 Hello and welcome everyone to the San Francisco Public Library and to our monthly poem jam back live after hiatus of a little over two years. So it's fabulous to see people here again. I'm John Smalley, a librarian with the general collections on the third floor. So I want to acknowledge our community and then also just mention a couple events that are coming up soon. The San Francisco Public Library acknowledges that we occupy the unceded ancestral homeland of the Ramatish alonee who are the original inhabitants of the San Francisco peninsula. We recognize that we benefit from living and working on their traditional homeland and as uninvited guests we affirm their sovereign rights as first peoples and we wish to pay our respects to the ancestors, elders and relatives of the Ramatish community. A couple things are coming up soon. At the end of this month, May 29th, which is a Sunday 1 p.m., we are having a poetry reading by five poets of nomadic press. They're sending five of their poets here. So please come. Should be a fabulous reading. June marks the 100th, well 2022 marks the 100th anniversary of the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses. So there'll be multiple exhibits starting in June on the third floor, the sixth floor, the book club on June 2nd is reading Ulysses. On June 5th, there'll be a film called Shalom Ireland which looks at how the history of the Jewish people in Ireland and how that is reflected in Ulysses. There'll also be a talk by Ireland's ambassador on June 17th. That will be Zoom. He's zooming in from Washington, D.C., presenting his book which is an excellent guide to Ulysses called Ulysses, A Reader's Odyssey. So that's just a taste of what's coming up. We're going to have an action-packed summer music, book readings, all sorts of stuff dealing with the climate and you name it. So that's just go to our website sfpl.org for more information. So that ends my comments. I want to welcome to the stage Kim Shuck, our host and the Poem Jam presiding spirit. Please give a warm welcome to Kim Shuck. One last moment. We have disinfectant wipes at the podium. Leaders. The hand sanitizer and the disinfectant wipes are right there. This is the first one back and I'm freaking out just slightly. I can't do it like that. Thank you for being here to celebrate Lawrence Ferrell and Getty with this wonderful book that Bobby edited called Light on the Walls of Life. It's a really great book. I've been looking through it for the last couple of days and I'm really pleased to be both part of it and be able to support it by having us all read today. I'm going to just go ahead and cut to the chase and introduce Bobby Coleman, what to say about Bobby. Relentless supporter of poetry and practitioner there of one of the people who's been really important to me since I became the laureate and a friend, Bobby Coleman. Thank you and thank you for coming. Thank you to the library, the friends, the contributors to the Scientology, the supporters, to City Lights which helped promote the event and has been supportive throughout the project and to Lawrence Ferrell and Getty. Now without Lawrence Ferrell and Getty's example what would the world look like? I just reviewed the October 13th 1998 poet laureate inauguration and his inaugural address which was here across the hall and I was struck by a couple of things. First of all there was his expansive presence and example so humanistic and so beautiful in a way, charismatic and then there was the maturity of not only his life experience and perspective but something innate about the human spirit so when there was a heckler of course those of us in San Francisco who perform or recite know how to handle that kind of thing very well in Lawrence's case even after it recirculated during the mayor's introduction Lawrence leaned on the edge of the podium and looked directly at the speaker and smiled and smiled generously prompting somebody, perhaps someone in this audience who was here to say unprompted that's a true public servant. I think that says a lot about what Lawrence offered us how Lawrence offered so much to the cultural life of the country and he's known for so many different things that will emerge in the in the readings that you're about to hear. I'm very happy that the library is recording this for the legacy. We're pleased with the anthology but this is a tribute to Lawrence first and foremost and to what's in our hearts that connects with Lawrence's work and legacy so I'll start with a very brief poem one that Lawrence read on that occasion and it resonates for me because it's the one I read at the spontaneous vigil on the night that we learned of his passing he was nearly 102 and you know it was heartbreaking because we were we had received Lawrence's blessing as approval for this project and it had it was a week from going to the printer when he passed away so that was a stunning turn of events because we were very eager for him to to see it it was something that he prompted for the benefit of youth poetry and arts education. He had published poems in two of our prior anthologies from Jambu Press so he trusted us and you know I think that we were all coming together to do something beautiful and then he passed on the project had to be reformatted, reconceptualized and it turned out that all the contributors to the book had somehow already been there that the transcendence of the spirit of Ferlinghetti in connection with the contributors of art and poetry to the book had already anticipated the the sort of big picture the timeless element so we added a memorial chapter and I hope that the love and spirit of of humanism and of spiritual breadth is there on every page of the book so here's the poem it's very short at the golden gate at the golden gate a single plover far at sea wings across the horizon a single rower almost out of sight rose his skull into eternity and I take a buddha crystal in my hand and begin becoming pure light he spells skull s-k-u-l-l rose his skull into eternity as opposed to you know the vessel which would be s-c-u-l-l so there's a little pun on the page which is typical Lawrence Ferlinghetti so I have the great pleasure of introducing the first of our readers the former poet laureate as well Devorah Major. Thank you you know when I teach I teach at California College of the Arts and there's a lot of foreign students there and I'm very critical of the United States for a lot of reasons and I always say what I appreciate is free speech and when I think I mean there's so many things to think of when you think of Lawrence Ferlinghetti but what he did putting his book the bookstore on the line publishing on the line himself on the line for how is why I can be proud of America having free speech really having it so I really like that so I was going to read I had my poem A I was going to read and then my poem B if somebody else read it I would my poem A is not a good one to start with because it's pity the nation and I don't want to start kind of with that so my poem B is dove sta amore dove sta amore where lies love dove sta amore here lies love the ring dove love in lyrical light here loves hill song loves true will song loves low plain song in passages of night dove sta amore here lies love the ring dove love dove sta amore here lies love and I like that because it's it's just sweet and that's not usually the edge people see or speak to I should say and my poem is hiding here it is error in time and it starts with this from Ferlinghetti well the poem doesn't but before the poem time a traveler melting in eternity the mind coming and going from back roads to far places Ferlinghetti time exists only as a contract we keep or break a memory we smell or forget a terror we confront or duck a bridge we build blow up or build time does not move it is the earth that shakes the sky that rushes we who surge time does not change the world changes as we nourish or devour the life around us not in time not on time not despite time but always in the moments named now thank you thank you thank you devora and you know I didn't hold up the book because I really wanted to be about Lawrence but this is what the book looks like and you may not be able to see it on camera but it's an upward shot towards the sky at the v of Ferlinghetti which is the street in north beach named after him Lawrence was particularly tickled that it used to be an alley for bootleggers George Long are you prepared yes so we have a musical interlude featuring saxophonist George Long and then we'll continue with more Ferlinghetti and more poets but George's George is going to take a moment to to get up to where you can see him and and then we'll the maestro will start to will start to blow the big saxophone and you know the reason the reason that we have a mixture of the arts and music is that that's the obvious milieu that that Ferlinghetti taps and you'll hear later from from Lawrence's formal biographer nearly Cherkovsky I'm sure that he and some of the other speakers will get into the mixture of arts and culture that Lawrence represents and here George Long perhaps no be fine you'll hear thank you George Long not just a great musician but a great friend to the poets and for many years even before before his friendship with me so thank you George yes Gregory Corso with whom George lived George also made a contribution of a recipe to the book that Lawrence sent him it didn't make the cut because it was too racy but I'll tell you about that in private next is Neely Cherkovsky a great poet and also a biographer of Lawrence Ferlinghetti both previously and reissued now so Neely would you kindly come up and share with you not only some poetry from Lawrence perhaps your poem in the book and any tales of Lawrence that you wish to share at this tribute I've read that poem so many a good evening yeah this book is such a labor of whatever it's so beautiful and Bobby it it just reflects the genius of companionship and the nature of generosity that bespeaks San Francisco and certainly Lawrence Ferlinghetti I was very fortunate that in the 1970s along with a lot of other poets of my age I was young then to get to know Lawrence personally he never acted like the great poet he was just another guy in the neighborhood albeit there were city lights and city lights publishing and and I became a good friend and I found out very quickly don't ask him about publishing or anything like that but I 40 years past before I realized he had put a very substantial poem of mine in the city lights journal in 1975 and 35 years later he asked me what did that poem mean and I told him what it meant and he said if I known that I never would have published it Lawrence had a aside from humility a great sense of humor as you as a lot of you know and when I so I got to know him and one of the great things he did is he handed me the keys to his cabin at Bixby Canyon one day and and and I was off to the races and I went there with so many different people I took my parents there and you had to cook on the stove outside and you had to chop wood and draw water from the well and and all that that's what you did and you're either the wasp the bumblebee the cacada all these and and there was a woman living there who knew all the plants in the canyon and Alan Ginsberg documented that in Bixby Canyon ocean path word breeze and there was a little outhouse and in the outhouse it had that was the Buddhist anarchist temple according to Lawrence in it it had Jean Jean Jacques Kerouac Alan Ginsberg Gregory Corso and I added my name at Lawrence's behest and so I used that place for so many years and only a few years ago Lawrence said well why don't you go down to Bixby again because I hadn't been in 30 years and at any rate so you know we sort of drifted apart in the 80s for a while I mean we were there together but we sort of and and lately came back together I did this book in 78 so what is that more than 40 years ago I did it as a poet not as a scholar you can find plenty of scholarly books there have been two biography since on Lawrence and to my mind they're books by scholars so I'm a poet writing about a poet I also did one about Charles Bukowski who I was even closer to and then Lawrence and then I did a book of essays called Whitman's Wild Children about which includes Lawrence and Bukowski and Alan Ginsberg and Harold Norris and all kinds of Bobby Kaufman and then some of you know I also I co-edited the collected poems of Bob Kaufman but what I wanted to say was not only did I meet so anyway this book reissued there'll be a review I hear in the Chronicle on Sunday and I've been telling people in North Beach I got a review in the Chronicle I don't get the Chronicle none of them get the Chronicle so I get the Chronicle I don't know why but I get it anyway it was amazing to me they asked me to write it last year and I said I've done it already and but he convinced me to do it and I'm glad I did because I learned a little more about my old friend and we had already reestablished contact there had been some problems about politics and things like that but one thing with Lawrence is he transcended like I believe I do the the the narrow and sometimes narrow-minded ideology of the left City Lights Journal in the 1960s had a photo of Ezra Pound on the cover and a story about him and one of Lawrence's greatest poems is called Pound at Spoleto the great Spoleto festival run by John Carlo Minotti and Ezra Pound traveled with a fascist but but Lawrence saw beyond that he saw this great tragic figure who who wrote this unbelievably magnificent lyrical poetry I must say that my dear friend Diana Prima knew that as well she went to visit Pound at the Madhouse and she said I had to go I mean he was the man I would learn from I needed to learn about poetry so anyway I called the sack a little there but the other thing about being in North Beach in the 70s so not only Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Alan Ginsberg, Diana Prima, Philip Lomantia the list goes on and on I had already met and knew Jack Hirschman well from Los Angeles he had come up two years earlier and then I came up I joined him in San Francisco and the access that these people these well-known established figures gave to us was absolutely phenomenal because Alan Ginsberg and Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Diana Prima would be accessible to anybody they they didn't put up any wall sometimes people put on oh my god Alan Ginsberg how can I but there he was and I never forgot that and yeah it was it was quite amazing so I was going to read this is the book there's the cover of Lawrence for you can see it it's a really neat cover and it's from the photo by my father and they had an artist Michigas it goes through it and do some things and I look at it now as a book of love it's and I think that one reviewer said once you get back past the Bohemian stuff it was dismissing Bohemia because the Bohemia is dismissed and tell me if I go too long Bobby I'm talking a little I'll be done in a second you know Bohemia is dismissed so but but but of all things the Wall Street Journal had a no not the Wall Street the Jesuit magazine had this great review and I loved it because the man talked about me as a poet before he talked about Lawrence he understood that a poet was writing this book and he understood my connection with Lawrence so I won't read this I'll just tell another anecdote or two so a couple years four years ago Aggie something that I was in New Orleans for a festival and it was great because they took me down first class and it was really nice and I was in this great hotel and and I was incredibly depressed I was in this big hotel and Aggie called me and she said hello Neely this is Agnetta Lawrence wants to speak to you so I call him up in San Francisco I think it was 99 then and he said hello Neely and I said hi Lawrence what's up and he said I just wanted to tell you that you have no idea of the influence you've had on so many people and I immediately responded I think you're talking about yourself and then there was a moment of silence and I said I love you Lawrence and he said I love you too Neely and you know I mean that was like just great gold to me that was amazing and then then they had the day of celebration on his 100th birthday and if that wasn't a love fest you know I mean I told Bobby a couple days ago I've laid enough laurel wreaths before Lawrence Ferlinghetti you know I mean you know what I have now is a much deeper sense of communion with him that's hard to say it only goes one way because he's gone and I'm still here and I can speak and I guess I'll end with a poem that I wrote last night and Lawrence is in here but it's some of you remember the poet is a tight he's a what do you call it what is a guy who gets on a damned wire over the tie yeah right you know he's a great poem about the poet is a tight rope or you walk so you know and all that kind of thing so I was at specs last night and I was looking across the street as a psychic shop it's always you know that 24 hours a day these red lights and then there was a transamerica pyramid and I opened up the chronicle this morning and there's the pyramid I have to see if I can read this the light is so hard for me the man on the high wire beginning at the tip of the transamerica pyramid in san francisco is finding it difficult to negotiate troubled time the psychic headquarters keeps a red light bright through the evening as smokers pollute the cul-de-sac in front of the bar no wonder we turn our eyes to the performer way up on top of the sky he is in trouble because he has knowledge we do not possess in the storm ruling across the bay dangerous ideas surface be careful watch yourself how long will the planet flatter itself come around now the center is collapsing yet again come now and cross to a new way of seeing um value each letter as if it were a wellspring come to the ancient cistern with your sister and brother and you are seemingly inevitably invincible despite the dying trees and the slaughtered primates and the penetrating serpentine pile of rocks at roadside where you are speeding along on the road no matter the high wire man crosses his eyes he jumps into the air he is a bird he's a plane but soon he is working he opens his eyes man is in trouble his world chokes to death the nude young men will not save it beautiful women can do nothing do you know old henry miller gave a cony island of the mind to the poet laurence furlingetty on a sad november noon in the local cafe where many high wire acts got their start furlingetty says the performer behaves like an amusement entrepreneur for the common man the poets are on wires higher ever higher the man on the high wire of the trans america building treasures his fear he envisions mus oxen in mythical north his music box is stuffed with sorrow insignificant treasures are stored in his mind he slips we cannot save him from disaster down he comes and lands on cold concrete of columbus avenue sidewalk in the city of san francisco financial district say goodbye to the love of your life if you panic try only for a moment maybe the sea will wash over your thoughts on the day when the ark disappears thank you that's it okay glasses glasses where are my glasses did they fall here ah okay thank you nealy yeah well you know nealy is very prolific and it's really cool to hear something fresh from the fresh from the notebook and you know i have a i have a the experience of a blue pencil you know as an editor and nealy has two poems in the book that are different than that one one was titled furlingetty at 97 which was you know tribute to laurence and then he was kind enough to supply a second poem in memoriam for a memorial section that you know as the book was revamped is in the the portion at the end of the book which goes into that place but also you know nealy you mentioned the i love you to laurence and i just said that to you two days ago and i'm not sure i got the same you know generosity of response that that laurence gave back so but you'll have your chance to say i love you and the the other thing i have to say is that the trans america building was a particular bet noir for laurence he did not like that that replaced the montgomery block which was a place for artists so perhaps you were referencing the fact that he really didn't like that pyramid anyway next we have aggy falk and i'm really excited because she represents not only her own contributions to the book but also you know our belated jack hershman who was the fourth poet laureate of san francisco so thank you aggy aggy also has her art in the book which is beautiful do i yes you do the mask oh really oh yes yes yes yeah and there is uh laurence wants to say something he wants to talk to bobby anyway actually i want to second a lot of things that nealy said about laurence and that is of laurence humility and how much he hated people talking about him being a famous person he absolutely loved that and i spent many times with him around his kitchen table we had a tradition we would go once a month or so on a sunday and i would cook and uh we would invite a few people at the time and we would sit around the table and talk and speaking of estra pound that would be jack saying estra dog because jack was not too fond of pound because for him being a fascist so that i thought that was kind of funny but i absolutely adored laurence for his he was so sincere and he never and and the one thing that nobody has mentioned yet is that he actually valued himself as an artist a painter more than as a poet not that he he would always say that he preferred painting he loved painting and he was so sad at the end of his life that he could no longer really paint because he couldn't see i spent many times with him and we also happened to share a birthday two days apart so we would celebrate with a princess cake and whatever dinner and i also spent the jack and i spent times with him initially and again you know people crazy about the beat generation they were what he really thought they were insane and he wanted people to go away we were sitting in a car once and they were banging on the windows and he said tell them to go away because he just liked to be free free of attention so he could free will and be himself and i totally understand that so anyway i'm not i have so many lovely things to say about laurence but i think nearly said a lot and i actually much want to read what i think is so timely and it's from his book time of useful consciousness i might say a few words later about him anyway the one thing i actually do want to say is he was never very demonstrative except towards the end of his life when he would actually and i bring up i love you again he would just say that i love you to whoever he loved he said it to me he said it to many i'm sure this is number two in this book it's long i'm not probably going to read it all because maybe it's not time but it's really timely so that sailing westward from this crene crene crenellated old world of overage i can see what you mean nearly of overage come about europe millions washing up on virgin shores bright with promise awake and sing you shall dwell in the dust ideas alphabets fornications trans migrations transgressions roman noses blown in sephardic profiles arab lips praising allah in alabama alli la la ma la la la la la prayer rings traded for status status symbols in sin sinati baseballs lost among payouts quote la matia boris and besi tomaszewski born jiddish in the Ukraine spawning the genus maestro mtt you are not in the stattle stattle anymore baby and birth certificates for the first born immigrant families inscribed with names like americas d'alessandro and not all pure heroes as various villains shown up to and various home grown borsua fascists and the faces of the statue of liberty don't give me your tired your poor your huddle masses and they shipped out russian born emma goldman and alexander bergman back to where they came from america america stranger than paradise to hangarian immigrants named jamush who is the amazement made who in his amazement made a film about it and old hunchback tony tenori genovese fishermen smelling of garlic and pepperoni catching crayfish in bronx river of parkway road bronzwell where he lived in a hut by the railroad tracks but sometimes could be heard the sweet sad sound of the mandolin and gregorius nuncio corso born calabrese often of bleak bleak street and became a poet in prison mouthing and mouthfuls of new american lingo and french khanok jack carowak growing up in american lower massachusetts lower massachusetts i can hardly pronounce that i say a red a red sock fan in his lumberjack shirt i was going to say it's good speaking for god the lighting speaking murmur and quebecian mother andelia divine fled to america from the last great arish potato famine ending up a housekeeper in a fine mansion on westchester still speaking her rough arish brogue and the sharp tongue she had and fast on she spoke she spoke she was with the wit of a publication father drowning his fifth pint stop talking now while millions of blacks uprooted out of africa deprived of homes and names enslaved in the deep south finally escaped to larger america to make a name for themselves while wb de bois born in great barrington massachusetts by a dutch african mother and the father descended from west african slaves grew up to write the souls of black folk striking like thunder clap on the ears of those who didn't want to hear it and catholic jack powers in boston who never would go west born black irish and rosebrew projects found the poor fed the poor from them throwaways at the public market and made poetry out of stone soup and beer all these years the last babbling in psychos room in mass general where now brother poet i end that because it's very long but it's actually you should you should if you haven't read it for a while do read it and i'm going to end with a very short poem i wrote for laurence called blue eyes because he had the bluest eyes you could ever find a sea rather blue eyes what blue eyes you have the color of an infinite sea or a sky race from all corners of the world the better to see the light stone all over the streets words lifted out of a brush with big heavy strokes and many times around your kitchen table are spoons in bowls and bonamy and poise and hearing your chuckles at the absurdity of it all as you enter the hall of fame with the humility and grace that still echo within all of us but it comes from your brushstrokes or your pen rest in peace laurence uh yeah hold hold on neely so um i just want you to know that agnetta also represented our beloved jack hershman and so we'll we'll circle back if there's time for more stories and additional material i wanted to nearly please i wanted to um i wanted to highlight the beautiful videography that's happening because i did check the lighting and it looks gorgeous on the monitors and i wanted to thank you because there's some confusion in the hall about whether or not it's turning out as it should and i want to assure everybody that we're going to have a and thank you to the viewers in the future who are going to be watching this and uh hopefully being inspired by it thank you library thank you kenny thank you team looks good so um i wanted to say that before i introduce says our love i wanted to say that there's a lot of connections personal connections that we all felt with somebody like laurence because laurence was expansive and available and i don't go into this in the book i don't go into into it in the forward i don't go into it in private conversations but not only did i feel immediately connected to laurence when i met him decades ago as a young person but as i researched the book to edit it properly to bring the proper spirit to it i found even deeper connections and i the reason that that that happens is the same reason why the poet contributors and artist contributors to the book did such a did such a timeless job i think is because it was there in laurence to start with and so the opportunity to connect with that is the way the heart works the way the art works so again the book is a benefit to inculcate that feeling that understanding through arts and poetry education that was laurence's intention that's our intention i'm looking forward to many beautiful events with the library and elsewhere and you'll all be invited so with that please thank you so much says our love wow i feel like i'm among giants and trying to just crawl on the shoulders of laurence and other people in this room and i'm the first one here who doesn't really have a strong personal connection with laurence but i have one anecdote to share and that's when i first moved to town moved to san francisco in the late eighties i had a roommate who was working at city hall with the board of supervisors and this was when they were establishing the change of street names in north beach and other parts of the city after san francisco writers and there was a project to get named streets after certain writers and my roommate talked about meeting laurence furlin getty was involved with this project and he was just amazed at how gracious the man was and yeah i just kept that that sunk in and i've just heard so many stories afterwards of just what a gracious person he was and you know i'm yeah i'm the first person to come up to the mic who doesn't have a personal connection but like was said by neely and others you know he influenced quite a lot of people many of whom did not know him personally and i'm one of them so i'm very happy to be in this anthology and bobby this is beautiful i think this is the second time i've been in one of your anthologies i was in the occupy anthology oh my god and i'm just remembering you know anthologies are such great things i didn't realize that until just recently when you can be in a book with other people that with other writers and there's a community in this that's just established you know you read read their other works you get to sort of share the same the same binding and the same thing you know you're you're there between these pages with all these other writers and you just feel this kinship with them so thank you bobby thanks for bringing us all together so moving right along i was looking through poems of his that i liked and which one am i gonna read and i came up with or i found this one and i rather like it you probably are familiar with it and i think realize this is a theme because it's similar i thought neely was gonna steal my steal his poems and read it ahead of me but no he didn't do so so so this is constantly risking absurdity number 15 constantly risking absurdity and death wherever he performs above the heads of his audience the poet like an acrobat climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making and balancing on i beams above a sea of faces paces his way to the other side of day performing ah through Shah's and sleight of foot tricks and other high theatrics and all without mistaking anything for what it may not be for he's the super realist who must perforce perceived taught truth before the taking of each stance or step in his supposed advance toward that still higher perch where beauty stands and waits with gravity to start her death defying leap and he a little charlie chaplain man who may or may not catch her fair eternal form spread eagle in the empty air of existence okay so moving on to lesser luminaries myself thanks for publishing me bobby this poem is called play land of the mind perhaps there are shores of heaven where deceased amusement parks go play land at the beach would be there a few of its novelties are still with us laughing sal at fisherman's worth camera obscura at the cliff house the fun house is now black and white a cameo in an orson wells movie there at the end of the lady from shanghai play land is a memory to many but condos and a safe way to more my own memory is a camera without film was I ever there I would have been very young I have a blurry picture of a cloudy white day a happy place near the ocean in sharper focus just beyond the frame a merry go round in waltz the roller coaster set to pounce an ageless laughing sal was I ever at play land I could ask my mother but it would ruin the spell would be like asking was my father really friends with william burrows ocean winds shoulder their way across the great highway a cascade of shrieks echoes from the roller coaster dive I have never been to coonie island but I have been to play land at the beach and my father was friends with william burrows thanks thank you sazar it was really a pleasure to edit you into all three anthologies and the the second of those three laurence was in the prior to anthology anthologies the second of them feather floating on the water poems for our children were from mature well that's you know the jury's out on how mature but adult bay area poets wrote poetry specifically for the students the youth of the bay area and jumbo press published this um you know as a as a public benefit and we laurence contributed um two translations his famous prayer translate translations went into the book it was also illustrated and at the back of the book were lesson plans for the students so that the teachers and the students could use the poems as prompts for learning to write poetry and the poems stood up I mean when we did readings we were before adult audiences and they they liked it very much so um it was an unusual book that way it went into all the libraries and all the school libraries back when there were school libraries so all the schools around the bay area got this book and that was um something that says i was in sazar also is involved in the in the um the the spoken word performance poetry open mic situation and has been you know helpful as we've tried to carry that torch forward which laurence was also involved with for decades so uh for example um the sacred grounds series which is the longest running open mic series um and kim of course is is perpetuating these things but sazar remembers when the when the venue was closed for renovations and we had to sort of carry on in a back garden in the alley and sazar was part of how we kept that longest running series going so um with that you know there's there's more music to come but the next uh the next speaker is an Easter Kobe and i wanted to say something as she makes her way up and these has history uh decades of history with laurence and the spirit of laurence and this is going to blow your mind she's in the book describing various projects and um you know one thing about the book is that it's very visual so sazar hasn't hasn't had a chance to curl up with the book yet but your playland references prompted me to put in lots of playland stuff uh including vintage postcards and references to why the bay area um is a sort of port of call for for an unusual degree of creativity and freedom so playland lives an Easter Kobe thank you very much thank you bobby are we supposed to hold this i brought a couple of show and tell visual aids um and i'll read part of the piece but bobby asked me to take on a topic that is so big that all i'm going to do is highlight it a drop through the lens of my own connection with laurence which is which is hi can you hear me better now which is the relationship between art and politics and as i think most of the people in this room know that the profound way in which they are inseparable both in terms of content and practice and outcome is a lot of what we associate with the profundity of laurence's presence and my very first i'm going to put this down so i'm not caring my very first connection with laurence came after a very old nasty battle that was when jarvis gans was passed which at the time i was director of performing arts at santa cruz and doing hundreds of uh ways in which you brought culture to the public in a very free form happy way we did a 24-hour june 16th of um norman o brown rising out of a coffin on the hillside for ulysses and um the finnegan's wake and all of those other things that we had a marvelous creativity the day that that was passed i was basically told that my budget and using students in such a creative way would be reduced by 90 percent and i was young enough to be arrogant that i literally quit on the spot because i was tired of the arts being in a bigger position so i in a brief conversation with laurence he gave me permission because he was able to harness through this creativity that poetry has its cookies to give out so we kree invented fortune cookies with poetry inside these are intuitional devices not sacred but to use poetry instead of some of the more mundane things we've all been given in our fortune cookies elevated it and we put on poetry readings in department stores all over the country literally minhatten we had people like gwendolen brooks in chicago all over and the idea of bringing poetry into public life and laurence was one of the people who gave this a blessing using his quote from coney island of the mines as part of the incentive so the next the next time was when in 1992 we all remember that the last time poetry was in public was when we had the inauguration of um we all know his name the poet who read at john kennedy's inauguration but robert frost excuse me i should know that because i had a lover's quarrel with the world is it on his grave and he there was no other poet laureate until 1992 when um maya angelo read at bill clinton's it happens not to be my most favorite poem but what it did was bring poetry back into public life and with laurence and many other people including friends of the library we created city of poets nearly was a part of this on the principle that there are more poets in san francisco when we have the permission to wear the bardic beret and it was a celebration of the place of poetry in public life the first poet laureate ship of of san francisco came out of that as well as many other things including an event that i will tell you about in this story that was published that connects to laurence bringing allen ginsburg to candlestick park to open a game for the giants which put poetry on national radio for two weeks when he was interviewed about it and i'll tell you more about that in a second but the notion of poetry as it's connects to politics an example being when joseph broadsky as a young man was brought up to court in russia because he wasn't officially in the writers union he was sent off and punished and the judge says to whom who made you a poet he said i made myself a poet and that was the spirit in which laurence recognized both the anointment and the invocation and the consequence of having the audacity to frame words and know their power and of course with laurence the good thing was that he added humor and humility and compassion and many other ingredients that are kind of essential to why we we revere him basically as bobby said to me on the phone when he called he said laurence is immortal the rest of us are mortals i think that's what's happening now and the next time i really thought about it obviously we know he already was a pioneer his 1957 response to the police and it was the juvenile section of the police that caused the obscenity charge against howell he was not just standing up as a businessman he was not just standing up as someone who was defending the rights of creativity he was standing up for the free speech and that moment in time was and is giving credit fairly universally as the turning point for the social and cultural revolution that followed to this day and is still going on and actually we have to kind of fortify our our trenches right now so the next time well i'm going to skip one next time because this isn't incomplete chronological i'm going to go back to alan ginsberg's memorial that i worked on with laurence in a moment but laurence as all of us are equally concerned with the tragedy of the unhoused who live in this very rich situation in a city that should be ashamed of this ongoing tragedy we created as city of poets something called undercover and it was to create a protection so this is my second little show entail i probably should just put it on so you'll see it okay if you can see laurence's laurence's words poetry is the shortest distance between two people not only was it printed on these hundreds of blankets made by citizens with the idea that we have to protect and cover they were distributed with books of poetry and all kinds of little convenient practical thing in the pockets to hundreds of people so that they would become visible and comforted and protected it was a major event it was not meant to fix the homeless problem but to bring media attention to it it was very successful as a media project i don't think we fixed the problem at all so then back to another major event that cross paths with laurence and it's when alan ginsberg died i'm gonna just read you the piece that was published in lithub it's short not too long in the spring of 1997 nancy peters the remarkable publisher at city lights book called me with the sad news that alan ginsberg had died it was really hard to imagine the world without him alan and i were allied as poet and pacifists over decades of reasons to rally the world knew alan as a rapturous poet who rigorously opposed militarism materialism and sexual repression my freshman year a college senior the emerging poet and waldman took me to new year's party downtown Manhattan at midnight alan led an ecstatic circle of rolling alms this was before his notorious chant at the chicago seven trial alan's loss felt personal as it did for generations of poets days after alan's death i met with and laurence and nancy at city lights they asked me to put together a performance honoring alan for a memorial i invited hundreds of poets to partake in a corral the following sunday at temple immanuel we spread the word to gather at the temple a landmark congregation founded in the gold rush when the san francisco chronicle showcased the rosters of luminaries joining the poet's cottage michael savage right wing radio attack dog seized the chance to condemn the event savage treated alan ginsberg's memorial as a target for suicide bombers claiming no temple should soil itself with a pinko faggot radio ballistics were usually material for savages daily devouring in the days when he was still a local shock jock like many under attack i went into a zone of surprise and shameful fear i felt responsible to both city lights and temple immanuel for the fact that my passionate offering had drawn such cynical and dangerous attention my night was completely sleepless remembering the last time i spent any real time with alan after a long rainy day meeting up at a bar in north beach probably toskas we argued about what he should read at the ballpark before a giant scheme the next day he had been invited to join city of poets san francisco library's campaign for the staging of poetry and public life alan was fierce in dismissing my suggestions for a poem with universal appeal oh i've read its stadiums to 40 000 people in prog no one wants to tame me i don't want to be polite on national television i ain't gonna be no maya angelo for you darlin that night in north beach trying to pick a poem for the ballgame with a force field i was on alert always in a hot zone with alan ruffling the reactionaries the next day alan knocked the ball out of the park reading his poem fuckbomb to booze and cheers my children were beaming in the skybox at candlestick park with san francisco mayor frank jordan and a fleet of media on the jumbo drawn in epic scale ginsburg bellowed resembling an old testament depiction of god alan was such a big hit that he was interviewed on national sports radio for weeks following the game he was treated like a hero inspiring citizens had to be powerful without being violent he was correct provocateurs get more results than pacifiers the poet the poets led the mourners into the chapel everyone was chanting under a celestial star dome of stars now three years later alan had died and michael savage took the chronicle article as bait to go on attack the memorial was savages red meat he harped and carped and insidious familiar fears that gained traction even in progressive bay area racist and homophones reside all over even after the fall of the soviet union the peace dividend was not abated kami baiting was in full blast i complained to laurence isn't it come crazy how a shock jock is living up to his name yes his real name is savage like donald trump destroying atlantic city had jokes about trump cards playing to empty casinos all cashed out savage is a beast takes pleasure in attack without hesitation laurence put things in perspective this savage attack would not have ruffled or reduced alan at all man up to the haters bow down and you give them license i'm more worried about the temple as a target of anti-semitism we are going to organize a mass public poetry cottage the next morning nancy laurence and i had an emergency meeting at the temple and manual with the chief rabbi in the past 24 hours there had been a barrage of bomb threats congregant complaints furling getty insisted lamenting the loss of his beloved friend alan ginsburg must be honored in the city that he first read howl alan's words still the rob trust what you see yes the insanity in the supermarket aisles yes the air waves full of madmen the rabbi was also adamant the memorial must go on capitulating to nasty intimidation would be contrary to everything that alan believed in lived for and manifested we were emboldened to proceed and i was relieved but still nervous security would be beefed up on sunday thousands of mourners gathered with many more thousands turned away for lack of space poets performed a grand oratorio drawn from alan ginsburg's elegiacadish a poem he wrote after his mother's death riffing on the traditional jewish mourners prayer the temple courtyard was lavishly scented with thousands of oranges floating in the moorish fountain the poets all dressed in white the color of mourning of purity and hope sang a lament of ginsburg's words incantory repetitions dancing through the crowd they formed a processional of people praying and crying through the arched columns the poets led the mourners into the chapel everyone chanting under the celestial turquoise dome of stars anise jacobi um you know i'd be remiss uh if i didn't mention that jambu press has been around a dozen years and was uh founded by virginia barrett it's a jambu is a small press collective um and virginia and satyapate are on the east coast and virginia can't be here because she's doing some heroic eldercare for her father her book this book was her concept and she went through about three dozen mock-ups of this cover including some that were based on the art of some of the contributors and some of which were were based on historic covers from laurence's books such as love in the days of rage we actually almost went with that one so we have a couple more readers and and a minimum of time um i uh want to call up kelly an because she's come from valet ho and uh she lived around the corner from from the late qr hand and she has been absolutely delightful to work with so kelly an please thank you uh thank you very much i uh i'll be brief um i also did not know um laurence furlingetty personally but uh crossed paths many times and i would say that for anybody who is in the poetry community that uh we're sort of like a spirograph of concentric circles that are all spinning around each other and um and uh moving here from los angeles coming to city lights for the first time um i was an aspiring poet and i found my first place that i felt like i belonged and from that point um i met the people that had become my poetry family um with one of them being right here uh so i'm gonna read uh a poem uh called uh in goya's greatest seems we seem to see and i'll tell you why um after i read it by laurence furlingetty in goya's greatest seems we seem to see the people of the world exactly at the moment when they first attain the title of suffering humanity they writhe upon the page in a veritable rage of adversity heaped up groaning with babies and bayonets under cement skies in an abstract landscape of blasted trees bent statues bat wings and beaks slippery giblets cadavers carnivorous cocks and all the final hollering monsters of the imagination of disaster they're so bloody real it's as if they still really are they really still existed and they do only the landscape is changed they are still ranged along the roads plagued by legionnaires false windmills and demented roosters they aren't the same people only further from home on freeways 50 lanes wide on a concrete continent space with bland billboards illustrating imbecile illusions of happiness the scene shows fewer thumb uh tumbles but more strung out citizens in painted cars and they have strange license plates and engines that devour america um i have two poem thank you i have two poems in the book and the first is an ode to city lights and it's of me uh landing and falling in love and falling home but i'm not reading that poem i'm reading the second poem which is an ecstatic piece of uh the boat people uh 2006 so there's a couple of versions of boat people this one spoke to me and um and i couldn't tell you why in the beginning it just kept i kept coming back to it i kept coming back to it and it wasn't until i looked later that i saw the figures in the water um and i understood what was calling to me what i first saw in this painting and i'll leave it up front and when people go to grab books uh there's of course a figure uh who cannot see a figure who cannot speak and there are two figures at the front of the boat and one it reminded me of maybe a mother and a child um and so the reason i read the first piece was the first ecstatic poem that i wrote was a piece uh by goya and so um this is my piece or this is my ecstatic poem um and of course this is much nicer than goya but uh it's called boat people i remember running on the beach in another life but i've since forgotten the firmness of land the tenuous of sand the firmness of soil slipping shifting sand transitions us to thin boards beneath us in fluid buoyancy i'm a buoy i'm a boy i am a bobbing boat to an unknown destination bobbing and rocking holding fierce to the view of shore to return to land no not my land but a place to land in another land the first unsafe and the other safer a land i do not know but the stars do the only thing i carry from home passing under invisible meridians under familiar skies waiting for a sign you are here waiting to return to land a place to land now my land thank you thank you kelly an as dominic ganjarame comes up to the mic i wanted to also acknowledge kim shuck and uh our friendship and uh it's so beautiful really and thank you for doing this and also um the book includes uh uh other poet laureates living and unfortunately departed as well as uh a car um a living us poet laureate and lots of contributors who would be here and there will be more events and they'll be you know findable online in the future so we're looking forward to everyone participating right now dominic ganjarame thank you explain the dominic ganjarame is not only a fixture in this city for a long time but is also an award-winning world-class experimental filmmaker as well as my friend so he brings a whole another dimension to what we're doing here today thanks dominic thank you bobby um you know i'd like to um congratulate bobby and virginia barrett on this book you know i've lived in north beach since 1979 and um you know i've seen you know tons of poetry books come out and this is one of the more exciting books i've seen in in recent years it combines poetry combines photographs it combines illustrations and paintings and and some and great poetry you know it was a joy for me to sit through and read this book and i normally don't go and sit through and and read an entire poetry book but this book i have so a round of applause uh for bobby yeah i'm getting here which appears on the back yeah i'm not i'm not in the book but i'm on the book this is my photograph uh from the 50th anniversary of uh city lights uh i got lorence in a very reflective uh moment there uh this book opens up all i ever wanted to do was paint light on the walls of life more light and this is what i do i'm an avant-garde filmmaker i paint black and white images on a screen moving light uh my favorite poet john cocktail uh once said that all artists are poets and um you know and i have a tendency to agree with him it just depends on what your uh definition of poetry is um you know i've made more than 35 16 millimeter films lived in north patients in 1979 and you know i was not an intimate friend of uh lorence furlingetty i ran canyon cinema i've been involved basically in the avant-garde film scene and one of my specialties is studying the bay area during the 40s and 50s which was the center of experimental and avant-garde film and i've been going to cuba since 19 since 2006 uh shown avant-garde films and bringing down books of lorence furlingetty to donate to the library that they love his work and um you know i i i knew lorence from the neighborhood we walk around say hi you know i'd go up uh and get some autographs once in a while but you know we weren't intimate friends and one day he's sitting at the cafe trieste and he's sitting alone i sit down and i tell him that i'm going to cuba and i'm showing avant-garde films and he you know he tells me this great story about meeting fidel and what it meant to him to go to cuba and uh not only did he support me vocally he also uh donated financially to my trips to cuba which were the film festival down there could not support um i've taught almost in every uh university in the bay area from the new college san francisco art institute uc berkeley university nevada reno and um the international film and radio school in uh in cuba and um you know it's interesting because uh san francisco being the center many of the poets of the 40s and 50s came to filmmaking uh they included people such as uh harry smith who was making films in berkeley jordan belson who worked out of north beach hi hersh christopher mclean james brouton some of these people you've probably heard of stan brackage worked here for a while and kenneth anger a premier scorpio rise in in a port in a theater that's on kerney street that used to be a porno theater uh basic and magazine shop basically selling scatological kind of stuff and now it's the center for uh north beach citizens and um laurence was friends of many of these filmmakers and in 1958 he participated he did the narration for a film made by um phil green uh from the california school of arts otherwise known as the san francisco art institute is called have you sold your dozen roses and i looked last night hell in high water i could not find a copy of that poem i'm not sure it's in print but laurence is reading the narration over images of the city dump which at that time was in the naval shipyard and people scavenging through the junk trying to find stuff and it's an incredibly brilliant poem it is on youtube you know this is tech week which is kind of a joke i know laurence for lingetti was a real supporter of of technology reading books on kindle i know i know he was very enthusiastic about that and we talked many times about you know about how important technology is you know and for poetry what do you need a pen and a piece of paper you know that's that's high tech you know and and in this day and age you can't get a book from france without spending $25 for postage or if it's not online you don't get to read it you know uh you know and we're being taped and you know this is film you know i don't know what that stuff is back there but this is celluloid film uh where it all began so you know with high tech you know we're ignoring the analog world where you know the typewriter was the first to go anyone here own a typewriter one two three four because the poets own typewriters and you can erase and you can see the indentation of the type everything's not perfect so um you know i make short films you can see my work on vimeo you just have to know how to spell my name right so i'm glad to be part of this book and congratulations bobby very very kind of you dominik thank you very much um we're going to be sort of writing out with george long on saxophone and we're we're kind of over time so maybe we'll add the soundtrack and filter out as he plays and the um the book is available at jambu press jambupress.com and through small press distribution booksellers like analog booksellers uh and uh of course libraries can order it and um thank you kim shuck and everyone else thank you uh i i i don't think it's been digitalized but perhaps by the time somebody's watching this who knows thank you everyone for coming thank you to the av people for sticking around thank you to john for making all of this possible thank you library thank you poets take care