Poetic Places : Poetry Readings in Southland Cafes, Bookstores and Coffeehouses Serve Up a Powerful Brew of Words and Ideas

Sunday afternoon shoppers breezed along Melrose Avenue, passing the plate-glass windows of the Gasoline Alley cafe.

The passers-by served as unwitting, temporary backdrops to poets Starr Goode and Cecilia Woloch, who read their work for those who sipped espresso and iced cappuccino inside.

Occasionally a passer-by paused to peer in, as if wondering what new trend was being set. A few times, unwitting would-be customers pushed through the front door before stopping cold and backing out. “I have to confess that I am guilty of sloth. Like many artists and writers, I like to stay up late and sleep in late,” Goode said to a wave of sympathetic laughter from the 40 people packed into the small cafe. Then she read a poem called “Sleeping Past Noon.”

Switching gears, Goode read a number of poems that brought the concepts of ancient gods and goddesses into a 20th-Century context. Then Woloch--her wild, red-hennaed hair standing out vividly against her black tank top and short, black leather skirt--read from a manuscript-in-progress of poems addressed to a mythical “contessa.”

Gasoline Alley, which offers free and free-wheeling entertainment most Sunday afternoons (the next reading will be this Sunday), is currently one of Southern California’s hottest poetry-reading venues.

It’s the brainchild of Harry Northup, a Hollywood poet-actor who’s published four books and appeared in 26 movies.

“A writer from Venice told me, ‘I knew it would take Harry Northup to make poetry chic,’ ” Northup recalled, looking gloomy. “Well, that wasn’t my intention. . . . I try to get the best poets I can. The purpose (of the series) is to encourage and promote good poetry.”

These days poets of all kinds are turning up all over Southern California to read their work out loud in front of audiences. If you haven’t glanced at a poem since Shakespeare was droned at you in school, you may be surprised at the entertainment value of contemporary poetry read aloud.

Sometimes, the readers are taken by surprise.

Silver Lake poet Eloise Klein Healy still remembers how, at her first reading years ago, “I read with Wanda Coleman and Sylvia Rosen. Sylvia read dreams and Wanda jumped off her chair, got down on her knees on the floor and was barking like a dog, and I thought, ‘What have I gotten into? My God, these people are crazy!’ ”

Today you can find readings in a wide variety of settings, from public libraries to theaters, eating places, colleges and universities, bookstores, record stores, art galleries, museums and private homes.

Held on Weekends

Most readings are held on weekends, but a few take place during the week. Monday night, for instance, Los Angeles poets Kate Braverman and Bowerbird Intelligentleman performed their work as part of the Goat Hill Readings series at the Good Earth restaurant in Santa Ana.

About 20 people sipped coffee and herbal tea and munched on salads while Intelligentleman (a UCLA social-psychology doctoral candidate and computer consultant also known as Bruce Morasch) started things off.

“I’m a REST-less, RECK-less, poet from Los Angeles,” he chanted rapidly, while a strobe light flickered over his long hair, sweat shirt and jeans. “ . . . Fruits and nuts and nuts and bolts and lots of loose screws. . . . “ In between verses, he drummed syncopation on his chest and stomach and greeted the crowd’s laughter and applause with a sweetly mischievous smile.

Throughout Intelligentleman’s mostly rhythmic, high-energy recitation, one male listener calmly sketched his woman companion, who leaned back and stared at the performing poet. Smoke spiraled upward from a few cigarettes, dissipating in the room’s air conditioning. A friend, Darlene Allen, stood beside him and translated many of his poems into sign language. (No hearing-impaired people were in the audience, but Allen and the poet say they hope to stage future readings specifically for the hearing-impaired.)

“I thought that was wonderful,” Orange fiction writer Julie Hall said afterward. “It’s the kind of thing that if you read it, you would never get it . . . (or) you’d get something different. Putting expression into (the poetry) makes it three-dimensional. You get all the punctuation.”

Braverman, elegant and slightly wicked-looking in an off-the-shoulder black dress and heels, her eyes heavily shadowed and her mouth outlined in scarlet, smoked cigarettes and read poems from her new book, “Hurricane Warnings” (Illuminati Press). “Some women are born/to sin./It’s a calling,/like the cloth/or politics. . . .”

She moved a little, tensely, in place, her voice sometimes rising almost to a shout. The audience paid close attention, giggling at some of her lines: “And you’re saying/I get drunk and restless,/drive my car too fast./Don’t give me promises./Just show up with cash. . . .”

Perhaps because of the dramatic surprises many poets offer in their performances, sponsors of the events say readings are gaining in popularity even among “poetry-haters.”

“A lot of people who said they didn’t like poetry keep coming back,” said Joyce B. Schwartz, a Westwood poetry and prose writer who runs a once-a-month Sunday reading series at the Sculpture Gardens Restaurant in Venice.

Schwartz characterized those who return as “professional people, by and large, who really stopped reading poetry when they finished college, or they read it in the New Yorker and didn’t like it particularly, or they read it in the Atlantic Monthly and didn’t understand it.” They find it much more appealing when it’s presented aloud, she said.

Restaurant’s Backyard

When the weather’s fine, the Sculpture Gardens readings take place in the restaurant’s backyard, among greenery and bits of carved stone. Usually four or more readers present poems during the free two-hour events, while listeners enjoy coffee or orange juice with rolls. (Egg dishes, soups and pasta salads can be had by those who arrive before 2:30 p.m., when the restaurant kitchen closes.)

Not surprisingly, those who give readings think more people should try them.

Poetry is “an underappreciated art form that’s much more accessible these days than it’s given credit for,” said Los Angeles poet Laurel Ann Bogen, who has published seven books.

Plus, it’s “cheap entertainment. People can spend $15 and go to a real lousy play, or they can spend $5 (or frequently less) and go to a really good poetry reading. It’s cheaper than the movies,” Bogen added.

Admission is free at many poetry readings, although you should be prepared for the time the basket is passed and you’re urged to donate funds to keep the series--and the poets--alive.

When there’s a set admission fee, it rarely exceeds $5, unless a particularly famous poet is reading.

Probably the best-known Los Angeles venue for hearing the written word spoken aloud is the non-profit Beyond Baroque Literary/Arts Center in Venice. Beyond Baroque features an eclectic mix of local and out-of-town poets and fiction writers in readings most Friday and Saturday nights.

One recent Friday, Beyond Baroque’s performance room was SRO with about 100 people for “An Evening of Black Literary and Performing Art,” organized by Los Angeles poet Michelle T. Clinton.

Spotlights focused attention on a slightly elevated stage in the spartan, black-walled room. The audience sat on folding chairs, listening to a sampling of 20th-Century, mostly contemporary poetry and prose by black writers.

Black Encounter

A short, sardonic play by Clinton about an encounter between contemporary blacks and “intergalactic” black visitors from the future was followed by local writer Will Alexander’s more academic-style reading and talk on the poems of Aime Cesaire.

South of Los Angeles, the Laguna Poets sponsor the most frequent events of any Orange County reading series. The Poets meet at the Laguna Beach Public Library at 8 p.m. each Friday, with featured readers three nights a month and an “open reading” (when those who show up take turns reading) each fourth Friday.

North of Los Angeles, the San Fernando Valley poetry-reading venue with the most events each month is Bebop Records and Fine Art in Reseda. The Bebop readings, which are held several times a month, generally start at 8 p.m. on Wednesday nights.

One recent evening, three rather rowdy poets held the Bebop stage, at the back of the store, before an audience of about 20 people.

Jerry Danielson started things off, reading an earnest poem in a deadpan monotone. Almost immediately, the store’s telephone rang and Bebop owner Richard Bruland raced to the cash register for a brief conversation that partly drowned out the poet’s voice.

Danielson bravely went on reading, only to be interrupted by a late arrival: a tall, stumbling figure wearing a serape, hat and funny sunglasses, waving a tequila bottle and shouting, in a suspiciously unslurred voice, “That’s kind of a wimpy poem to start a poetry reading with, isn’t it?”

“Richard, sit down, give me the bottle,” said Jim Burns, one of the evening’s scheduled readers.

The heckler went on shouting abuse at Danielson, insisting, among other things, that he be allowed on stage to read “Hussong’s Song,” which he said was “a good poem, it was accepted by a magazine before it folded.”

A woman in the audience spilled coins out of her purse, someone else noisily fumbled with something wrapped in plastic, people whispered. Finally, Burns and the “heckler” (revealed as the evening’s third co-reader, Richard Weekley) went onstage to announce they’d just performed a skit called “13 Ways to More or Less Interrupt a Poetry Reading,” with some help from Bruland and other “listeners.”

Tone for the Evening

That opening set the tone for the rest of the evening, which included electronic music as well as mostly playful poems.

During an intermission, Van Nuys poet Don Fanning said he’s been going to readings around Los Angeles since 1983.

Many poetry readings he’s attended, Fanning said, contain “a few gems in the poems, but often a lot of the stuff kind of leaves me unsatisfied.” However, attending a reading is “worth it, if there’s one gem,” Fanning declared.

While Fanning thinks of good poems as precious stones, Gasoline Alley series organizer Harry Northup finds a stronger parallel between poetry read aloud and music.

“I try to listen to it (poetry) like it’s music,” Northup said. “It’s like a stream of music coming out of the corner of this cafe on Melrose.”