The Barbary Coast Award: Holy!

Last night was one of the great nights, when you can actually sense not only time but your own significance in the history of something important.

The best fireworks show you’ve ever seen, with explosions so vast and colorful and loud and resounding that people actually cheer with each pop though they gape from the spiderstar silent, still melting into the darkness.

Although Lawrence Ferlinghetti was too frail to be in attendance to receive the 4th annual Barbary Coast Award, the overwhelming support he received from every arena of the artistic world was so resounding (see above: kaboom!), the retrospective of his life and the span of his City Lights Bookstore and their collective effects on the city of San Francisco and on the minds of generations of readers and thinkers was so poignant and heartfelt that the evening truly felt like a celebration of the whole city and its spirit and the very community the man made it his mission to establish. The feeling of the night was triumph

That there be such a man who would risk everything for what he believes in, not once but persistently, throughout the course of a lifetime … and to watch the many people said man has directly influenced and created a space for testify as a community … is perhaps the most triumphant of all human experiences. As each person spoke I could not help but stare at the pictures of Ferlinghetti screened behind the stage; I stared at his face with each testimony and measured the boundaries of my own self.

I sat up all night and thought about what to write today. I haven’t even put together my report for The Chronicle yet—I wanted to get the gush out. But as I listened to the whole show, which I snagged clandestinely on my audio recorder, I could not overcome the feeling that I had recorded a piece of history that should be remembered and passed down—and not just as hearsay. So what follows is more of a script than anything else:

The Marcus Shelby Quartet played their signature jazz as, one after another, some of our favorite writers took the stage to read excerpts of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s poetry (in this order): devorah major, Marc Bamuthi Joseph, Daphne Gottlieb, Robert Mailer Anderson, Beth Lisick, Michelle Tea, Justin Chin, Juan Felipe Herrera, James Kass and Chinaka Hodge. Each artist injected the verse with a personal verve, then shone as they walked or even skipped off stage.

When they finished, these ten, the lights came on and they returned from the side stage to the center, and I expected them to bow and leave again. The crowd gave a loud applause, apparently thinking the same thing, but then—as a chorus—the artists launched into the footnote to “Howl,” for which each recited a passage:

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! 
Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! 
The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand 
and asshole holy! 

Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is 
holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an 
angel! 

The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is 
holy as you my soul are holy! 

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is 
holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! 

…

Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop 
apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana 
hipsters peace & junk & drums! 

Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy 
the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the 
mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! 
…

Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the 
clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy 
the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! 

Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the 
locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina- 
tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the 
abyss! 

Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! 
bodies! suffering! magnanimity! 

Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent 
kindness of the soul!" 

The crowd went wild. And then Bamuthi Joseph, MC, said “Holy Shit! Here we are,” and then “give it up for Lawrence Ferlinghetti!” We all cheered, thunderously, but we were still too decorous. “We are honoring Lawrene Ferlinghetti tonight,” Bamuthi Joseph said, “which means any impulse you have to be quiet or coy is fucked up and should be thrown out the window … We are an uncensored, untethered body of literary worshippers tonight.”

This was the beginning of the show!!!

… And then came the tributes. Here are some notable quotables:

Paul Yamagatzi, who has worked at City Lights for 40 years now, talked about the whole sense of community, how City Lights was always to be a meeting place, an intersection of minds and texts. He celebrated Ferlinghetti’s abilities not only as a poet, activist, and painter, but as an organizer and collaborator with the peculiar ability to pass a vision on—how central he was to the community that we are today.

Elaine Katzenberger, executive director of City Lights, started by saying she would be brief because she knew we were waiting for more important people, but then was carried away by an impassioned speech that ended with a justified pitch for us all to “come to the bookstore.” Huzzah!“People love City Lights. It has something to do with how it’s infused with who Lawrence Ferlinghetti is. … It’s been a center for culture. … He is the sparkle of irrepressible human curiosity.”

She captured the intersection of spirit and utility that is the bookstore’s hallmark: “There’s something different when you walk in that door … it’s driven by something other than money. It is not profit that moves us to go to work every day—it’s passion. And it’s curiosity. And it’s wanting to share it. And that’s what books do when books inspire you. And you walk in there and suddenly you realize wow, there are all these people who are thinking other things than that noise that I have to hear all the time. Not only that! Look around: … Decisions are being made about what should we share and how can we do that.”

Michael McClure then took the stage with a slow gait and impressive air. He talked about reading in the Six Gallery with Ginsberg et al. and how City Lights evolved. “If we couldn’t afford to buy ,” he said, “we could stand in the aisles and read. … It was Coney Island of the Mind which did more than any other book to turn young people the world over to poetry as an instrument to thinking and feeling. … This was the beginning of a metamorphosis of consciousness. Scholars have a fulltime occupation to try to make sense of what Lawrence has done since then … to make freedom available in the United States and wherever his energies reached.”  Then he read a poem called “Cups,” which ended with the line: “What will we say to all the singing realms that try to rise inside of us? Grawr!”

Michael Horowitz, co-founder of the Ludlow Library, which he described as “a library/museum of beating hand culture books” and which collected first editions and paraphernalia from neighboring artists, praised Ferlinghetti for supporting him and so many others, for “the protection of all things. Thank you for protecting me and helping me protect others.” An image of City Lights as a true sanctuary began to form in my mind, and members of the Quartet peered over their instruments with smiles on, holding the standup bass, sax at the ready.

Already we were sensing an overload, and when Horowitz finished the band played a little interlude to let us process things.

Then, a short video was projected onto a screen above the stage. We saw Sylvia Whitman of Paris’ Shakespeare and Company give us a tour through their bookstore, which, she lovingly explained, they consider the sister bookstore of City Lights (and even called it “the best bookstore in the world”). A marquee with that name is painted above the doorway and as she walked up to the third floor to find her father, the famous 90+ year-old George, she passed several employees who all looked into the camera and said “Hi Lawrence!” or else were reading one of his books. It was so personal and … appropriate. George seemed a little confused by his daughter’s questions, and the following dialogue made everyone laugh:


Never stayed in City Lights.
But there are photos of you in City Lights.
There are?
Yes … Why don’t you say something to City Lights?
… Talking to City Lights is like talking to myself—it doesn’t make any sense.


George then extended a most gracious offer to Mr. Ferlinghetti to stay at Shakespeare and Co. for as long as he’d like.


You said that to Lawrence?
I’m saying it to him now.


Wow. Then Jack Hirschman took the stage in what was definitely one of my favorite parts of the night. He started by saying he’s known Lawrence for over half a century. I’m going to give a long excerpt of what he called “Ferlinghetti Arcane:”

“… Jack and Alan drumming on a new American poetry … but you’d already been international … You the constant consonant and vowel uttered, and I the same vowel uttered at the end of the next syllable but only an unsounded echo barely heard still being in the university. … You never did go back to bourgieville, but stayed on as independent as you could, creating the first paperback bookstore in the land, opening a bunch of doors so that worlds and people could realize San Francisco is one of the most priceless cities on the planet, still a city small town, like a kid at a window somewhere dreamed of way back when. … With your lilting whine of a drawl, distinctive in its way, memorable and therefore imitable.

… You should have been at … for Neely Cherkovski’s at his almost perfect, always slightly envious but ever-affectionate impersonation of you, because you already were a legend by the 70s, encircled by a transparent but ever-unbreakable wall of image with a capital I, which only Jack and Alan otherwise possessed. … You critique my work for being too arcane and esoteric while you stole from all the poets you loved, giving their phrases new context, a master husker of American corn. Ironic deconstructivist of the reveries of patriotic cliché, you had a dream and would not go gentle into that warzone.

… This millennium decade when we become closer out of brotherly need in a time of great anti-semitism against salaam alakem as well, and with Alan gone who was a light and also I imagine a heavy cargo for you, we know there’s no god to judge or forgive us, there’s only this singing to life what comes form the human immensity of death … and that’s why putting it to the computer file of the revolutionary poets brigade and policy, “At Sea,” the finest poem you’ve ever written, and you wrote it this very year at the age of 91, I have a sense of the greatness of the victory over time and despair an authentically true poetry embodies.

So write on young timer, you who opposed the war in Vietnam, the gulf, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, write on, first baseman in your ninth decade, with legs still able to give my latka leaden ones a run for the bases. Well sure, ‘cause I ride my bicycle every chance I get! … Though the antibiotics make you tired, your complexion’s still rosy, and I know all you want to do is get up and go downstairs and drive to your studio where alone you never are. So chorus, sure. We’ll give you one more standing O big guy. Chorus, sure. …

Needless to say, this brought the house down. MC Marc Bamuthi Joseph then remarked: “This is off the chain. … A fluid reminder of how blessed we all are. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the experience where you walk into a bookstore and kind of get emotional, choked up by all the words committed to paper. But to bear witness to all these personalities kind of jumping out from their spines and being present with us here. It’s moving me, but … I’m from New York though, I’m hard I’m hard!”

He did such an outstanding job as MC. After each testimony he would say something like that above and it would feel so tenuous … like ‘wait, what could you possibly say …” but he would put himself out there and it worked every time.

Tiny a.k.a. Lisa Gray-Garcia, a poverty scholar and revolutionary journalist, took the stage in a somewhat frightening mask and all-white suit and declared: I’m here for all who aren’t here …” She thanked Ferlinghetti for “ripping a tear into the cloth of access so this poverty scholar can jump in and resist, by publishing Criminal Poverty, and for truly understanding the equity of publishing and his connection to race, class and resistance, which has enabled me and … … to continue the fight against poverty and homelessness.” Then she sang an old jazz excerpt, ending with: “The champagne is Larry, and Larry is mine.”

Robert Scheer, editor-in-chief of Truthdig and a long-ago employee of City Lights, followed with one of the evening’s more poignant testimonies, saying of Ferlinghetti that he was “One of the great human beings that I’ve ever encountered. He was the bridge between the Beats and what happened with the radicals of the 60s. He was aware of both worlds. … I thought he was sort of a saint, frankly, and that’s coming from someone who got paid a buck and a quarter an hour for 3 years. … The bookstore was like a lending library … I never heard him say we’re supposed to sell books—we’re supposed to turn people on to interesting books.” He said Ferlinghetti was so pure that it made him feel evil, and in that vein he confessed, just last night, to stealing quarters from the register to buy food when he was poor (although he did gift LF his uncle’s wristwatch, he was sure to add). And, of course, he apologized!

Oh, there was the fact that he introduced Bob Dylan to Ferlinghetti. That was a nice anecdote. But that was just the adlib portion of Scheer’s praise. He had written and then read the following about Ferlinghetti as a Profound Thinker:

“An aspect of this deeply modest man that he tries to conceal in his public persona. Over the past half century we have seen the  super-achievers, the smartass careerists, the best and the brightest lead us from one disaster to another. From the carnage of Vietnam to the lies of Iraq to the banking meltdown. During that time Ferlinghetti and his City Lights stood as a center … consistently of reason and sanity and the honoring of basic human rights along with the joys of freedom. … He became the embodiment of the pacifist anarchist. …”

He painted Ferlinghetti as “an indelibly shy man who forced himself to be a public person reluctantly but faithfully whenever the times required it. This is the stuttering poet of truth loath to take the stage but rising every time when the outrages of the moment demanded that the powerful be held accountable. And he did hold them accountable.”

Then Litquake co-founders/directors Jane Ganahl and Jack Boulware took the stage. Jack recalled how after 9/11 he was walking through North Beach thinking “what everybody in America was thinking: what’s going on? Who attacked us? Why did they attack us? Why are we invading Iraq? Why is the media not covering this? And I remember looking up and seeing in the windows of City Lights Bookstore the words “Dissent is Not Un-American.” And I remember thinking ‘I’m so glad I live in this city with this literary legacy.’”

And Jane told the story of Litquake 2002, when the festival consisted of only one day of readings and the committee (was there a committee?) presented each reader with a little “corny” trophy that said “First Place.” And they had asked Ferlinghetti to kick off the proceedings but he was three hours late, so they started without him. When he did show up, he walked right onto the stage and read an original poem called “Lit.quake” (below). Then he walked off the stage and left!

Jack and Jane chased him, tugging on his coat to present their dorky trophy. “Lawrence! Lawrence! You forgot your trophy.” He looked at it and smiled. “Was I really the best?”

So we’re having a quake

We’re going to have a literary quaking

It’s announced in the smallest papers

Free for the taking

It’s flying on flyers all over town

It’s happening here today

In downtown San Francisco

In the town that’s famous for earthquakes

And ready for them every way

It’s a quake that’s been promised

And all the best writers will be quaking or shaking

So get ready to tremble get ready to shake

The hour has come

The atomic clock is down to one




And I am wondering

Who will really be shook up

Who will be quaking in their boots

Will it shake the country to its roots

Will it crack the marble skies

And will it have a ripple effect

With Lit.revolutions and Lit.orgasms

All around the world

Will it shred the fabric of society

And cause inebriation or sobriety

Will it get you high or low




Will you go with the flow

Will it make lovers run for cover

Will it shake up marriages in fancy carriages

Will it let loose the dogs of war

Or liberate the doves of peace

Will it leaved a scorched earth

Or business-as-usual on the home hearth

Will it open up a huge hole

Into which will tumble

And the cars and trucks and freeways of the land




And where will be the epicenter of this quake

And what will be the reading on the Richter scale

Will there be lots of real estate for scale

What towers and powers will come tumbling down

Will it shake down the banks

Will it hit the ranks

Of both the good and the bad

The glad and the sad

Will it derail tanks and war

Or derail peace and more

Or bring down the war machine

Or other things obcene

Will it burn up the Bush

And will the White House fall

Will it change anything at all

Will it open up a great chasm in which we’ll see

The huge spiritual void in America




Or will it move your heart and soul;

Will it shake your mind

Willit wake up the humanity

Of all mankind?




This poem was a tremendous thing to read during intermission while considering the immanence of Patti Smith, Tom Waits and Winona Ryder! I thought: my, how this festval has grown. How this city, even, has grown as a result of this festival. How this festival would not exist without Ferlinghetti. And so on and so on.

Everyone was shocked through the doors, in the stairways, on the balcony, on the stage! It wasn’t loud; there was a muted murmur in the halls and I couldn’t help but bumble about like a stuttering fool. What? This is only intermission? …



After the break, Eric Drooker, illustrator and animator of the graphic sequences in the new motion picture Howl, gave a presentation of the slides (which you can see here, as part of a presentation earlier the same day) and read some passages from “Howl.” One of the slides was a cover he did for Nation Magazine that inspired a striking Ferlinghetti poem. “Not bad, Lawrence,” he said, and then: “I’ll let the images do the talking for me.” Applause!

Then devorah major drew from Ferlinghetti’s namesake, St. Lawrence, making sure to stress that while LF is certainly not a saint , he has grown into his name. He “always provides a sharp zinger for those who need sharpening.” And of course the former Poet Laureate was not the first one to use the S word.

Ishmael Reed stressed Ferlinghetti’s courage in standing up for the right thing, even when seemingly no one else in the world would do the same. He spoke of President Eisenhower, and how  “One writer was not awed by the first imperial presidency. … Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s document ends with Eisenhower’s resignation.”

Then a man rushed onto stage and we were all confused for a minute until we realized it was a sound guy. As he set up the audience was audibly trembling with anticipation, and when Bamuthi Jospeh announced Lenny Kay and Patti Smith I thought ‘Oh lord, here goes the Herbst Theatre, and all of us in it!’ Announced as the godmother of punk and a poet, one of the first things Smith said (with much aplomb) was: “Lawrence Ferlinghetti is not a man that anyone would say is ALSO a poet. He IS a poet.” Her voice lowered to an intimate hush: “Lawrence, we send this little song to you and may it give you energy and sweet dreams tonight.”

They then proceeded to play a riff of Lou Reed’s Coney Island Baby: “You’re my Coney Island Baby / You mean so much to me. / We love you tenderly. / You’re my luck star / That’s what you are / You’re my Coney Island Baby / We love you / We love you / We do.”  They then played “Wing” with so much passion and just heartfelt sincerity it was palpable that Smith was singing for Ferlinghetti and to the audience at the same time. She then ended with a completely humble “Thank you Lawrence” and exited the stage. It’s a crime that I don’t have video.

Bamuthi Joseph followed: “Even if you’d never met me, you would have a pretty good idea of who I am if you met my friends. The company that you keep. The folks that vouch for you. The folks that speak your name. Just standing there watching this performance thinking ‘Wow there are some incredible folks that would vouch for this man, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.’ … I seek to acknowledge that … his impact is made manifest by those who would speak for him.

Without pausing, he went into an introduction of Tom Waits and people started stomping and whooting.

Waits came out and, accompanied by Marcus Shelby on standup, played an original rendition of the final section of Ferlinghetti’s “A Coney Island of the Mind.” It was simply astounding—you could sense the impact this poem had on the artist.

Steve Earl followed by saying he didn’t prepare anything new to play or to read but could not say no when asked to pay tribute. He thanked Mr. Ferlinghetti for saving him from what would probably have been a well-paying job, to much laughter, and then made one of the most profound statements of the entire night: I was born in 1955 so that means that I never had to live in a world where Allen Ginsberg had not written “Howl” and Lawrence Ferlinghetti hadn’t taken the heat. Thank you very much.”



Talking with Mr. Kruger over a post-show coffee, he remarked how—considering this—the world is a completely different place and that, as a consequence, we are all living in Ferlinghetti’s world. This is the kind of thing we all know innately, but I beg you to think about it long and hard, my friends. Cry some everything tears! (Go on.)

Then Winona Ryder took the stage, and in front of a giant picture of the actress as a little girl on Ferlinghetti’s shoulders, she read from Americus I. Her reading was personal and raw—she smiled intermittently and at times stumbled over the beautiful prickly language. Here is an excerpt (just imagine):

"… No end to the sea-bells tolling beyond the dykes of the calling of bells and empty churches and towers of time. No end to the calamitous annunciation of harry holy man / Endless the ever-unwinding wash-spring part of the world shimmering in time through space / No end to the birthing of babies for love and lust has lain / No end to the sweet bird of consciousness, to the bitter deaths in vain. / No end, no end to the withering fur and fruit and flesh so passing fair and neon mermaids singing each to each somewhere the fires of youth and the embers of the rage of the poet born again / No end to the muted dance of molecules / All is transmuted / All is muted and all cries out again again! / Endless the wars of good and evil flips the fate / The trips of hate / Nukes and faults and all failings safe and chain reactions of the final flash where white bicycles of protest still circle around / For there will be an end to the dog-faced gods in wing-tipped shoes and Gucci slippers and Texas boots in tin-can hats in bunkers pressing buttons / For there are hopeful choices still to be chosen in the dark minds in stonewall bars and green giants of chance / The fish-hooks of hope and the sloughs of despond / The hills in the distance and the birds in the bush / The hidden streams of light  and unheard melodies / The sessions of sweet silent thought stately pleasures droned decreed in the happy deaths of the heart every day / The cocks of clay / The feet in running shoes upon the quay. / And there is no end, no end to the doors of perception still to be opened and the jetstreams of life and the upper air / The spirit of man in the outer space inside us, shining, transcendent into the crystal night of time / In the endless silence of the soul / In the long loud tale of man in his endless sound and fury / signifying everything / the dancing continues / there is a sound of revelry by night."

Ryder then added that she always thought of City Lights as

“A beacon, an oasis—the light in City Lights like a lighthouse flashing and gathering all those great minds in search of hope and creative shelter. It is a living monument to the ideals that inspire and protect those writers. It’s hard to imagine a world without the profound courage and the deep, deep conviction of a man who went all the way to court to defend Ginsberg’s “Howl,” and his own right to publish it, for all of us and for all future generations to enjoy and to be inspired by it. Every writer, poet, and artist to this day is indebted to Lawrence and his deep commitment to freedom of press, and because he helped insure that all our work would have a chance to find its own audience, and in the end, in the end that’s all any writer artist can ask—to have the chance to be seen and to be read and to be heard. So I thank you Lawrence, I’ve been so privileged to know you my entire life, and I salute you and I love you very much.”

Lawrence babysat Winona in City Lights and she was audibly shaken. What could top that, you ask?

On the screen, a video played in which Lawrence addressed us directly.

“San Francisco, the late last frontier. What’s left of the last frontier includes City Lights, and I’m happy to accept the Litquake award ON BEHALF OF CITY LIGHTS, and now I’m gonna read a poem that Jack Hirschman has claimed is the greatest poem I ever wrote.”

But before he “reads” this poem, I would just like to point out the humility, the humanity of this poet who so proudly accepted the award on behalf of his shining project, City Lights, and how he tipped his hat to Mr. Hirschman. He said no more, but read:

“AT SEA”

The sea through the trees 
distant
shining
The dark foreground 
a stone wall
with lichen
And the bone-white beach stretching away

An old salt 
sits staring out
at the sea
A wind sways the palms
infrequently
Another day prepares 
for heat and silence
A small plane
buzzing like a fly
disturbs the sky
The air eats it

Far out on the slumbering sea
a trawler creeps along
The wind from the south
blows the bait in the fish’s mouth
The yawning sea 
swallows the trawler
The lichen lives on
in its volcanic stone
taciturn
eternal
awaiting its turn
in the turn of the sun
Never will I return here
never again
breathe this wind
on this far run
in the reaches of morning
where the sea whispers
patience and salt
The sun 
scorches the sky
and drops like a burnt-out match
into night
And I am an animal still
perhaps once a bird
a halcyon
who makes its nest at sea
on my little flight across
the little chart
of my existence
Life goes on
full of silence and clamor
in the grey cities
in the far bourgs
in the white cities by the sea
where I go on
writing my life
in neither blood nor wine
I still await an epiphany
by the petri-dish of the sea
where all life began
by swimming
But it’s time now
to give an accounting of everything
an explanation of everything
such as
why there is darkness at night
Everywhere the sea is rising
(Flood tide and the heron’s haunted cry!) 
Am I to be drowned
with the rest of them
all the animals of earth
washed away in ocean
motherer and moitherer
in this tremendous moment
of wondrous sea-change
as our little world disappears
in a tremor of ocean and fear
to the murmur
of the middle mind of America
as imbeciles in neckties
drop from the trees?
No matter then
if I end up
in a house of insurgents
on the Avenida de los Insurgentes
or shoeless on Boston Common
or cast-up clueless
in my great Uncle Désir’s
beach hut
in St. Thomas
Pardon my conduct then
if I can’t give you
any final word—
a final unified theory of existence—
all thought subsumed
in one great thought 
(utopian vision!) 
Humans with all their voices
as myriad as 
the syllables of the sea 
have never been able to fathom
man’s fate
nor tell us why we are here
Still will we be 
free as the sea
to be nothing but
our own shadow selves
beach bums all after all
in future time when
nations no longer exist
and the earth is swept
by ethnic hordes
in search of food and shelter?
Neither patient nor placid
in the face of all this
in the sea of every day
with its two tides
I drift about 
immune to hidden reefs or harbors
Someone throws me
crystal fruits
in the shape of life-preservers
Others wave
from distant strands
Goodbye! Goodbye!
Beached at last
bleached out
I would to the woods again
with its ancient trees
that sing like sitars
in the wind
Wordless ragas!
Shipwrecked ashore
at the mercy of avaricious gulls—
And yet and yet
we are still not born for despair
Spring comes anyway
And a gay excursion train appears
The ancient conductor
with stove-pipe hat
and gold pocketwatch
greets us like long-lost passengers
gracing us with
wreathes around our necks
as arms of lovers
insanely embrace us
Is there anything more to be said
before they carry us off 
as dead
while we’re still dreaming
still in search
of the bread of the word
cast upon the waters
the dough that rises
in the yeast of speech
in the written word
in poetry
Tracks upon the sand!
left by corraled bands of animals
cornered by mistakes and habitudes
and trains taken 
to mistaken destinations
or trips taken or not taken
with angels of love
to lower latitudes
Between two waves
the ocean is still—
a silence of ages
lasting but a moment
between two waves
of emotion
as lovers
turn to each other
or away
Love ebbs and flows
comes and goes
between two emotions
yet surges again
with each new wave
as some sea-creature from the deep
breaks the surface with a leap 
The sea roars but says no more
O the yarns it could spin
if it would
between its rages
under the eye of the sun
under the ear of the sky—
Cities asunder! 
Plunderers and pieces of eight!
Petrified hulls!
Crystal skulls!
Sailors’ masturbations!
or yesterday’s sperm
lost in the wake
of a pleasure boat
O endless the inchoate 
incoherent narrative—Voyager, pass on!
We are not our fathers
yet we carry on
breathing like them
loving and killing like them
Away then away
in our custom-built catamarans
over the hills of ocean
to where Atlantis
still rides the tides
or where that magic mountain
not on any map
wreathed in radiance
still hides

A radiant Nancy Peters accepted the Barbary Coast Award for Mr. Ferlinghetti, and that concludes our transcript.

Oh, the afterparty? Nevermind that … Did you already read all of this? If you still want more, email me. I recorded videos of the Off the Richter Scale series and nearly have them all rendered, but I think this is more than enough for the day! Plus, the festival continues, and I wouldn’t want to miss more than I have to. I have to condense this report into 1000 words now, after all.

— Evan Karp



Ps. WE HAVE ALL JUST WITNESSED MOSES PRESENTING THE TABLETS FRESH FROM SINAI. ATTEND ANY EVENTS YOU CAN. FIND US. FOR WE GLOW WITH THE RIGHTEOUSNESS OF UBER-DIVINE PRESENCE. UM YES I’M CARRIED AWAY. Have you read this? FIND US!