Bucky Sinister

Ferlinghetti’s Birthday

I got to Beyond Baroque early and saw a man wrestling with a bottle of Maker’s Mark with the berserk desperation of a raccoon diffusing a bomb. Every good poetry reading has a booze table, usually stocked with Two Buck Chuck, but this one went beyond and had a full bottle of nice bourbon. He was hacking at it with a pair of house keys trying to get to the cap. Maker’s Mark has a rubbery coating over the top, that I think is supposed to resemble melted wax. If you don’t see the tiny peel tab, good luck getting in.

The man was already sporting the hazy aura of the day drinker. It was a weekend afternoon in Venice Beach, the easiest area of LA to drink a Mimosa. Yes, he was brunch-drunk, the way a seasoned drinker gets fooled into thinking they haven’t had near their limit, and ends up being trashed before noon. He was one of those Los Angeles hot old guys with rugged handsomeness, skin leathered not by blue collar labor but by a lifetime of seasonal vacations, and with him was a woman younger than him but well into her forties and with much less mileage; she looked both excited to be with him and mortified at his current actions. Having opened many of these bottles in my life, I was going to solve both of their problems by taking the bottle away and opening it immediately, but when I offered, he turned and looked at me and it was unmistakably Dennis Quaid.

SA Griffin had asked me to read at the Lawrence Ferlinghetti tribute at Beyond Baroque, and I said yes immediately. The old man was turning 100, and no matter what else you may think of him or his writing, he’s the main reason we know who the Beats were. And if you don’t know while you’re reading this, now is the time to do your own homework and figure it out. That, and SA Griffin is one of my favorite living poets, an influence on me since I first saw him read when I was 19.

I seldom get asked to do poetry readings anymore, not for any reason other than I am mostly disconnected with the literary world. In the ‘80s, there was a scene—an active group of poets working to write, find a voice, and get published. It’s where I learned to write, and how I found my favorite poets. Through the ‘90s, I firmly entrenched myself in that world, running hundreds of readings and participating in thousands. But, by the end of that decade, the scene was assimilated by the poetry slam crowd, and really ruined it to the point that I hated it. But that’s another story, and they’re more or less gone now, and there’s still a few of us old farts around.

For SA and I, poetry is a driving passion. It’s an art form with negligible commerce attached, a get-poor-quick scam, so the only people who pursue it are really into it for the art, or they quit very soon. You will make no money and no one wants to see your art. If you want to clear your house out at the end of the party, announce the poetry reading is about to start. Anyone who stays is likely living under an assumed name.

Poetry is a lifetime practice, honed and refined until the poet’s death. But that endless quest for the perfect verse is only for us poets; for Dennis Quaid, it’s little more than karaoke, so why not be hammered?

Dennis barely stayed vertical during his reading, keeping his balance by rocking the lectern back and forth. And he sounded great—the part of his brain that performs went on autopilot—how easy was this, that he got to read off a piece of paper, not having to memorize anything? Quaid on bender sounds better than most poets who practice. Also, I have to add that he was wearing a Cutters shirt, what I think was a replica from his movie Breaking Away.

30 years ago, poetry readings were very hip among the actors of young Hollywood. There was a reading series at the old Largo on Fairfax that was booked by casting director Eve Brandstein and poet/actor Michael Lally. I saw Ally Sheedy read her rehab poems there. It was common to see people like Judd Nelson or Justine Bateman reading out of their journals, showing the world they’re normal people…just like us!

Like many poetry readings, it ran long, and I left early. Included after this is a poem, based on Ferlinghetti’s own poem, “I Am Waiting.” I wanted to snag the empty bourbon bottle as a souvenir, but it was gone.