CALIFORNIA ALBUM : Writers Defeat Fees for Poetic License : San Francisco politicians trade doggerel in battle over whether the city can require a permit for coffeehouses and bars where poets recite their work.

You can find them any night of the week, these heirs to the Beat Generation, crowded into coffee shops and bars, listening in rapt silence to their fellow poets.

At dusk, the new writers of the cafe stage leave their day jobs behind, hit the coffeehouses and take turns performing their work. Devoted to the art of the spoken word, they are part of a flourishing subculture that embraces the city’s romantic image and furthers its literary tradition.

So it came as quite a shock this spring when they learned they must pay for their poetic license. In dollars.

The San Francisco Police Department began enforcing a little-known law requiring cafes and bars to fork over as much as $800 for an annual permit to hold poetry readings.

For the outraged poets and cafe owners, it quickly became a freedom of speech issue. They organized in protest and staged a poetry reading--without a permit--on the steps of City Hall.

Politicians soon jumped into the fray with bad verse of their own, capturing the limelight with rhyming promises to rescind the licensing law. In one notable effort, Mayor Frank Jordan declared:

We don’t care one whit

For poetry by permit

Let the verse flow free

From the beach to the sea . . .

*

On Monday, the poets celebrated victory. The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to rescind the law. Free artistic performances in coffeehouses and bars no longer require a license.

“I can’t believe in San Francisco there’s a law that says you can’t read poetry,” said board President Angela Alioto, who sponsored the repeal. “We’re getting rid of it so it can never happen again.”

The easy triumph of the literati has drawn attention to San Francisco’s underground poetry movement, which thrives on spirited public performances before small audiences.

Bridging the city’s racial divisions, members of the Anglo, African-American, Latino and Asian-American communities come together to share their deepest emotions at poetry readings.

No one can say for sure how many poets there are, but some estimate as many as 1,000 people take part in open mike readings in cafes and bars across the city.

“About every other person walking down the street will tell you they’re a poet,” said Lawrence Ferlinghetti, a Beat Generation poet and owner of the City Lights bookstore. “There are more poetry readings now than there have ever been. They call themselves performance poets, but they’re really doing what we were doing.”

Indeed, today’s poets trace their roots to Beats such as Ferlinghetti, Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac--daring writers of the 1950s who first became known by reading their works in North Beach cafes.

Much as Los Angeles attracts aspiring actors, San Francisco has long been a magnet for writers. Poets are drawn to the city, Ferlinghetti said, “because poetry is the dissident aspect of literature and San Francisco is the dissident aspect of the United States.”

Or as Rose Catacalos, director of the San Francisco Poetry Center, put it: “We help create the climate of a city.”

Some readings are boisterous entertainment, such as competitive events called slams, in which poets are rated Olympics-style by judges who hold up numbers.

But in a culture that grants few book contracts to poets, public readings are the only chance most have to air their poetry--to be published, in a sense.

“Open readings are emblematic of the art life in San Francisco,” said Joyce Jenkins, editor of Poetry Flash, a monthly newspaper for poets in the Bay Area. “People come here looking for this great tradition that we have that started even before the Beats.”

The controversy over poetry reading permits started when Theresa Strang bought the Blue Monkey cafe and discovered she would have to buy an entertainment license to continue weekly poetry readings.

Threatened by police with a misdemeanor, she said, she halted the readings for six weeks, prompting outraged poets to complain to city officials and local newspapers.

“It’s a forum of emerging art, a forum of free ideas, so it doesn’t seem right to tax it,” said poet Neeli Cherkovski, who appealed to the mayor and helped organize protests. “It’s like a free university.”

*

The debate reached a low point when politicians began churning out their own doggerel. The Police Commission passed a resolution in verse halting enforcement of the law. Mayor Jordan and Supervisor Alioto--who have battled over pandas for the city zoo--engaged in a rhyming rivalry over who should get credit for repealing the poetry permits.

At one point, Alioto wrote:

So don’t get exercised, dear Frank, don’t panda to the press

Just spend your time to help to save the city from its mess.

Police Sgt. Steve Tacchini, who works in the city permit bureau, said the licensing issue has been blown out of proportion. Police did not enforce the law, he said, and never intended to discourage the city’s poets.

“We have the highest respect for people’s 1st Amendment rights,” he said. “I think it started as a tiny seed of controversy and has grown into a mighty oak.”

On a recent night at the Blue Monkey, more than 40 poets gathered lawfully and took turns reading. The audience listened intently, not even talking in whispers, as the poets spoke of old shoes and Anita Hill, lost love, AIDS and Mother’s Day.

“This is the only link we have left to culture in this day and age,” said poet Ken Scott. “We’re all wanna-bes. We’re all entertaining ourselves. It keeps us from going into the streets and screaming.”