Coffeehouse Culture : Poets, Free-Thinking Mavericks Finding a New Home

“In the coffeehouses of old, we all loved intelligent music--classical, jazz or folk . . . . We also loved books and writers and conversation; we were voracious readers ourselves; we were--or wanted to be--writers.”

--Author Lionel Rolfe, “In Search of Literary L.A.”

The scene smacked of the 1960s. Pink neon lined the bar, and rows of abstract art hung high on the wall under track lights. At every bar stool and table were young people--women in tights, men in jeans, some wearing long hair.

Up on the stairs, halfway to a balcony, teetered 80-year-old William P. McLain, looking none-too-hip in thick glasses, brown trousers and a gray sports coat. This old geezer from Iowa, a dyed-in-the-polyester fuddy-duddy, was enthralling the crowd with his poem, “Bessie-Mae,” about a beautiful and aspiring starlet.

“In Hollywood she met a director/ And Bessie thought she had it made/ She thought she would be in the movies/ But that wasn’t the part she played. . . .” McLain clutched a microphone as he read his comic tale of exploitation and revenge, ending with a simple moral: “When you’re good, be as good as you can/ And nothing will stop you from getting ahead/ As long as you have a tight can.”

Whoops of laughter erupted in the dark confines of Highland Grounds, a funky Hollywood coffeehouse that opened in early 1990--a time when only half a dozen coffeehouses were still operating in Los Angeles. Since then, a resurgence has taken hold. Suddenly, there are upward of 50 or so coffeehouses scattered across the city, bearing names such as The Living Room, Troy, Java, Cafe Mocha, The Onyx and Cobalt Cafe.

Not to be confused with more-mundane coffee shops--places to order toast and breakfast--coffeehouses represent a narrow but vibrant slice of American culture. They are nightspots that tend to attract all manner of mavericks and free thinkers--artists, singers, writers. Patrons can order up espresso or cappuccino, linger past midnight, engage in intense conversation and, in general, play the role of bohemian. Often, there are nights devoted to live music--typically blues or folk songs--and poetry readings.

“They’re more of a meeting place, a social place, than a coffee shop,” said Richard Brenner, a former bartender and mortgage broker who founded Highland Grounds with partner Tom Kaplan. Brenner attributes the coffeehouse revival to disaffection with materialistic values and to a decline in singles bars brought on by stricter drunk-driving laws and the AIDS epidemic. “You’re seeing the emergence of places where people can go and meet and just talk and hang out,” he said.

Warren, a 38-year-old poet from Van Nuys who uses only his first name, is a coffeehouse version of the old “lounge lizard.” He hangs out at coffeehouses at least three nights a week, sometimes more. His favorite spot, it so happens, is the Iguana Cafe, a graffiti-spangled den in North Hollywood.

“If you can write good poetry, you can have . . . a lively discussion on a variety of topics,” Warren said. “A lot of highly charged intellectual and emotional discussions come out of those places.”

Poetry has become a passion for Warren, who has read publicly about 50 times. One poem described the women of his past as “locusts in tall wheat,” eating at his insides.

“I never get applause on that poem,” he said, but another, concerning the death of his mother, had listeners teary-eyed. The applause he got “was electrifying--it made the hair on my arms stand up,” Warren said. “After that, I became an audience junkie. I’ve got to have that every once in a while.”

On this night at Highland Grounds, poetry readings were scheduled after a two-hour session called “Shakespeare on the Patio,” in which performers recited classical works of the Bard and other writers under a canopy of canvas and eucalyptus trees. Their strutting and fretting on a small concrete stage, under glaring outdoor lights, seemed to establish a poetic mood.

“The pound of flesh I demand of him . . . is mine! And I will have it!” shouted Shelly Desai, a 49-year-old actor who was practicing a courtroom scene from “The Merchant of Venice.”

He went on, “I stand here for judgment! Answer! Will I have it?”

Applause rippled across the patio. A succession of short performances ended at 9, when most of the coffeehouse crowd--about 50 people--moved indoors.

Allen Freedman, 49, one of the older members of the group, climbed the stairs to deliver a work addressing the responsibility of the poet.

“Let us assume for just one moment/ That our poetry does matter,” he thundered dramatically, dominating the room. “. . . As matter in the world/ Possessing weight and moment/ So that it does move/ Not merely to some pleasant or unpleasant feeling/ But to pleasant or unpleasant action.

“Let us assume that we are poets/ Fellows of an ancient order/ Beneficial/ Dangerous/ Significant. . . .”

He had written the poem four years ago. Unlike many of the night’s readers, he was a veteran of coffeehouses since the late ‘70s and had seen some of his verse published in New York Quarterly and the Manhattan Poetry Review.

His writing began after a divorce, Freedman said. “My first poems were, ‘Oh, poor me, I’m lost and alone,’ ” he recalled. “But then I realized I had a voice. I had both something to say and an ability to say it.”

Shane Montgomery, 28, a woman in black tights who had grown up as a “theater brat”--the daughter of an avid English teacher--read a much darker work, one she called “Deep Disintegration.”

“I’ve suffered in your churches and fainted on your streets/ But I can see beyond you as I’m lying at your feet. . . .”

Written to decry man’s inhumanity, the work is one of about 100 that Montgomery has copyrighted in hopes of creating a book. She began hanging out in L.A. coffeehouses about a year ago.

“It’s the most incredible thing to feel that bonding (with the crowd) when you’re up there reading,” she said. “Or to listen to somebody who’s really good, who captures you.”

As midnight neared, the succession of readers touched upon issues from poverty to casual sex. Danny Peck, a singer who put out an album 15 years ago, joined Yvonne De La Vega, a poet and singer who once worked with Herb Alpert, to perform a ballad inspired by killings in El Salvador.

Peck strummed a guitar while De La Vega, a part-time waitress, sang her tune, newly dedicated to the people of the Soviet Union.

“And we read poetry and talk about jazz/ While the whole world is rocking and rolling;/ The planet is shifting, is cracking, and the whole world is slipping away;/ Oh, L.A., can we pray? Are you listening from your deco havens?/ Your dark coffeehouses where poets lament?”