Testing the Limits of an Open Mike

There are only three rules for poets reading their work at the Gypsy Den: Refrain from throwing consumables, avoid pointless profanity and don’t stand on the furniture.

At a recent gathering at the Santa Ana coffeehouse, Lee Mallory -- founder of what he describes as Orange County’s largest continuous poetry reading -- managed to break two of the rules within his first five minutes onstage.

“He stood on a chair and used the f-word,” said host Jaimes Palacio, who had introduced the golden-tongued chronicler as “the most powerful poetry promoter in Orange County.” On the other hand, Palacio was happy to add, “nobody threw any food.”

So it is on the first Tuesday of each month at the open reading that’s been happening for 17 years, albeit at seven locations.

“I’m a zealot,” said Mallory, 59, who writes poetry during bus rides from his Newport Beach home to Santa Ana College, where he teaches English as a Second Language. “I’m on a mission to put poetry back on the map.”

The mission began, he said, in 1968 when, as a student at UC Santa Barbara, he “met a bohemian living in a water tower” who sparked his interest in the written word. As Mallory was a member of the campus ROTC, he recalled, “I’d be up late writing poetry in the water tower and out early drilling” with the Army.

Mallory began teaching after a postgraduation stint in the military and wrote his poetry on the side. His work has appeared in seven collections of his own, as well as dozens of periodicals. In 1988, Mallory started the monthly Factory Reading series -- named after the Chicago Pizza Factory, where the gatherings initially were held.

“I felt that poetry could bring back a sense of community in the face of the alienation happening due to high technology,” said Mallory, who, in addition to taking the bus to work, watches an old TV set, has no cellphone or VCR and refuses to own a computer. “I felt that poetry could bring us back together -- get us back in touch. It’s all about feelings.”

The monthly readings he founded, however, have at times suffered from homelessness.

In 1990, the Santa Ana pizza place where the readings began went out of business, forcing the gathering to relocate to a restaurant in Tustin -- which was firebombed, prompting a move to a bar that almost immediately declared bankruptcy. A murder near the next venue persuaded the group to “get out of Dodge,” Mallory recalled. Engagements followed at a Chinese restaurant in Santa Ana and a coffeehouse in Costa Mesa -- which the gathering quickly outgrew.

In April, the group began meeting at the Gypsy Den Grand Central Cafe on Broadway in downtown Santa Ana. There, one is likely to see crowds of 20 to 160, including “young punkers with pink hair and leather pants sitting next to retired aerospace workers in Pendleton shirts,” Mallory said.

The recent gathering of 40 people was somewhat less diverse than that. In addition to the literary artists presenting one poem each on the “open mike,” the audience heard the gentle strains of a young female vocalist as well as the strident words of three “featured” poets, including the founder himself.

“Lick this paper,” Mallory read from atop a chair. “ ... this is poetry.”

Performers talked about sex, doing the laundry, bartending, love, drinking hot chocolate, becoming a Walt Disney cartoon and how to tell the difference between a girl and a boy.

“You can tell it’s a girl,” intoned featured poet Brendan Constantine, using random sentences on the subject he said he had gleaned from the Internet, “because it has a gigantic bow tied around its neck and because it’s addressed as ‘Tessie.’ She’s wearing a pink shirt,” he went on, “so you can tell it’s a girl.”

Cecilia Ortiz, for one, was impressed. “This was a great surprise,” the 35-year-old resident of Santa Ana said when the reading was over. Ortiz said she frequented the Gypsy Den and had come in for coffee without expecting to hear poetry.

“It was great,” she said. “It’s definitely inspiring -- like food for the brain.”

Constantine, a 38-year-old high school teacher from Hollywood who wore multicolored bracelets and six earrings in his left ear, couldn’t agree more.

“This was a good reading,” he said, describing the poetry scene in Orange County as more cohesive than its L.A. counterpart, partly because of community support. “There weren’t just poets in the audience,” he said, “and the non-poets, when they realized what was going on, didn’t just get up and split.”

That’s good news for poets everywhere, Constantine declared. “Poetry in America,” he said, “is enjoying a level of excitement it has never experienced before.”