for four years until it closed in June 2008 (when someone allegedly ran
off with the rent money).
Over the last five years, many of us have lectured on zines and small magazines in
schools, attended small press festivals, hosted and performed in readings in San
Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Los Angeles, New Mexico, and even Las Vegas, been
featured on cable access TV and pirate radio, and produced spoken word CDs and poetry
DVDs, all the while sharing resources from Northern to Southern California and keeping
the news of our efforts alive through email, snail mail, telephone, and chance meetings in
downtown Santa Cruz.
I hope you enjoy the following selection of poetry and visual work from the underground
poets of California’s west coast…
Daydreaming Past the Exits
Those days cold and bitter in the city
when they cut off my dental
and she couldn’t get a job
those days of nicotine relief and huge belly laughs….
knowin’ our kid was probably retarded----
when my sis was in & out depressed---maybe on meth
when our favorite potheads nearly killed our cats-
when Pam died and I woke up at the Kern River
that was magic
I cried in the tent all night
not because of the ants----
I obsessed about the country/any country but mine/anything but this apartment
full of shimmering toys/ electrical excess /skull lights/clowns that went off
with no prompting/fart machines/the illusions/distractions/consume/consume….
I worried about scabies, staph infections, the swine flu, mental retardation…..
solar showers….composting toilets, did I have enough flashlights?
I played endless internet games, I played the anarchist fake
I stayed in bed----A LOT
I helped mother, played Scrabble on Saturday nights with my girlfriend
and ailing father
those were the days when we couldn’t tell the ruse or the fascism or the legit
is this it, the big one, martial law? what are we still doing in the city? why are you planning
a degree? do we have a future? are they closing the borders? why are we still here?
her: head buried in calculus book
me: head buried in internet games, lawsuits, lottery tickets
him: couldn’t shower couldn’t focus couldn’t learn
on the porch with cigarettes on a rare warm evening: “what’re we gonna do?! the kid’s a total liability!!!!”
oh precious laughter & vhs movies & country drives/abandoned houses/ghost towns/our trips south/our trips north/oh precious kisses/I didn’t know when I’d met her/she’d be my steady/my thinker/my rock/
unlovable criminal country/beautiful/beautiful girl
flooded with ideas but no concrete plans
endless stream of daily drama, letters and phone calls-
no real salvation
I want to make soap! I want you to whittle! how can invisible numbers carry us through a swine flu epidemic?
I want a dog/I want real weather/I want to be too cold/too hot/anything to feel
I knew I needed wheels & a lot of propane
I knew my camping skills would someday surpass my skills
at paying credit cards on time….
and that Starbucks was laying off workers
and it could only mean the end of civilization…..
the gunshots in my neighborhood real and the southern borders tight
I didn’t want to raise an astronaut
but a gang member either
I wanted to do more than sleep/ happy to get by/in a comfortable ruse…..
I surrounded myself in foolishness
all my business was suspect
but so were the headlines…..
as they raced to prophecy….
the animals evolving from benign creatures
into genetically engineered super-germ-monsters
Steve McNamara lays into the Poetry whore muse.....
King Wenclas bangs out Totem and Taboo to the concern of the poetry police
Mark again with a piece of his mind intact and dangerous...
Received a packet--- pure crack jax box but with a number of secret surprises inside-- from underground prodigy ULAer Christopher Robin of Zen Baby fame with this ‘zine therein-- at a magical moment of some import. I had been knocked for a loop by the most recent love interest (in fact the first in many years ) in my sorry life and (luckily) for me the young creature was on her way back to her parents’ house in the Shenandoah foothills of the Carolinas. When I yanked this ‘zine out of Christopher’s CARE- package the resemblance of the cover to countenance of my aforementioned infatuation calmed my troubled heart which had the additional effect of reminding me how indebted I am to the “glorified nobody” for consistently putting the underground literary fire to my feet.
POPULAR REALITY, SPECIAL REPORT. P.O. Box 66426, Albany, NY. 12206
Henn publisher provocateur . $3.00.
A cheap even rickety “traditional “zine’ out of the post-industrial rust belt upper state New York does what it does unabashedly and will suceed in raising the spirits if not the hackles of the underemployed minimum wage Darma bum. Better than television by a long shot. American idol, “Lost” and many of the talking head pseudo- science journalism “news” shows swamping the air-waves of these end-times are the paradigms herein superceded. Cases in point follow from cover to cover which domain must occlude the front cover which might be considered obscene, approximately dirty if it weren’t so deliciously ridiculous.
Surreal news “articles” like “Christ Kills Two, Injuries Seven In Abortion- clinic Attack”, a report from Pine Tree State Mind Control, a lovely and provocative MySpace Survey from none-other than Misti Rainwater-Lites that is worth at least three bucks.
Reprints of old and recent news articles from the vague past as well as the sorry-ass present: what really caught my attention for obvious reason was the derive tweaked “MOTHER SUES AFTER LEARNING CITY GAVE SLAIN SON’S BRAIN TO PENN”.
The longer “feature-op ed like assays ans analyses into the heart of ridiculous darkness such as pieces by Boram, The Refrigerator’s Ritual Infection I by Nadine Halley, Hope For Homos, and then again the longer pieces that may be best described as non-non fiction to the order on the order of, “The Suicide Of Everyday Life, a wage slave dreams by Lee Reiherzer, and “We Are Scientists” the state of shit, were especially poignant. But over all this crazy “zeen” is not only touching to certain prevalent mentally disturbed types but definitely “touched” all by its lonesome.
FDW. West Philly. 2/22/09.
Bruce Isaacson, DUMBSTRUCK AT THE LIGHTS IN THE SKY, 2008.
Zeitgeist Press, 96pp.perfect-bound. soft cover book. 12.95 US
Reviewed by FDW, ULA.
Nice guy spoils himself with the writing poetry and turns into a pretty cool writer of poems.
The writing is worth reading and keeping to read again the narrative vignettes grow on one particularly.
Also worth getting to get a handle of what kind of literary action is out there in Las Vegas, Nevada, where Isaacson and his family reside as one may wonder about such things whenever Las Vegas is brought up for the usual reasons in a conversation. Special attention should be paid to the prose-poem, "The Old Poet" which entertains
a viable folkloric story thread about what might easily be an American archetypal apprehension regarding the poet as mythopoeia figure. With extreme insight.
Parabolic for the people and having a subtly disturbing Gothic edge that underscores Isaacson's Yankee culture and higher education. "Teenage" is very representive
of this ambience.
DUMBSTRUCK is damn- straight and righton solid stuff. Often in these without exception interestingly titles poems, the humor and the sight gags may seem a bit deliberated and irksome to one but not really as the reader will be rewarded for their patience after seeing through the poem. The good spirit that directs the angle of incidence and the warmth of the bread at hand consistently make the experience worthwhile. Tho some of the shorter poems may seem like cloying ploys, but so what. The whole book vibrates with competents and the certainly that is rooted in an actual creative competence and fortitude and many of the shorter pieces act as rest stops to give the reader an opportunity to cool down between the "heavier" swinging more expansive compositions. Here is roving organic poetries, good solid vers livre/libre-- spring board off of what Aldington (1915) declares, "We fight for its [vers livre ] as for a principle of liberty." -- good examples here: "Blood Sugar Blues", "Going Back To Brenda" are worth every second and the savor of each with an easy seamless flow and emotional rewards that are the reason we read if not write poetry, To begin with.
Tracking the wave of the most effective and representive, "How Are You Doing", p12 and the incredible "Carousel", pp. 14-17, placing the theme ("theme" because there's a dialectical or two) succinctly riding the crest of emotional import, a human one a deeply humane one in situations we may have guessed at-- before coming to Isaacson's book-- in the actual world, including business, of relationships, and more.
Steve Henn, THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY WARSAW COMMUNITY COMMEMORATIVE BOOK BURNING,
Pudding House Chapbook Series, Pudding House Publications, Columbus, OH. quarto-sized chapbook
(2007) staple-bound, 32pp.
A sweet and oft powerful tome of advocacy and advocacy and witnessing, whereas the title poem is a fine piece of madness. Notice: this poetry is important for people who neither like for reasons that are moral as they claim poetry nor read the oracular art as well, as those who do and do, because these poems are to a piece significant swan songs for the domineering News and of the contemporaneous truth of underground lit. And fun as Hell and as sharp to partake. This Henn cat has a chip on his shoulder and never far off the mark his every fiber refuses the chip the Power tries to put into his poets' head. Maybe because it's there in black and white on the cover and reiterated within this too slender chap, the mention of Ambrose Bierce sold me on wanting to write this up beat review. That and the fact that Christopher sent me a free review copy. Seriously this some the best most worth while and surreally humoress array of outsider poetry this one has had the pleasure to peruse so far ao good this year. This poetry speaks for itself not from a soapbox or podium but from the stage of stand-up and vaudeville cut-ups of what most gets under the skin of a reader of American poetry these days. Or imbibe of slam for that matter. Good stuff for peanuts at ten bucks. ".. fifteen minutes of scraping ice, take the wife's, the boss bitching 'bout twenty minute late,..." --- "REALTY TV". A most excellent and pleasant word play but at hip-hop speed! "Royal Rumble: Gay Pride Parade And Klan Demonstration", is a excellent low down yellow journalismo a la fin de siecle but as funny as the Marx Brothers. Also plus plus to checking out "How To Turn Yourself Into A Stalker ", screwball purple-prose socked into a fluorescent straight jacket of wham- bam verse. See these poems as just plumb good advice in the form of a quick fix manual of blue-prints and still every inch a book of poetry. 
spine, pocket digest-book, with twenty-one ct. 4-color collage/montage most with 'texte'. 100pp. A note on the title- frontispiece indicates these poems were writ in DC. Takes kindly from life at first at least in the first half of this well put together compact book withdrawn but happily disaffected and then kicking and screaming with optimal affect in the second half. The Trimania 2005 gathering of Buffalo artist and poets is cited as pivotal to the organization and context of the THE OPTIMIST . Influences besides comrade Hip Pocket notables, Johnt, Poerhn and McMahon are and evidenced in the faculties of the poet as well. There's besides the important influences of Jack Spicer, WCW, and Kerouac and "confessional" influence via Robert Lowell informed by real personal history. Negative capability snaps into action-ventures in the winding and unwinding of great representative pieces such as: "Thru The Trapdoor". Most successful are Robert Duncan-esque, less Creeley-esque, are "Final Friday" and the sharp journalese of pp. 67 through 71, and pp. 55-59. VanRemmen when opening up to composition by 'field' should allow and just leave well enough go of adjective or adverb or connective conjunction as these kinds of words naturally tend to fall away and fray at the edges of such compositions. "The Poison Apartment" and "The Relapse" for example would benefit. The Creeley influenced segues are good for domestic and closet dramas but VanRemmen might be better advised to be more sensitive to the fact that resistance becomes friction unless the proven failures of an admitted master be purged from the work of the student at some point the sooner the better in the development of that student's self sufficient "voice". Where this self - management directive is apparently working is when VanRemmen like an alchemist engages diverse raw material at his command, a true bricoleur. The stuff of Constuctivism's (Russian Futurism, i.e.), namely, "phrasical verse" (sorta like the 'samplings' of our hip hop rap dj brethren and sisters?), branded texte, emails, mixed stencil-typography, over all shifts in confabulated emphasis, etc. So that the willing reader is enabled to intensively drift along these intersections and alternative routes of VanRemmen's heart and mind. Retro (because essentially radical subjective extrapolations from none other than the American confessional school) Futurist, since a lot of the work here is composed with "free" disassociative associations violent but not agressively so (in other words 'fun"), praxis, nexus, and loci of the perception in turn personal memory. Also visionary, visuals like in "Cradle Of America", "Note From The Verge". Day dreaming/day tripping out side and inside, "Eternal Sequence Of Rt. 23A", "Love Among The Ruins" again algebraic'ly not mathematically calculated arrangements. The foot-loose 'uncouth' savor suggestive of spontaneity will attract the reading/writing public and overall underground while flaming the ill-literate company poets and Establishment fakes. Bravo, Brian, on an achievement well-tempered.
