Garbo’s memory (Photo)

I posted on Facebook an early photo of me reading at Garbo's Cabaret and Niteclub in Guernewood Park, which unleashed an onslaught of memories. Not sure who took the photo, maybe Lee Perron? Most people were afraid of my gear.  To a point and shoot camera.

Randy McAtee asked, Do you recall what you were reading? Weirdly, I did. I was testing out Woman is of the Ocean, a poem written in a trance state. No idea what it was about. Of course Randy Googled it, and got nowhere, which led to my adding many old, if questionable, poems to this blog, as a record keeper.

I think it was the night Jack Crimmons and Elizabeth Herron read. I usually didn’t take color photos, far too expensive. So that narrows down the time frame. Jack might have even taken it. We were all Sonoma State classmates enrolled  in an experimental program called Expressive Arts. One of my projects was connecting with local poets, which led to my becoming an organizer of the series. This photo is where it all began.

Classmate Rebecca Clinton said, Garbo's! I remember getting my FIRST full-body hug from robert bly in that corner pub.

I forgot that Bly came to Garbo's. Didn't he also read? Unfortunately that was also the day I quit being a Robert Bly fan. He was such a colossal piece of shit to me—after all that work I did to put on that workshop/ reading and book party/signing for Calliopea Press. Rilke translations. Organizing, raising the funds, etc.

He humiliated me in front of people. I guess he saw me as hired help, a lackey of no import— and that SSU event was my baby. Wouldn't even sign my copy of the book either. So Carol gave me her printer's copy. I probably blocked it from memory. I never could read the book—so beautiful with its embossed irises on cream stock, with purple ink.

In retrospect, I had waited until the very end of the signing, so as not to intrude (and was off in the distance, breaking down the room, folding chairs, etc.,) and he was probably cranky, having kept on his Poet face all those hours. Guess I got the see the poet unmasked.  Not a pretty sight.

Monte Río poet Gail King said, Garbo's was the best ever on the river.  HARD TO REMEMBER BEING SO YOUNG. You remember her name.  I thought her novel gave her the money to buy the bar.  I was all about bars and poetry so a perfect match for me.

Garbo’s was my poetic training ground. I was not into bars, but Monday night was poetry night. And they had great local bands other nights. Uncle Wiggley. Only bar I ever felt safe going to alone. The owner Marjorie Summerfield? what was her story (other than she was a novelist)? "Compression Tested" Nothing about it on the web.

An article I wrote for The Paper in 1988. The Russian River Writers' Guild (RRWG) is the oldest ongoing reading series in the greater Bay Area and north coast. The RRWG has kept the "literatii" entertained in most west county towns, from Monte Rio, its first home, to Occidental, Guerneville, Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. The pen, I found lodged in the spiral spine of an old notebook.

From a FB post, added 8/19

Remembering John Prine's Brother at Garbo's

Chicago Sun Times columnist and movie critic, Roger Ebert, wrote "John Prine is the poet of my life. People say he's great, but he's a lot better than that." I recommend reading Roger Ebert's Journal, a column he originally wrote in 1970, "John Prine: American Legend—A Singing Mailman Who Delivers a Powerful Message in a Few Words."

(Ebert's also updated the original story by posting some great John Prine YouTube links. The " Angel From Montgomery" backstory is worth the price of admission.) Bob Dylan once said "Prine's stuff is pure Proustian existentialism." I concur.

I have an interesting John Prine segue too via his brother. Circa 1980, John Prine's brother played John's songs for drinks at our Russian River Writers' Guild Monday Nite Poetry & Prose Reading series at Garbo's bar in Guernewood Park, CA. That's how I first learned to really listen to the words of John Prine's songs as poetry.

Ironically, it was songs—Irish ballads that first led me to writing. But that's another story. Prine always had such good angst-riddled lines: "You've broken the speed of the sound of loneliness...How can you ask about tomorrow?" My kind of lines. I was living in a perpetually warped möbius strip time.

(In the 1980s, we were living under a dark cloud: many of the gay club owners who housed our poetry venues were succumbing to a mysterious disease. Nobody knew what it was. Or its name. But we personally knew the names of the fallen: Peter Pender, the pianist/gold medal figure skater, bridge/chess champ who owned Fife's Resort with partner Hugh Ross, Stumptown Annie's owner, decorated Vietnam Purple Heart veteran, Leonard Matlovich, the first gay man to "come out" while in the military—was no longer looking like Kevin Spacey. It was too much to bear.

There was also my neighbor, handsome Bill Dutra, the original Marlboro Man, his beautiful face ravaged... Note Bene: I can't find info on Bill on the internet but he may have been Christian Haren. The info on Christian (or Chuck) fits—he owned The Chocolate Factory in Guerneville. But I can't find a photo.

Bill showed me an old tear sheet photo of him as the Marlboro Man—which I recognized. Bill told us amazing stories of being an actor, working with John Wayne—how I found out Dr. Kildare was gay—and stories of Key West. So all the pieces fit—just not the name of the Castro Street Cowboy.

I could have confabulated the name—but I've an uncanny memory for details. Whoa! Now I've segued so far from my story, I'm even scaring myself. So sorry. Another story, another time. (The Russian River basin attracted many Hollywood types, Fred MacMurray, Raymond Burr, Irene Dailey all lived in its watershed.)

My personal John Prine favorites were the songs that had recently made the charts. I loved "Paradise," but we all called it " Daddy Won'tcha Take me Back to Muhlenberg County," a song Prine says he wrote for his father. There's some good backstory video on the song here.

When I was a senior in high school in 1969, the town of Paradise, in Muhlenburg County, was drowned by the floodwaters of the Green River when a dam was erected, so barges could get to the Peabody coal fields. All about progress.

The Abraham Lincoln brigade

Ed Balchowski, the one-armed piano player read his poems with his daughter Zelda, at Garbo‘s. He tells us he was in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, fighting fascism. He said an army of civilians, a politically conscious People’s Army traveled to to the Spanish Republic. The communist party workers in Spain needed to fight fascism, and International troops sneaked into Spain. He tells us of a nurse named Selma O’Reilly, women ambulance drivers and everyone made up stories of why they were going to Spain. Some posed as archaeologists, others as doctors, nurses. It was a five-hour hike over the Pyrenees. There was a US embargo, Roosevelt refused to support democratic Spain  and sided with Franco. He saw the republic as a communist threat. Even the Catholic Church supported Franco while the Germans bombed civilian towns, Madrid Guernica Bilbao. It was not very glamorous, not like in the movies. The lies. Mañana that all familiar cry. We ran out of munitions and medical supplies.  He sings Spanish Civil War songs. Ed says no pasarán, with the stump of his left arm orchestrating the air. They subsisted on mule meat and garbanzos. The government went with the embargo to Spain and people in America protested it, there was tons of food and clothing waiting. We put pressure on Washington to deliver the goods. In 1938 the US embargo lifted, we were there with no arms, pre-World War I weapons, Napoleonic? He mentions his comrades in arms—Hemingway writing For Whom the Bell Tolls, he mentions Langston Hughes, he mentions Lilian Hellman and Paul Robeson—all who spent time at the front. He said the USSR was the only country to send arms to Spain. We were truly an international brigade, Americans, the English, the French, the Italians, the Poles,  the Russians, all part of the international brigade. He raised his right arm in a salute. Fascist troops drove the brigade to the sea. Hitler invaded Austria and 70% of the Lincoln brigade was dead or lost. For every action there is a reaction 3200 Americans died, half the victims return to the United States and continued to fight the war in the US. So much sorrow, we were defeated but we won the war against fascism, D-Day 1945. When we returned home, we were harassed by the US Army and McCarthyism was a witchhunt. I didn’t look ahead, I was doing what I wanted to do. I didn’t think of getting killed. I don’t regret the loss of an arm. It seemed like the right thing to do. Aye Manuela The Abraham Lincoln brigade.

RRWG Erotic poetry reading, Garbo’s

RRWG flyer, Dec 1981, Garbo's, Guerneville, Maureen Hurley & Meridel LeSueur

RRWG reading at Garbo’s with Meridel LeSeuer & Maureen Hurley

Dynamic poetry at Garbo's (photos) Hass & Maxon

SONOMA COUNTY STUMP

Dynamic poetry at Garbo's

By Maureen Hurley and Alene Balsé

On August 17, Garbo's Monday Nite Poetry and Prose Series hosted Robert Hass and Suzanne Maxson. The performance was well attended and the audience captivated by the poets' personable prose style and universal appeal.

Hass began his reading with work by the exiled Polish poet Czeslaw Miloz,  the 1981 Nobel Prize winner in poetry.

On all fours they crawl out of the dugout.
Dawn. In the distance, 

Under a cold aurora, 

A slow blind train.

Hass, who also translates haiku, has been referred to as "one of the best kept secrets of well known American poets"; won the Yale Younger Series Poets Award in 1973 for his book, Field Guide. Also highly acclaimed most recent book, Praise, which does poetic justice to the English language. "Ideas and emotions are inseparably interwoven, and the pull of their ramifications steer the poem toward universality. " 

Each thing moves its own way 

in the wind. Bamboo flickers,
the plum tree waves, 

and the loquat
is shaken.

—from The Beginning of September

Maxson's tiny and unassuming presence made the impact of her socially conscious poetry all the more dynamic. From her first book, Our Lady of Names, she read poems of war-stricken El Salvador and Lebanon where 'bowls were filled with whitest yogurt" and beggars cried "bak- sheesh, baksheesh." She then read a poem about her son, "Gabriel on a Sunday," (See poem, this page) and we embark on a journey back to the gentleness of our experiences from that of the jolting reality of the world's harsh existence.

Hass's and Maxson's easy manner and casual humor made their appeal both genuine and personal and made for a wonderful evening of poetry on the River. As Hass commented, "how calm people's faces get when they hear poetry, how the lines smooth out on their faces.

Press Democrat, Poets give rise to verse

RRWG flyer, Jan. 1981, Garbo's, Guerneville, Maureen Hurley, George Englander, Dan Propper

RRWG flyer, Nov-Dec, 1980, Maureen Hurley & George Englander

RRWG at Garbo’s