chat Golden Gate

Announcing the premiere of an invaluable and captivating documentary,  Oliver Katz and Vincent Katz‘s long-time-in-the-making Golden Gate – An Oral History of Bay Area Poetics.

Two screenings. The first, tomorrow (3 p.m.) at Small Press Traffic in San Francisco, features, in addition, several of the participants, Norma Cole, Steve Dickison and Michael Palmer, in what will doubtless be a lively and informative Q & A session.

The second, the following day, (6 p.m.), will be a free screening at the Bolinas Community Center, Bolinas, home of a lively and unique community and intersection that flourished there, most notably, during the late ’60’s and early ’70’s – (a history faithfully documented
in Kevin Opstedal‘s comprehensive survey, Dreaming As One (2024) – not to mention the recently-re-published 1971 anthology On The Mesa), as well as, post 1974, the, literally innumerable, (50,000 plus?) pages of the home-grown weekly newspaper, the Bolinas Hearsay News).

Joanne Kyger, ‘the Queen of Bolinas” (indeed, one might argue of much Bay Area Poetics)  introduces the film, beginning with a prescient quote from Jack Spicer, from 1949, (from”before the Beats”) – “they don’t become the Beats until they have the Six Gallery Reading in 1955″) – “It is not that modern poetry does not make sense. It is that it is not entertaining. The truth is that pure poetry bores everybody. It is a bore even to the poet. Poetry is a kind of singing. Poetry demands a human voice to sing it and an audience to hear it. Without these it is naked pure and incomplete, a bore. Do you wonder where the audience is? We must regain our voices.” This was, she notes, “nicely prophetic”.. “before, you know, rock n’roll and Bob Dylan and the fact that poetry had to be.. (had to) take itself off the page if it was to be at all interesting enough, and not “boring”..” – Sotto voce, she adds – (a conspiratorial confession!) – “there’s an awful lot of boring poetry out there on the page!”).

Spicer, of course, remains a pivotal figure (his biographer, Kevin Killian speaks later on camera both of his significance – a profound significance, as an influence (along with fellow-poets Robert Duncan and Robin Blaser) spearheading a “Berkeley Renaissance” (a pre-Beat movement, precursor of a wider San Francisco Renaissance), and, also, simultaneously, as a key role-model, inspiration, pioneer – pioneer to a whole new generation of modernist-inclined, queer, LGBTQ, poets.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti is, of course, suitably championed and acknowledged.
Anne Waldman (an informative voice, as indeed are all the poets, throughout the film) remembers those early days:
“We knew it as “the San Francisco Renaissance”, which was how it was being named by Donald Allen and others and maybe it was already calling itself that” – (City Lights) – so important to one’s fantasy of poetry and poetry community and poets to what Ferlinghetti was doing, having founded that store early on. My fantasy in high school was to have a City Lights book, a little Pocket Poets book..When I first got into what they were doing there were maybe three or four, and Ferlinghetti himself was this poet we were reading in high School..”

“Golden Gate – An Oral History”  features rare and remarkable film of City Lights authors, Diane di Prima and Michael McClure, reading.  It also, it should be noted, features “nearly one hundred (immaculately selected) archival photos, videos and sound recordings, sourced from the poets’ personal collections and from university archives.”

Anne, Bill Berkson, David Meltzer, Aram Saroyan.. the sound-bytes, the connecting voices, are always smart and pertinent.  Similarly, the visual settings (the poets are shown in their environments, their homes, at home with their art).

Pre-Beat San Francisco, Beat San Francisco, Bolinas. The subsequent establishment of the poetics program at the experimental college, New College is a further necessary point of focus.

(For further reading – see  Roots and Routes- Poetics at New College of California (2020) and A Scholar Is Not Without His Lute – Robert Duncan and Company in the Poetics Program at New College of California 1980-1987 of the same year)

Bill Berkson – “Robert Duncan was the grand master of the poetics program at New College of California…he was the elder and he was the one who probably drew most people..”
Norma Cole – “When I heard about New College, someone said, “I don’t know what Robert Duncan is trying to do at that place.. I went there the next day because I..because I had a feeling that that was the place..”
David Levi-Straus – “Duncan had been in Switzerland, I think, doing some workshops and he said that he had taught the children of the rich and he was going to come back here and teach the children of the poor.”

Anecdotes abound (about Bolinas, about New College, about San Francisco poetics early and later days). The film is not only informative but richly entertaining.

These two screenings are the initial screenings but future screenings (LA, New York, and Cambridge, Mass) are planned. We’ll keep you posted.