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Wordspace: David Meltzer & Michael Rothenberg Return of the Beat Thing
presented in partnership with NM Literary Arts & La Alameda Press
In 1960, David Meltzer’s poems appeared in the ground-breaking anthology, The New American Poetry. He has gone on to create a substantial body of work that is pervaded with “a kind of bop-perfection.” Having arrived in San Francisco in 1957, he is associated both with the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance, often reading with jazz musicians at bars and coffeehouses. Beat Thing (La Alameda Press), winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles award, is both tribute to down-in-the-street wildness and rant against the romantic commodification which surrounds the Beat Generation. Meltzer brings forth the original spirit of Beat in an encyclopedic cascade of details whose dense, deep, fierce, funny, raucous, free-associative jazz energy infuses every line. Beat Thing is an ecstatic chant of defiance and celebration. Mr. Meltzer was to have read at The Space in 2004 but due to unforeseen circumstances couldn’t make it. Since then David’s Copy: The Selected Poems, edited by Michael Rothenberg, has come out with nearly 50 years of Meltzer’s poetry and provides ample evidence of his stylistic breadth as well as the music and humor active in it. Michael Rothenberg’s work as an editor is well known, not only for David’s Copy, but also As Ever: Selected Poems of Joanne Kyger; Overtime: Selected Poems of Philip Whalen; Way More West: Selected Poems of Edward Dorn and the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. He is also editor of Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org, a prominent online literary zine. But Rothenberg is an author in his own right, including The Paris Journals; Monk Daddy; Grown Up Cuba; and recently Unhurried Vision from La Alameda Press, which charts the year Rothenberg spent caring for the terminally ill Philip Whalen. In 1976 he moved to California and co-founded Shelldance, a bromeliad and orchid nursery in Pacifica. An active environmentalist, Rothenberg has been a leading force in the protection of Bay Area coastal lands and endangered species.
$5 at the door. Available in advance, by phone or in person, at the Outpost Performance Space (268-0044)
In 1960, David Meltzer’s poems appeared in the ground-breaking anthology, The New American Poetry. He has gone on to create a substantial body of work that is pervaded with “a kind of bop-perfection.” Having arrived in San Francisco in 1957, he is associated both with the Beats and the San Francisco Renaissance, often reading with jazz musicians at bars and coffeehouses. Beat Thing (La Alameda Press), winner of the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles award, is both tribute to down-in-the-street wildness and rant against the romantic commodification which surrounds the Beat Generation. Meltzer brings forth the original spirit of Beat in an encyclopedic cascade of details whose dense, deep, fierce, funny, raucous, free-associative jazz energy infuses every line. Beat Thing is an ecstatic chant of defiance and celebration. Mr. Meltzer was to have read at The Space in 2004 but due to unforeseen circumstances couldn’t make it. Since then David’s Copy: The Selected Poems, edited by Michael Rothenberg, has come out with nearly 50 years of Meltzer’s poetry and provides ample evidence of his stylistic breadth as well as the music and humor active in it. Michael Rothenberg’s work as an editor is well known, not only for David’s Copy, but also As Ever: Selected Poems of Joanne Kyger; Overtime: Selected Poems of Philip Whalen; Way More West: Selected Poems of Edward Dorn and the Collected Poems of Philip Whalen. He is also editor of Big Bridge, www.bigbridge.org, a prominent online literary zine. But Rothenberg is an author in his own right, including The Paris Journals; Monk Daddy; Grown Up Cuba; and recently Unhurried Vision from La Alameda Press, which charts the year Rothenberg spent caring for the terminally ill Philip Whalen. In 1976 he moved to California and co-founded Shelldance, a bromeliad and orchid nursery in Pacifica. An active environmentalist, Rothenberg has been a leading force in the protection of Bay Area coastal lands and endangered species.