READINGS, WRITINGS, AND LIBATIONS : Performance Poetry Is Catching Eyes and Quenching Thirsts

About 180 people of all types and ages are congregated in an open courtyard, where they have come to sip exotic brew and subject themselves to the spoken words of the wise and the wacko.

A man wearing a moth-eaten sweater and black cord jeans stands before them, clutching a notebook in his right hand and raising his clenched left fist skyward like some hero from a Greek tragedy. His voice rises and wanes with each stanza he dramatically reads from his latest poem. Behind the hanging sheet that serves as a backdrop, another man points two flashlights in various directions that come through as stars bouncing to the poet’s reading rhythm.

The gathering is at Deidrich’s Coffee in Costa Mesa. And those in attendance have come for poetry and java, as they have every third Monday of each month for the last year, served up in a program called the “Cafe of Dreams.” The event is part of a recent Southland trend known as “performance poetry” that has the nation’s poets turning their heads west toward this burgeoning literary scene.

Performance poetry weds the spoken word with performance art, sometimes incorporating theatrics, voice dynamics or props. The genre has become so popular that Los Angeles held a poetry festival last month that featured over 200 poets and attracted an audience of about 2,200.

In Orange County, performance poetry is also catching on, with 10 regularly scheduled readings per month and several more scattered throughout the year. The longest-running and most frequent reading in the county--the Laguna Poets--happens every Friday evening, except major holidays, at the Laguna Beach Public Library. Founded by Marta Mitrovich 18 years ago, the group also has a tradition of inviting well-known poets like Allen Ginsburg and Gary Snyder to read as part of the annual Laguna Arts Festival.

Most of the readings follow a similar format, presenting at least two featured readers--who are chosen by the organizers based on their work or reputation--and providing an opportunity for poets to sign up and perform their work to a somewhat captive audience. The latter segment is known as an open reading. The cover charge is always less than the cost of a movie, and sometimes free.

In addition to the readings, poetry journals and specialized poets’ groups are becoming established and receiving recognition outside county boundaries.

Poets and followers agree that the popularity of live poetry depends as much on the way words are spoken as it does on the words themselves. “No one wants to sit through an hour of mumble mumble,” said poetry enthusiast Michael Logue. “We decided from the beginning not just to get good writers, but good readers.”

Logue has become somewhat of a celebrity in Orange County’s poetry community since 1988, when he and fiancee Tina Rinaldi co-founded Poets Reading Inc., a Fullerton-based nonprofit organization that holds bimonthly readings at the Fullerton Museum Center, publishes a magazine for poetry and discussion called The Quarterly, and provides scholarships to aspiring poets attending an Orange County university or college.

A writer and computer consultant whose baroque attire reflects his eclectic personality, Logue also donates much of his energy, time and computer equipment to organizing special events featuring renowned writers. British poets Ian Whitcomb and Thomas Gunn and Irish poet James Simmons were invited to read last month as part of the Festival of Britain.

Logue doesn’t believe that Poets Reading Inc. should be so closely identified with him, citing the work of Rinaldi and 18 dedicated volunteers. “I certainly don’t do this for my health or as a personal glory vehicle,” he said. “I do it to promote the literary arts, to provide a forum--both written and oral--for local writers.”

Also intent on promoting live poetry is Lee Mallory, a poet and English professor at Rancho Santiago College. He and Jana Kiedrowski have presented the “Factory” the first Monday of each month since late 1988.

Jokingly referred to as “the reading that wouldn’t die,” its dedicated following has had to relocate several times because of a series of unfortunate circumstances at the restaurants they used. Their first site and namesake, the Chicago Pizza Factory in Santa Ana, went bankrupt, as did their second venue, and the last site burned down. The Factory’s latest home, at the Casa Palma Mexican restaurant in Santa Ana, has remained free from catastrophe since May.

Mallory believes a restaurant offers a casual and festive atmosphere conducive to the creative, spontaneous and often shocking works read in Factory gatherings. (Those attending a recent reading also seemed to enjoy the margaritas, chips and salsa.) “We pride ourselves on the ‘anything goes that’s good’ philosophy,” he said.

This “anything goes” philosophy also applies when Anvil Productions, Unlimited, serves up poetic lunacy with the “Cafe of Dreams” at Deidrich’s Coffee. A theme is designated each month for discussion and contemplation among the readers and guests, like this month’s focus on stress release that encourages everyone to bring a percussion instrument for Monday’s 15-minute beat-it-out session. Noise, music and verbal interaction with the audience complement the poetry. Hostess Marsha Muscato is the only poet from the four-member Anvil Productions, which includes co-host Randy Bird and his wife, Bonnie, and photographer Kip Duff working behind the scenes.

According to Deidrich’s Coffee owner Martin Deidrich, a New York poet visiting last month’s reading called the turnout and participation phenomenal compared to poetic activity in the Big Apple.

“I am hosting the poetry readings because I like attending these sort of things,” Deidrich said. He plans to start his own in-house program of weekly entertainment and events at his Costa Mesa coffeehouse, which will eventually spread to his Tustin location, he said.

Ipso facto and Gallery 57, named after the stores they inhabit in Old Towne Fullerton, were started this year by Elliott Rogers, a poet and substitute teacher in the Fullerton Elementary School District as an outlet for the 16- to 24-year-old crowd and for those poets who were “censored or turned away at the other places” because of language that some might consider shocking or vulgar.

Ipso facto takes place every third Friday of the month and is strictly an open reading, without scheduled poets and without any language, content or time restrictions. The no-holds-barred attitude carries over to the all-featured-readers format at Gallery 57 every first Thursday of the month.

Smaller, intimate readings drawing only a dozen or so people--which may be more in tune with the introspective personalities of many poets--have taken place in the last few months at the Dana Point Bookstore and Anaheim’s Caffe Gourmet.

Some organizers, including Poets Reading Inc., limit the use of profanity and topics that appear to be used purely for shock value. “We’re more mature than to listen to shock-value profanity,” said Logue. “Although some of our poets use language and subjects that might seem obscene to some people, as long as it’s within context to the work, we only ask the audience to bring an open mind.”

While some might consider any restrictions censorship, John Brugaletta, a published poet and professor of English and comparative literature at Cal State Fullerton, says that’s not necessarily the case.

“You have to be like an editor of a magazine,” he said. “If you say no, they could always go somewhere else.”

Brugaletta also serves as chief editor for the South Coast Poetry Journal, a book published biannually at Cal State Fullerton featuring works by internationally known and unknown writers. The SCPJ staff, made up from a selected group of students, sorts through an average of 75 submissions a week deciding what goes and what doesn’t.

He and other poets have questioned whether the lack of standards at some performance poetry venues make it a kind of fast-food art that has little literary value and only aims to gratify a visually oriented society.

“It’s almost like a group of people are trying to challenge what is acceptable in poetry,” said Shannan Batts, a poet and student editor of SCPJ. “Like we’re supposed to compete about who has the proper definition of poetry or as if anything can be poetry--not that it really is.”

Robert Peters also disputes the innovation and talent of many local poets and journals. A nationally known poet, critic, and professor at the UC Irvine, his credits include “The Peter’s Black and Blue Guide to Literary Journals” and “The Great American Poetry Bake-Off”--a collection of essays and reviews.

“I’m puzzled by the safe, even bland, approach they always take,” he said. “It would be great to see a whole bunch of energetic, experimental writers, but I just don’t see that here. It seems they’re afraid to push that sanitized norm for the arts O.C. is famous for.”

Ron Hoffen, poet and editor of the poetry magazine Free Lunch, agrees with Peters. Since 1988, the Laguna Niguel-based nonprofit magazine has been distributed free to poets three times a year throughout the country. Always looking for new, unestablished, experimental poets, Hoffen said he finds few with any quality among local artists.

“I’m not against poetry being accessible to all people, but I have to wonder whether performance poetry, which is becoming very popular here, is showmanship or art,” he said.

But there are its defenders. Charles Webb, a published poet who has also been included in the latest SCPJ edition and is an English professor at Cal State Long Beach, has documented this West Coast live poetry phenomenon in a collection called “Stand-up Poetry,” which features some of the best L.A. writers of the genre.

“There are many people who prefer to write performance poetry off as fluff,” Webb said, “but the best of performance poetry still works on the page and is just as open to analysis and deep reading.”

Poets, reading organizers and followers contend that as Orange County’s culture continues to develop, it is vital that the literary arts at any level receive attention and support from the public.

Terri Joseph, a poet and English professor at Chapman College, has long been involved with organizing campus-based events like the Distinguished Writer Series that are tailored for the public. She also works on the staff of the California State Poetry Quarterly, a collection of works from throughout the country, co-published by Chapman College and the California Poetry Society.

“Poetry really belongs to the people who practice it,” she said, “and the trend to take it out of textbook and make it a performance makes it more accessible to an audience without a strong literary background.”