The first Monday of month has passed, which means I was with my Left Coast Writers group down in Marin at Book Passage (see links on my sidebar.) LCW is one of the places I go to remind myself that I’m a writer. It’s a social gathering/literary salon ripe with networking opportunities. I’ve been a member for ten months now, and at every gathering I have extended myself beyond my comfort zone to speak to a stranger or near-stranger. That shouldn’t be so hard, but to me, it’s a Homeric odyssey . The group meets at 7 P.M. and usually goes to about 10:00-10:30. Without exception, at every meeting, there is a voice in my head cooing words like, “Pajamas. Slippers. Cookies and milk. Quiet. Safe. Home.” Way before I even get through the door, I’m tempted to turn around and forget the whole thing. But I don’t, and I haven’t been sorry yet.
The evening starts with a guest speaker, someone of note. This month, because it’s National Poetry Month, we heard from Neeli Cherkovski. I’m not all that keen on poetry, so I didn’t know of him, but what a great guy. He was easily into his sixties, a wild-haired Beat Poet from the glory days of North Beach, San Francisco. Before he got up to speak, he didn’t sit in the chair at the front of the room as much as he laid across it and the table next to him, like an indolent cat in a sunny window. Once he was introduced and at the podium, he announced to the group that he was presently on his last day of unemployment insurance. Frequently, he tugged at his hair, and when he did, I noticed that his pullover sweater was worn thru at the elbow. His demeanor had that odd combination of groovy-mellow and frenetic-angst.
He was good-friends with luminaries, Charles Bukowski and Lawrence Ferlinghetti. Ferlinghetti was the founder of City Lights Books (1953) in North Beach, the first all-paperback bookstore in the country. The bookstore is famous for supporting authors such as Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Denise Levertov, and William Carlos Williams. And Charles Bukowski…well, here are a couple of his quotes:
“Some People never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must live.”
Or, “Sex is interesting, but it’s not totally important. I mean it’s not even as important (physically) as excretion. A man can go seventy years without a piece of ass, but he can die in a week without a bowel movement.”
And one more, “There is a time to stop reading, there is a time to STOP trying to WRITE, there is a time to kick the whole bloated sensation of ART out on its whore-ass.”
Cherkovski is the author of twelve books of poetry. He read from about four of them, mostly love poems. They were to men, but their homosexual nature had little baring on their meaning or the feelings they conveyed. Occasional phases were truly beautiful, but I didn’t write them down, and now I can’t remember what they were. He can be Googled.
It was a pleasure for me to witness a serious writer who wasn’t all buttoned-up, corporate serious. As a beginning writer, I see a lot of advice that scares my creative spirit to death: how to write what sells, how to pitch with flair, how to wow. Cherkovski was none of that, and yet, I’ll never forget him.
I’ll post again next Friday. Have a great week!
Comments are always welcomed.