April in June: LA Times Bookfest, Day 2, and Santa Barbara

The last day of the festival started off with one of my favorite living poets, Kim Addonizio, and it was good to run into her in the green room, along with Elena and Carol Ann and catch up briefly before the reading, and to meet Barbara Hamby again, who lives just about 80 minutes from my south Georgia home. We headed out quickly, though. The last day often is lower energy after Saturday, but not today. Here was the line up:

10 a.m.

Kim Addonizio, Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within

10:30 a.m.

Kevin Prufer, National Anthem

11 a.m.

Barbara Hamby, All Night Lingo Tango

11:30 a.m.

Jim Natal, Memory & Rain

12 p.m.

Carol Ann Davis, Psalm

12:30 p.m.

Mark Irwin, Tall If

1 p.m.

Jeffrey McDaniel, The Endarkenment

1:30 p.m.

Juan Felipe Herrera, Half of the World in Light: New & Selected Poems

2 p.m.

Brendan Constantine, Letters to Guns

2:30 p.m.

James Ragan, Too Long a Solitude

3 p.m.

Sesshu Foster, World Ball Notebook

3:30 p.m.

Douglas Kearney, Fear, Some

4 p.m.

Gail Wronsky, Poems for Infidels

4:30 p.m.

Readings from the Great Poets

Kim pulled out her harp and blew blues in the middle of a fine poetry set and the crowd was awake and alive. Students I introduced her work to five years ago still talk to me about her influence, and her poems have made their way into the high school curriculum of at least two schools in south Georgia. Kevin Prufer, good friend of fellow poet Noah Blaustein, was charming and affable and his excellent work was well received. Barbara made the audience laugh and think, which is a perfect Sunday morning combination, better than church. The rest of the day was packed with LA area poets, except Carol Ann, who now lives in South Carolina. While it might be easy to dismiss the locals as locals, these are good writers. Jim's an old friend and his poetry is wonderfully observed. Carol Ann read from Psalm, mostly, a book I own and like. Mark, who teaches at USC, read his relatively more avant garde work, which I enjoyed, and so did the crowd. Jeffrey McDaniel's subversive, hilarious poetry pushes the boundaries, and I like that. Juan, who spent many years in Fresno, is aging nicely, and his beaming smile warmed the crowd. Brendan, whose poems I hadn't heard before, was sharp-witted and his performance brought lots of people to the tent. James, who draws a big crowd every year, gave his usual strong reading. I missed most of Sesshu (Margaret beaned in, and I had to escort her to the Green Room to hang out briefly before her meeting with Pico Iyer), but he kept the crowd, and quite a few of his young students showed up. Douglas Kearny read with spoken word energy and joyous ferocity, and he didn't let the stage restrict him. His work surprised me. (I read from the books I buy when I come back, and his was probably the class pick.) Gail writes dark, edgy poetry, and she's kind of an LA rock star (No, wait, that would be her daughter playing guitar in Kate Crash). Some of us closed the day reading poems from whomever wasn't us. The last slot is usually slow, so we wanted to spare a reader the indignities of a vanishing crowd. More people were there than we expected, though. I read a Larry Levis poem from California Poetry, an anthology co-edited by Chryss Yost, who provides a nifty segue into the next paragraph, the next city, because she lives in Santa Barbara and she would be joining us for dinner.

Elena tried to get me to stay for drinks with some of the poets, and it's an offer I hated to refuse, but I'd promised my Santa Barbara hosts Amy and George that I'd be in Santa Barbara for dinner, so I hopped in my lame-ass rented Aveo and headed north on Highway 1 through Malibu. Even in an Aveo, it's a beautiful drive, and in about 90 minutes I was there, greeted warmly by Amy and George and Mookie and Nigel. The plan was to dine at the Hollister Brew Pub, where they make excellent beer and good food in a mall. I headed up to Chryss' briefly to catch up with her and her menagerie. And we headed to Hollister for dinner. It was very, very good, but not as good as the company, because, along with Amy and George, Chryss, Dave, Patrick, Cookie Jill, and Barry came out and we enjoyed dining and drinking under the TVs tuned to various sporting events. The casual atmosphere allowed us to be, well, casual, boisterous, and loudish (but never loutish) at times. After dinner, we headed back to the house for a nightcap or two from George's cellar. We started with an amazing Golden Eye pinot and we concluded with a Williams Seylem Sonoma. In between I know we tasted something Rhonish (a grenache, I believe) from Paso Robles, and, after everyone left and Amy had gone to bed (early Monday meeting), George put The Bird and the Bee on while we sipped the last of the pinot.

The next day was quiet, as everyone worked. I went out for Indian food and wandered around on foot, the weather too overcast to head to the beach, and then had a nice coffee at Jeannine's with the ageless Barry Spacks and ageless Chryss and it was good to catch up on the local poetry scene and everything else. Ageless George and ageless Amy had tickets to see a famous blues act whose name eludes me, so many of the people from the night before came over and we hung out until they came back and we enjoyeed more wine and hung out and ate pizza and watched part of the Joy Division documentary, finishing off this too quick visit in high spirits. I had to drive to LA and fly back the next day, classes to teach, finals to write, energy renewed by this trip home, this time with good poetry and great friends and my wonderful hosts. I've been very fortunate to spend this time every year working the book festival and renewing my bonds with friends in LA and Santa Barbara. Soon after I returned home, the San Jesusita fire threatened George and Amy's house and Chryss' (the fire literally stopped at the end of her road) and probably several others and brought home the tenuousness of everything, my great fortune in these few days each year with the best people I know.

April in June: LA Times Bookfest, Day 1

The nice thing about going west from east is the ease with which I wake up early, since 6:30 LA is 9:30 GA. I shower, shave, dress up (for me), and zip to the UCLA campus to hit the green room before Elena and I start working the Poetry Corner Stage, which features a new poet every half hour. You'd think we'd get tired of hearing two full days of poetry, but it doesn't happen. We have too much to do but still we stop and listen. Elena's already in the green room buzzing with authors and entourages, and she's sitting down for coffee with David St. John, and I rush to join them. It's always a joy to see David because he's so welcoming and much more stimulating than the coffee I set down at the table. Robert Pinsky (who taught me much at Berkeley) comes in and Frank Bidart, who won the LA Times Book Award for poetry, and Marie Howe and Linda Gregerson and Dana Goodyear and Victoria Chang and we're introducing and sitting and chatting for twenty minutes before we have to get to work. It's a whirlwind of conversation, threads across time and place and new threads randomly. Robert mentions that we should get innoculated for shingles based on his own recent experience with this common illnes (and I think my friend John Guzlowski would agree). I talk with Frank about having heard that Lee McCarthy, a mutual friend and fellow central valley poet, had recently passed away, and we connected and appreciated her unique energy. Then Elena and I had to go work the stage.

It's always wonderful to see Bill and the staff of Small World Books (their presence is the best part of Southland Tales), who stocks the tables with a fine selection of poetry from people who'll read at the stage and other excellent poetry books that you should own. Saturday's lineup (and their most recent publications)? Funny you should ask:

Poetry Stage

10 a.m.
Dana Goodyear & Victoria Chang , Honey & Junk and Salvinia Molesta respectively

10:30 a.m.
Robert Pinsky, Gulf Music

11 a.m.
Matthea Harvey, Modern Life

11:30 a.m.
Linda Gregerson, Magnetic North

12 p.m.
Carol Muske-Dukes, Sparrow

12:30 p.m.
Frank Bidart, Watching the Spring Festival

1 p.m.
Marie Howe, The Kingdom of Ordinary Time

1:30 p.m.
Jill Bialosky, The Intruder

2:00 p.m.
This was supposed to be Jorie Graham's slot, but she cancelled.
To avoid dead air, Elena Byrne, Tony Barnstone, Sarah Maclay and I took turns reading from our works (and one of Jorie's poems).

2:30 p.m.
John Felstiner, Can Poetry Save the Earth? A Field Guide to Nature Poems

3 p.m.
David St.John, The Face: A Novella in Verse

3:30 p.m.
Cole Swensen, Ours

4 p.m.
Connie Voisine, A Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream

4:30 p.m.
Mindy Netifees & Richard Silberg, Sleepyhead Assassins and Deconstruction of the Blues

5 p.m.
Get Lit Players: Classical Teen Poetry Troupe


Saturday featured a strong lineup with good variety. Robert and David and Connie were my personal highlights, and it was good finally to hear Frank Bidart read in his driving style. I went to Utah with Connie and she was a prize nominee this year! Her book is terrific and I'll teach it in the fall (note: order books, dumbass). Richard Silberg, an avant garde icon, and the Get Lit Players, a troop of young spoken word champions, were very pleasant surprises. John Feltsiner gave the first lecture at one of these events, which he peppered with other people's poetry. Good message, but I think some in the crowd were puzzled. It was one of the smoothest days we'd ever had. Only one reader forgot how to tell time, but we handled that quickly. And Jackson Wheeler, David Oliveira's Solo co-editor, showed up, and we caught up best we could.

Elena hosted a party that night at the Ruskin Center. I enjoyed the drive up, listening to Henry Rollins post-punk program on KCRW, Television, Joy Division, and especially (because I hadn't heard it in ages) The Normal's "Warm Leatherette," which bled into one of my own poems (albeit with a very different ethos), among his many fine selections. I showed up early, set up chairs and tables, while Elena and Carol Ann Davis cooked pasta and made lovely sauces and salads and there was wine. Lots of LA poetry royalty arrived at this casual gathering and to name a few would slight the many, but we ate and drank and enjoyed a fine first day of poetry and conversation and pasta and a perfect LA evening in the Miracle Mile.