The best public poetry reading I've had the good fortune to witness occurred at the San Francisco Public Library in 1976.
It was held in the library's auditorium before a packed house. Charles Bukowski came on stage to thunderous applause mixed with heckling from a contingent of homosexuals determined to give Buk a bad time.
Bukowski was at that time something of an underground legend in poetry circles, after working incessantly for many years without earning much notoriety among mainstream taste-makers.
He'd invented an alter-ego, Hank Chinaski, a voice of his discontent.
But things were changing fast. Buk was working with John Martin, bringing out a succession of books under Martin's Black Sparrow imprint, and it would not be long before the poet found the international success that changed his status from cult hero to bestselling author.
To this point, Buk had published his first novel, "Post Office," a chronicle of his experiences working for the U.S. Postal Service in L.A. A book of stories, serialized in L.A.'s Open City newspaper, had earlier appeared under the auspices of Ferlinghetti's City Lights Press. That book was titled "Erections, Ejaculations and Other Tales of Ordinary Madness," and it was filled with stories like none before published, and certainly unlike any I had ever read.
Like "Post Office," it was funny, bold, twisted, and mesmerizing stuff. Bukowski broke all the literary rules and created new ones. He would go on to be much imitated.
He had arrived, a new literary lion, and people either loved what he was doing or hated it.
That explains why the homosexuals were in the library that night, determined to destroy Bukowski. They hated him--though to this day I'm not certain why--and they failed miserably.
Buk wrote stories and poems that put many lifestyles and belief systems under scrutiny. He was determined and fully capable of denigrating all, and he didn't really pull any favors.
He was as democratic a curmudgeon as ever lived.
It was mankind Buk could show utter contempt for, not simply subsets of humanity. In his mind, everybody deserved a lashing, and he spared no one.
The table in the front of the auditorium was decorated with a single, potted cactus plant and a wash tub of iced Heineken beer that Buk consumed to his fullest advantage, taking long swallows between each poem to keep his throat limber and to build his courage, which was considerable already.
Bukowski read for two hours, straight through. He was sensational, holding the audience like a great actor.
As Buk would often point out in subsequent years, poetry readings, particularly his, could be nasty affairs. If the poet wasn't at the top of his game, people could crucify him and wouldn't hesitate to do so if given an opening.
That's the way it was in 1976, but things have changed.
Two weeks from today, I'll move to the front of the room to read some of my own work. It'll be the first time I've read in public since the late eighties, and while I won't drink a tubful of Heineken like Buk did that evening in San Francisco, I may very well fortify myself with a cocktail or two beforehand.
I don't expect anybody to protest too much if things get skewed. People are too mannered, too damn nice these days, too genteel.
Stony silence or embarrassed applause might greet a flawed author these days. It'll be nothing like the scene in the San Francisco Public Library one night years ago when one author played to a crowd of sympathetic rebels and a group of his detractors.
That night Bukowski had his act together and he prevailed.
TS
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