When we sere setting up the show of paintings by Leo Krikorian last fall, we pondered what events might enhance the show, and speak of the era it grew from. Well … Leo had a bar, one named “The Place”, in San Francisco, which was a significant venue for the Beat and West Coast Renaissance artists of the nineteen-fifties and –sixties, and a likely stop for any Black Mountain classmates who might find themselves in the vicinity. Perhaps some of you have been there. So … Leo hung shows, he had music, he hosted poetry readings. Why not recreate, as best we could, a night, a good night, a great night, if we could, at The Place, Leo’s scene? And so it all began.
If we needed to understand San Francisco in that era, I knew where we could turn: to local poet/translator/editor/historian – and real living breathing Baby Beat – Thomas Rain Crowe. Thomas had been in San Francisco during the Beat florescence, and had edited Beatitude, the journal of Beat writing, after Bob Kaufman. When we asked him to join us in creating a very special night, Thomas was delighted.
Thomas has been a tireless builder of artistic community for decades, and counts among his friends most of the poets in Western North Carolina, and many of the best musicians. When he pitched in, we realized that our project might morph into a larger occasion than we had first imagined. Why not have two nights? he suggested. The Beat “movement” (if that’s the right term) had both East Coast and West Coast presences, and too many significant writers to feature in just one night. Board and staff agreed, and so we found dates and began to set up the programs.
By the time it was over, we'd had four readings.
First Flight ...
December 10, 2004, brought the first performance. The poets we had enlisted had simple ground-rules: each would read some favorite work(s) of one of the poets s/he most enjoyed/thought significant/whatever, and some of his or her own work. Pretty flexible , we thought, and befitting the occasion. Thomas had also recruited a local jazz band, the Jar-E Jazz Quartet, to play interludes and vamp behind readers, if they wished, as they read.
They all, poets and band alike, performed without compensation - other than a shared bottle of single malt scotch that got passed among them; poets do love a good party as much as anyone.
The poets were a various bunch: performance poets, beat poets, hippie poets, fine incarnations of all that had spun off from the Beat breakthroughs. Thomas himself read, of course, and also Ted Pope, Jaye Bartell, Michael Revere, Lori Horvitz, Sebastian Matthews, Gillian Coats, David Wilson, and myself. We read the west coast Beat writers: Gary Snyder, Lew Welch, Jack Micheline, Joanne Kyger (married in the sixties to Snyder; her journal has some insightful notes about those she’d come to know who’d come through Black Mountain), and Jaye read some Robert Creeley, in honor of Creeley’s visits to San Francisco during the era. All read their own work, as well, and some of that work extended in interesting and exciting ways the tradition from which it had evolved.
It was an amazing night, and proved a success of unexpected magnitude: the place filled up, then overflowed - and the crowd hardly diminished for the whole two plus hours of the program. The Center was packed.
It began to dawn on us that we were doing something right, that we were offering programming that met a real need.
Next Flight ...
The reading of February 11thproved equally remarkable, and drew nearly as many who needed this poetry in their lives as had the first. The Center was jammed, and jammin’.
This night we read work of the East Coast poets, who were the more public face of the Beats – even if, as Ginsberg did, they first came to wide public recognition in the west. Dave Wilson didn’t read with us this second time out, but we were joined by poet Lee Ann Brown. Lee Ann grew up in Charlotte, two hours east, but went north, to Brown, for school, and has been active in the New York poetry scene for more than a decade. She and her husband, actor Tony Torn, now own a home in the Little Pine community of Madison County, and plan to spend part of each year in our area. She’s an experimental poet who has great Beat credentials, since she’d slept for weeks on Ginsberg’s daybed in New York while waiting for her own apartment to become available.
The Jar-E Jazz Quartet once again provided musical backup and interludes. Jason Brady, of Cullowhee’s Single Wide Records, recorded the complete occasion, just as he had the December reading.
Onward ....
Several weeks before the third reading in our developing series was scheduled, a confluence of two occasions prompted us to have a smaller-scale, more quickly developed event before it. Those occasions were the death of the great Black Mountain poet Robert Creeley and the visit to our mountain city of Lisa Jarnot, a former student of Creeley’s at Buffalo. Lisa had read for us before: she was one of the featured poets at our Under the Influence festival in 2002, so we knew that she’d fry brain circuits and inspire smiles of delight. Lisa had come to visit Lee Ann, whom she’d known for years; they’d even collaborated on several poems published in Lee Ann’s first major collection, Polyverse. So, still stunned (Creeley was one of my teachers at Buffalo, as well, and long after I had audited his course on American poetry he remained for me, as for so many others, a teacher and mentor), I helped rustle up a reading for his departing spirit, a kind of wake for those of his relations who found themselves in these hills. It became Onward: A Night for Robert Creeley, held at the Center on April 22nd. Lisa read several of Bob’s poems, and spoke of the years she’d known Creeley in Buffalo when she was an undergraduate. Given the limited time we had to let folks know about it, it was smaller than our previous readings in all ways, but the readings were deeply felt and highlighted much of the best work Bob did, I think, early, middle, and late. It met a need for the poets who had joined our community, as much as for the audience of thirty or so who also attended. Lee Ann, Tony Torn, Sebastian Matthews, Jaye Bartell and I joined Lisa for the event.
Beyond the Beats ...
The theme of our June 10th reading was “From Beat to Black Mountain”. Given our identification and heritage, I though we should do a night to explore the connection between the Beats and the Black Mountain poets – who were (and are) less well-known, perhaps, but have arguably had an even more profound and persistent impact on our literature. The Black Mountain poets read the Beats, published them, articulated concerns that were, in many instances, compatible with those of the Beats - who were, often, their friends and intellectual relations. The two camps were like cousins, perhaps, who acknowledged each other as family, even while they appreciated the differences between the two sides of the line. Since Creeley’s passing was still very much on our minds, we again made his work a focus. Vancouver poet Peter Culley, who had come to know Creeley on Bob’s visits to Vancouver, just happened to be in town to visit (who else?) Lee Ann and Tony, so we invited him to read and offer his memories of Bob. He and Lee Ann also read some collaborations. Asheville (soon, sadly, to be Ozark) poet Mendy Knott led off the evening, which also featured readings by Thomas Rain Crowe, Jaye Bartell, and a dramatic reading of Ed Dorn’s wonderfully comic Gunslinger Book I by the Mighty Art Center Poetry Players – Thomas, Jaye, Tony Torn, Gillian Coats (sublime as the down-to-earth Lil), Ted Pope, and myself. Guitarist Jeff Johnson, of the Asheville band Braidstream, played interludes on his primary instrument and also on sitar, which he used again for the musical interjections in Gunslinger. It was another full house, and another great night of performances – all, once again, recorded by Jason Brady, and also preserved on video by Bonesteel Films, a longtime friend of the Center.
More to come ...
Plans are already underway for the programming we’ll offer this coming fall and winter, of course, and we certainly hope to continue to offer events that meet needs otherwise unmet. We’re starting things off on September 30, when poets Jonathan Williams and Thomas Meyer will read at the Center. Jonathan has recently published a very well received collection, chosen from the fifteen hundred poems he’s written, titled Jubilant Thicket; if he’s not careful, the Sage of Highlands might actually have his long-deserved fifteen minutes of fame. Thomas, author of The Bang Book, Staves Calends Legends, At Dusk Iridescent, and the new Coromandel, has for many years collaborated with Jonathan to operate the Jargon Society, which has published over the last five decades significant work by a range of remarkable poets and artists, including Jonathan’s Black Mountain fellows Charles Olson and Robert Creeley.
