Nicasio Morning

Outside the dining room window,

last year's twins cross the road with their fawns,

the sound of deer hooves on the pavement

like a hard stacatto of rain on parched clay.

They forage and browse on oak leaves,

the dry grass seethes with crickets.

Little nourishment there.

I'm sitting on my cousin's wreck of a front porch,

watching the traffic whip and grind its way

around the baseball diamond cum village square,

like it was the Indie 500 & bluejays squall like cop cars.

They all rubberneck, I learn to ignore them.

I do not know which type I hate more, the gawkers,

or the ones that make you invisible.

They are all trespassers on the sheaves of morning.

I imagine the commuters to be a smoggy tempest wind,

a dopplegang of music pulses from their coffinships.

At least they make the sharp turn: some didn't.

Sitting on this porch can be more than a moving violation.

Sinead's lost two parked cars to the road warriors, I've lost one.

Victor stops at the bend in his Porsche,

shouts "Hello," mistaking me for my cousin.

Guns off in first gear in his glove of a car.

Cat-eyes on the double line crunch beneath his tires.

The road unequally divides them into friend and foe.

My aunts are managing the shape of their death

in the unforgiving language of cancer.

Two cyclists, oblivious that I can hear their every word,

disparage the sorry state of this porch

and how this is such a ridiculously small town.

I answer their good morning with: "It's not a town, a village."

Two ravens croak and chuff as if in agreement.

Autumn bite in the air, laptop keeps my lap warm,

Cheetos the cat paws and laps from the water bowl,

strokes his dish, marking it with his "all-mine" scent,

half-heartedly fends off the bluejays poaching his kibble,

then inexplicably wants to share my lap with the laptop.

Meanwhile, two hawks keen in the blue bowl of a sky.

The cattle low, forage in brown pastures

and thirsty deer head down to the dry creekbed

for their morning drink out of genetic habit.

Upstream houses have robbed the creek of its water

for their luxury pools and extra bathrooms.

Deer learn to slake their thirst from bathtub troughs.

Between rare bouts of of utter country silence,

flies and hornets sing their small song in the weeds

as woodpeckers plumb the final depths of the dying oaks.

Jim Dodge

Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler
Book Review The Paper, 9/21/90

Poet & novelist Jim Dodge reading at Copperfield's in Petaluma. © 1990 Maureen Hurley Photo

First time’s a charm, they always say. But for former West County poet-novelist Jim Dodge, it was more like the second and third time that brought the good luck to launch his newest novel, what he dubbed “my first, and my last.” 

Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler

Dodge said his latest novel, Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler came out of fifteen years of living in a commune on The (Cazadero) Ridge—which was also the spawning ground, or should one say, the nest, that hatched his two nationally acclaimed novels, catapulting Dodge into the literary limelight. 

Translated into eleven languages, Dodge’s first published novella, Fup (City Miner, 1983), a slim story (59 pages) about a 20-pound duck, with a penchance for paddling in post-hole ponds, a wild boar, and an old codger who believes he's immortal due to the home brew whiskey, Ol' Death Whisperer, he religiously imbibes—was hotter property than the Creighton Ridge fire. It landed him a spot on the Today Show. There was talk of movie rights, and according to Dodge, it’s still under option. 


Jim said Fup was translated into eleven languages. He showed me copies of Fup in Hebrew, Swedish and Japanese, and said that the bilingual Japanese edition was being used as an American English primer for teaching American idioms and colloquialisms. The thought of poor Japanese students carefully using some of Jim's rather colorful phrases had me in stitches.   
                               

Dodge's second novel, Not Fade Away (1987), a smashing story about a white mint '59 Cadillac intended as a gift to the Big Bopper, took off equally well, burning rubber from Meyer’s Grade, across the country, and back again at break-neck speed. The protagonist "Floorboard" George, was supposed to wreck the car for an insurance scam but instead, George runs off with the caddie in an epic journey where On the Road meets Ken Keseyian states of mind liberally laced with rock and roll.

After the fairytale success of Fup, Dodge's agent asked him if he had something else in the works. Dodge replied, “Nothing other than a first novel that is bad, really bad.” She was interested. So Stone Junction was duly dusted off and trimmed down from a hefty 800-page manuscript to a more manageable 355 pages. Dodge found that rewriting the monster manuscript was harder than starting from scratch.

Signing copies of Stone Junction at Copperfield’s Bookstore in Petaluma last spring, Dodge joked with admirers, saying, “Real men write prose.” He unpretentiously shot the bull: from playing cards, to the state of the environment, and to the proper nurturing and development of middle-aged stomach muscle.

Dodge sold Japanese printing rights, the first translation offer to come in for Stone Junction, released February 1990. Dodge explained his latest novel nearly sold out at 12,000 copies but “if a book doesn’t make it to the best seller’s list a couple of months after publication, it’s dead.” According to Dodge, the book will probably go into paperback edition very soon. 

Compared to Jack Kerouac’s Beat classic, On the Road, Dodge's Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler is a story of coming of age with a New Age twist. Stone Junction is a story about Daniel Pearse, “who never had a father, who sees his mother die before his eyes, and who learns a great deal about the impossible task of growing up marked by such a history.” 

The book—spanning ten years of Haight street’s pharmaocopias, to New York’s gridlock (with bouts of homing instincts nurtured in the Cazadero hills), is also a story of an alliance of magicians and outlaws (AMO). Daniel’s real teachers were safecrackers, drug connoisseur, card sharks and magicians. The idea for the AMO “comes out of the storytelling tradition” quipped Dodge, “or from playing too much ‘fort’ when I was a kid.” 

The writer’s slapstick humor and homespun philosophy abounds as the protagonist Daniel attempts to steal the six-pound Faith Diamond, the world’s 4th largest. No one knows exactly what the diamond represents, but Daniel is addicted. He cannot leave the ultimate crystal ball behind, just like he can’t shake his mother’s murder. The CIA wants the diamond to stay buried deep in an underground in a vault that rivals Fort Knox. Only Daniel finds out if diamonds really are forever...

I like the way the book is divided into four sections: air, earth, fire and water. Dodge’s writing style is distinctive; but I was afraid it would intrude, but it didn’t. The only place where I was ricocheted out of the story line was when Moss’s mule, Old Pissgums was introduced. 

Maybe it’s because I had a donkey as ornery as Old Pissgums, maybe it’s because the story was a refreshing vingette from the main story that I was temporarily launched out of the book—or because it reminded me of Dodge’s witty poems. 

But don’t get me wrong. I wouldn’t trade the scene with Old Pissgums for anything in the world. I liked Old Pissgums. Dodge laughed and said that the hardest challenge a novelist faces is to keep the reader’s interest directed. 

Stone Junction: An Alchemical Potboiler is a story about male bonding and paternal rejection, though Annabel, Daniel’s mother opens the novel, and his crazy girlfriend Jennifer, closes it. Dodge commented, though it’s difficult—and dangerous—for a male writer to write about women from a woman's perspective, Jennifer is one character he’s satisfied with. 

When I queried Jim about the character of the disc jockey who breaks up the flow of the narrative, he admitted that was the weakest part of the novel. The card game is almost as tediously long as real life itself. (If anyone wants to take up Lo-ball, this is the definitive book). Dodge relies upon his own extensive experience during his salad days as a professional gambler and card shark to give this scene verve and authenticity. 

We sipped tea in the afternoon sun and discussed writerly things such as the mutual quest for the perfect sentence, punctuation and endings. I commented: “I wondered how you were going to get out of Stone Junction. So many writers flounder around the end of a novel looking for an ending in all the wrong places.” 

But Dodge was able to gracefully slip out of the story in the last few pages of the novel without leaving the reader hanging with a formulaec ending. Which I'm not going to divulge. You'll have to read it yourself to find out what happens.

One writer Dodge greatly admires is Larry McMurtry, (Lonesome Dove, Terms of Endearment ). "Larry is pure storyteller. I’d be happy if I had a couple of novels like his.” Don't be fooled by Dodge's "aw shucks" modesty. 


Dodge is a spirited storyteller both on and off the page. I've listened to his stories for years. One of my favorites was the story of the chicken who escaped the Fulton chicken processing plant with Jim rooting for the chicken, "make a run for it!" Then there's the one about the, er, amorous bullfrog and the rock....

Dodge cranks out his novels old school but he recently upgraded to an old electric typewriter. A newfangled Smith Corona word processor made a six-hour trial debut into the writer’s life—until it made a serious faux-pause, telling him, “not a valid entry,” and it was goodbye computer, hello pen. 

Dodge gave the cheeky computer to his companion of many years, Victoria Stuckley, who in turn, transcribes his novels into disk format—thus completing the computer age circuit.

Balking like Old Pissgums himself before the camera, Dodge tried to, er, dodge the camera. Jim, who is 44, instructed: “Describe me with words; a middle-aged Gary Cooper...” Right. My editor's gonna love this one.

Jim showed me a photo of his, saying, that as an undergraduate, he had to make a choice between writing and photography. Dodge said he once went through a box of 100 sheets of photo paper in one day to print one negative, “and it still didn’t come out right.” That was that.

Jim said he also spent a whole day trying to perfect a single sentence and it didn’t come out right either. He recounted, “I went to bed and next morning, I got it right. Try that with photography sometime," he said.

Dodge described the New York publishing business as a “jungle.” He said that negotiating contracts is akin to detecting lost land mines with a pogo stick. His agent, whom he’s never met, takes care of the business end of things. The basic rule of thumb he’s learned is to retain as many “rights” as possible, including reprint, foreign language and movie rights.

Dodge recently moved from Sonoma County—following the money. He shares a converted garage overlooking Humboldt Bay in Arcata with a blind kitten he perversely named Lassie. 

Dodge said as if by way of apology, “I’m not a cat man,” but our conversation was littered with kitty box potty commands and coochie-coos as we sat in a haphazard garden of a driveway warming our backs in the late afternoon sun. Lassie worked hard weaving figure eights or shackling infinity signs around our ankles.

The successful novelist also teaches creative writing at his alma mater, Humboldt State University, filling in for other teachers on leave, etc. In the process, Jim discovered that he liked teaching English courses more than creative writing. Less outside interference. Dodge said he likes teaching better when he’s working on something of his own. 


Dodge received his Master of Fine Arts in Creative writing and poetry from the University of Iowa Writers workshop in 1969.

Arcata, the alter-ego of straight-laced Eureka, is one of those lively towns where hippies, college students and rednecks collide like crude oil tankers and sea stacks during rush hour. 

There are many similarities between Humboldt County, which boasts of the highest per-capita of artists (and dope growers) in northern California, and Sonoma County, which runs a close second on all counts. (Mendocino is also a contender for the heady title). Dodge, born in 1945 in Santa Rosa, CA, has done time in both necks of the redwoods. 

Dodge, also a published poet with two out-of-print chapbooks under his belt, stated that more and more poets are turning to fiction. “Poetry is on its deathbed in America,” said Dodge, blaming its demise on writers like Pound and Eliot, who raised poetry to a “mandarin art form, so that only 25 readers in the world could understand it” without a dictionary or an encyclopedia.  

However, Dodge's next book will be a poetry chapbook, Bait & Ice  by Tangram Press. It will be an extremely limited edition (150 copies). Dodge mused, poetry should be printed on good quality paper, “the letters pressed into the paper, so tangible, you can feel them.” 

When asked why he left the Cazadero hills, and did he miss Sonoma County, Dodge said, “I don’t look back very much.” Dodge’s backwoods philosophy is honed by “17 years of being an air force brat” and tenure in “about as many schools,” including the toughest matriculator of all—life.

Dodge's parting colloquialisms to me ran the gamut from “Don’t look back; it might be gaining on you,” to “Life, if nothing else, is an adventure in consciousness.” With that, he gave me a hug goodbye. 

The shadows of redwoods were growing long. The road home was longer yet. I climbed into Lazarus, my old blue pickup and pointed its nose south and I never looked back. 


I crawled into the darkroom and spent the night trying to get the surreptitiously shot negatives of Jim to come out right. I gave up and dusted off some rather chiaroscuro photos I'd taken of him at Copperfield's last spring. Polished the sheen of my sentences with a fine cloth instead.

NOTE BENE: A version of this story was written for the Western Sonoma County Paper in the Fall of 1990. I'm not sure when it ran and I'm sure it had a catchy title knowing Nick Valentine—and I'm sure it was probably rearranged as is the wont of copy editors. I suspect sidebars were also involved to rearrange and picket fence it in.


But just getting my old work into cyber print—without the back up of my tear sheets— has been a challenge as all my pieces were written in Microsoft Works 2 or Appleworks 1 and there are no longer any conversion files for 20+ year old files. Programs are now more polite than Jim's Smith Corona (not valid entry.) Point being, I recently found a Microsoft Works 4 converter and under OS 9, I can for the first time—access these ancient files with a minimum of strange gobbelygook interspersed in every line. 


It's too hard to pick up the strings and resurrect old writing—I'm not who I was then. I can't get into that headset. I'm not willing to invest vast tracts of time in revision. So, with the addition of a few transitions and punctuation changes, the story stands—warts and all. If it's too fup'd up, well then, Mea Culpea. 

West Sonoma County Paper


A little more au current info by Jim Dodge, Some Principles for a Writing Community, in North Coast Journal March 25, 2004. Scroll down to the bottom of the page.


Here's a link to the introduction to Jim Dodge's Stone Junction by Thomas Pynchon (1997).


For some reason this blog has lifted my entire blog post and posted it on his own blog zoran rosko vacuum player with no link or mention. Grrr. I guess vacuum explains it all.

BLACK BART RIDES AGAIN

On August 3, 1877, the Wells Fargo stagecoach pulled out of Fort Ross and headed south over Seaview Ridge, down Meyer's Grade toward Guerneville. The horses were tired, the stage clattered along the dusty coastal route that linked Point Arena to the outpost of Duncan's Mills on the Russian River, without mishap. So far, so good.

But as he was nearing the end of his arduous journey down the sleepy Sonoma County coast, a strange, cloaked figure stepped out of the scrub and shadows on River Road and yelled, "Halt! We have you surrounded" The startled Wells Fargo driver reined up and stared at an apparition in the sizzling August heat. He rubbed his eyes. Was it a mirage?

A ghost dressed in a linen duster, wheat sacks on his legs, a flour sack over his head, topped by a black derby. He didn't believe the wild stories of a ghost bandit loose in these parts. But this was comical.

The driver soon gave up any notion of a sunstruck ghost when the "ghost" demanded in a deep, hollow voice, that brooked no opposition, that he "throw down the treasure box." And he waved his double barrel shotgun in punctuation.

The driver, looking down the working end of a very real 12-gauge shotgun, decided discretion was the better part of valor and handed over the strongbox with its $300 in coin, a cheque for $3.05, and a silver watch, to the notorious outlaw.

When the apparition disappeared into the chaparral on foot, the Wells Fargo driver took off to Guerneville lickety-split, cracking his whit as the carriage careening along River Road, to report the robbery.

When the Guerneville posse arrived at the scene of the crime, he noted that it was in the same place as the last robbery three years earlier, last July; the mail sacks were slashed with a characteristic "T" shape. "Yep, that's Black Bart's M.O., all right," he said to no one in particular.

The sheriff found the smashed strongbox in the underbrush, devoid of coin and cash. When he found the axe, he noticed a scrap of paper on a tree stump fluttering like a wounded bird, anchored under a rock He tossed the rock into the bushes and examined a waybill with a curious message in different hands, scribbled on the back:

I've labored long and hard for bread,

For honor, and for riches,

But on my corns too long you've tred,

You fine-haired sons of bitches.

Black Bart

the PO 8

Driver, give my respects to our friend, the other driver; but I really had a notion to hang my old disguise hat on his weather eye.

Respectfully, B.B. (1877)

And so began the dubious literary career of Black Bart, the Gentleman Bandit, who, for the next eight year, with numerous daring thefts, successfully hoodwinked and bilked Wells, Fargo and Company, out of $40,000, relieving them of their petty cash to the tune of—or should I say the pure po8try of—thousands of dollars a year. Someone quipped, that whatever Black Bart lacked as a rhymer, he sure made up for as a robber.

California's first, and most notorious stagecoach robber poet of the West, Black Bart, had left his calling card—a note with a penned verse at the scene of another crime. A second verse left inside a hacked up strongbox at a holdup on the Quincy - Oroville stage line, read:

Here I lay me down to sleep

To wait the coming morrow,

Perhaps success, perhaps defeat,

And everlasting sorrow.

Let come what will, I'll try it on,

My condition can't be worse;

And if there's money in that box, '

Tis munny in my purse.

Black Bart

PO 8

(July 25, 1878)

After the second poem, again, each line was written as if in a different hand, there was a price on Black Bart's head. Governor Irwin posted a $300 reward for the capture of Black Bart, PO8. Wells Fargo matched Irwin's reward and the US Post Office added another $200. An $800 reward for bad penmanship, bad poetry, and a whole lot of Wells Fargo's moolah.

The $800 bounty merely upped the ante, Black Bart brazenly robbed three more stages that week alone, but the reward went unclaimed for five years. But never again did he leave his calling card of odd verse at the scene of any crime. Perhaps Black Bart, with his busy burglary schedule, suffered from writer's block.

Apparently C.E "Charles" Bolton, a retired San Francisco mining engineer, had a bone to pick with Wells Fargo and so he decided to lighten Wells Fargo and Company stagecoaches of their payload.

Bolton was born Charles Bolles, in Norfolk, England in 1829, was raised on a farm in upstate New York from age two, and at age 20, he arrived to the California gold fields in 1849, and eventually changed his name to Bolton. After five unsuccessful years of mining ventures on the North Fork of the American River with his cousin and brother, Bolton returned to Illinois after his brother, Robert, died tragically in San Francisco.

Bolton married Mary Johnson in 1854, settled down to raise a family, but soon grew tired of the farmer's life in Illinois.

Bolton enlisted in the Civil War and fought at Vicksburg, where he was seriously wounded, and General Sherman's March to the Sea. He received medals and a commission, but grew weary of civilian life. His feet were itching, so in 1867, he took up prospecting in Idaho and Montana.

In August 1871, Bolton wrote a last letter to his wife, of a dispute with some Wells, Fargo & Company employees who had ruthlessly forced him off his land in Montana by cutting off his water supply, making it impossible for him to mine his silver claim. He vowed to get even.

And thus began Bolton's life of crime. And poetry. Charles Bolton—a man of many aliases including Charles E. Bowles/Boles/Bolles, and T. Z. Spalding when he was arrested, robbed his first stagecoach in July, of 1875 in Calaveras County. His favored pseudonym was "Black Bart."

During the early 1870s, the Sacramento Union ran a weekly serial, a dime novel, "The Case of Summerfield" where a highwayman, Bartholomew Graham, AKA Black Bart, made a habit of robbing Wells Fargo stages.

A case where reality mirrored fiction, Bolton adopted the moniker. The description and persona suited him to a "T."

"He [Black Bart] is five feet ten inches and a half in height, thick set, has a mustache sprinkled with gray, grizzled hair, clear blue eyes, walks stooping, and served in the late civil war....It is said that he was engaged in the late robbery of Wells & Fargo's express...."

— Caxton, "The Case of Summerfield"

The real Black Bart made good editorial copy, he was the press and the public's darling. An eyewitness later described him as having graying brown hair and deep-set piercing blue eyes under heavy brows.

What made the crimes unusual was that stagecoach passengers reported that Bolton was always very polite, saying, "Please throw down the box." He was a real Robin Hood, always courteous, never robbed them, making a point of returning their items, with a poetic bow or flourish, saying, "Ma'am, I don't rob passengers. I'm only after Wells Fargo."

Bolton often took the train to Stockton and thought nothing of walking 40 miles into the hills, a soldier's quirk he picked up during the Civil War. He knew every road, trail and pass from Sacramento to San Francisco like the back of his hand. And then some. Even Wells Fargo was impressed with his prowess, describing him as a very "thorough mountaineer."

Perhaps it was because of the sheer distances he routinely traversed on foot that gave him the idea to rob Wells Fargo stages. A highwayman riding shank's mare? No one expected to find a man on foot in the middle of nowhere without a telltale getaway pony.

Black Bart, who pulled off at least 28 robberies in eight years, often revisited the scene of his last crime spree, with great success. He favored steep mountain passes, where the exhausted horse team pulling a heavy stagecoach laden with gold, were forced to a slow walk.

Wells Fargo began bolting the strongbox to the carriage floor of the stages to impede Black Bart's progress. But there were so many lonely stretches of road that naturally lent themselves to highway robbery. The stagecoach run from Clear Lake to Cloverdale was dubbed "The longest 30 miles in the World."

During one robbery Black Bart quipped, "Sure hope you have a lot of gold in that strongbox, I'm nearly out of money." In Shasta County, stage driver Horace Williams asked Bart, "How much did you make?" Bart answered, "Not very much for the chances I take."

And near French Gulch Bart said, "Hurry up the hounds; it gets lonesome in the mountains." Black Bart eluded the law for nearly a decade until his capture in 1883. His eventual undoing was a silk handkerchief he dropped at the scene of his last crime.

Black Bart's last holdup was—oddly—at the scene of his first crime on Funk Hill, near Copperopolis, in the Sierra foothills. Though he escaped into the hills with one gold bar after he was winged by a young hotshot hitchiker, Jimmy Rolleri, as he was trying to free the strongbox bolted to the stagecoach floor, Black Bart dropped a bloodied silk handkerchief at the scene of the crime.

Bolton was eventually identified by a laundry mark on the handkerchief and duly captured when Wells Fargo detective James Hume and Sheriff Tom Cunningham found the handkerchief, and exclaimed, "At last we have a clew!"

After visiting some 91 laundries in San Francisco, Wells Fargo detectives James Hume and Henry Morse traced a laundry mark, F.X.0.7., on the handkerchief to a Bush Street laundry that Bolton used. When who should walk in out of the blue but the dapper Bolton himself. Hume was startled, the resemblance was uncanny, he thought he was looking at his double in a mirror—right down to the broad white mustache.

Morse noted that Bolton was "elegantly dressed, carrying a little cane.... a natty little derby hat, a diamond pin, a large diamond ring on his little finger, and a heavy gold watch and chain.... One would have taken him for a gentleman who had made a fortune and was enjoying it...." At Wells Fargo's expense.

Hume and Morse engaged Bolton in conversation about mining investment schemes. They discovered that Bolton took frequent "business trips" that coincided with Wells Fargo robberies. Back at the Wells Fargo office, Hume's questions took another turn, stagecoach robberies. When an eyewitness identified him, Bolton knew the jig was up, raised his hands and exclaimed, "Gentlemen, I pass." He confessed that he was indeed "the P 08." Bolton may have gone meekly to his arrest but he bristled when they made fun of his verses.

Charles Bolton pleaded guilty to the charge of one count of stagecoach robbery (and two counts of poetry); he was sentenced to six years in San Quentin prison on Nov. 21, 1883.

Police reported that Bolton was a model prisoner. He was "a person of great endurance." Witty under the most trying of circumstances, he was "extremely proper and polite in behavior. Eschews profanity."

Black Bart's shotgun was never loaded. The "rifles" he had trained on the stage were merely sticks propped up in trees. He worked alone. His gang was an imaginary sleight of hand. Bolton was reputed to have said that he didn't want to take a chance of hurting any of his victims. "I never robbed a passenger or ill-treated a human being," he said.

After his early release from prison for good behavior, on Jan. 22, 1888, and in failing health, Bolton answered the bevy of reporters flooding the prison boat, one wanted to know how prison life treated him, another asked: did he intend to rob any more stages? He shook his head no, and said, "Gentlemen, I'm through with crime." One reporter pressed Bolton, did he intended to write more poetry verses? Bolton threw back his head and chuckled, "Now didn't you hear me say I was through with crime? I repeat, gentlemen, I am through with a life of crime."

Without so much as a goodbye, a month later, Bolton disappeared, leaving his belongings behind in a boarding house, and he was never heard from again. Wild rumors spread: he was spotted in Mexico City, living the life of a king. Or in New Orleans. He was never seen again.

But his work inspired many copycat robbers to pen their own verses left at the scene of their crimes.

So here I've stood while wind and rain

Have set the trees a-sobbin,'

And risked my life for that damned box,

That wasn't worth the robbin'

Agent Hume was called in several times to verify their poseys, but after examining the handwriting, Hume (Black Bart's literary executor?) declared; their doggerel was the work a copycat—it didn't match the work of the Gentleman PO8.

* * *

In May, 1983, in an irreverent history-making attempt— some 100 years after the capture of Black Bart—Sonoma County's own Black Bart Poetry Society held its first (and last) annual poetry festival and membership drive. Over 100 paying audience members were were held captive by poetry at the On Broadway Theatre in San Francisco's North Beach district.

Among the luminaries at the first and last Black Bart Poetry Festival were Beat poets Bob Kaufman, Joanne Kyger, and Bobbie Louise Hawkins; Sonoma State's novelist, Jerry Rosen, and Steve LaVioie, as well as other Bay Area poets. Steve Abbott, Cole Swensen, and Dave Benedetti also performed sets. One featured performer, [NPR's "All Things Considered"] Andrei Codresciu, was unable to attend, but sent his regrets.

The Black Bart Poetry Festival also aired the experimental films of William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlingetti, and Kenneth Patchen as well as streaming live feed overhead videos of the performers in action. Sets were broken up with punk-rock riffles by bass player Dan Schiff.

In an irreverant history making surrender to creative anarchy, Monte Rio's own Po8 Laure8, Pat Nolan and his sidekick in crime, Steve LaVoie, co-founders of the Black Bart Poetry Society, also held their first annual paid membership drive at penpoint. There were few takers.

Besides cajoling patrons to sign up for the "Life of Crime" newsletter, there were featured readings, video loops and random music events. Nolan interviewed several prominent poets and he has plans to produce a video essay on the current State of the Arts in Bay Area Poetry.

The Black Bart Poetry Society whose sole motto is,"For those who think poetry is a crime" was named after the illustrious outlaw with the nome de plume of Black Bart. Black Bart robbed many Wells Fargo stage coaches from Marin to Mendocino—the epicenter of his nefarious activities was in Sonoma—especially the Russian River area were among his favorite harvesting grounds.

Black Bart's colorful history and infamous motto certainly adds an ironic twist to the folk song, Pretty Boy Floyd, "some rob you with six guns; some rob you with a fountain pen." Black Bart always signed his highway robberies with a poem—his trademark, the PO8.

If you think poetry is a crime, or have a momentary lapse in judgment and wish to join BBPS to submit some of your own doggerel, call Outlaw in Chief, Pat Nolan at (707) 865-1253. Says Monte Rio’s PO8 Laure8, Nolan, “All Outlaw Members will be held responsible for memorizing the monthly newsletter that comes out sporadically, at best.”

Future plans include a Black Bart doggerel poetry contest to be held at Duncan's Mills, reputed to be the scene of the original crime.

BLACK BART POETRY FESTIVAL PHOTOS

Bob Kaufman & Pat Nolan

Bob Kaufman & Pat Nolan

Pat Nolan

Steve Abbott & Mimi Mimeaux

Lynn Wildly & ?? ANYONE KNOW WHO THIS IS?

Jerry Rosen

David Moe

HD David Moe

Cole Swensen & David Benedetti

Rod Iverson & Pat Nolan

Steve LaVoie, Gail KIng, Bill Hawley & wife, Susan, Phil & Tony Cotouri

Bobbie Louise Hawkins & Pat Nolan

Bobbie Louise Hawkins & Pat Nolan

Gail King & Bobbie Louise Hawkins

Bobbie Louise Hawkins

Lee Perron looking a little insane between sets

Lee Perron

David Benedetti

Alastair Johnston

Alastair Johnston

Joanne Kyger

Pat Nolan & Steve LaVoie

Sadly, when Blogger went down, these photos were lost and I don't have web ready copies.

© 1983 & 2009 Maureen Hurley Photo. Photos may not be used without express permission from me (except for Alastair Johnston). That's the fine print.

(a shorter version of this article was published in The Paper, Guerneville, CA, 5/83). The problem with revision is that it's endless. The previous version of Black Bart (9/11/09) and its endless revision took me two full days with no time off for lunch. This one ate up most of my Sunday. It's done by virtue of the fact that I'm sick of it. I've sent it onto its fate, whether it appears in the upcoming book, in its entirety, or in a vastly abbreviated format, or not at all, I'm done with it—or it's done with me. I later realized that I nicked the title from a later article I wrote on Black Bart & E. Clampus Vitis (next on board for the preservation of elderly typescript articles written in my hasty youth.) And what will I do for a title?