New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1:
The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell continued
Talent: In the forward to this anthology, co-editor Alan Allen described the odd mix of tribal members to this scene, "The barbarian poets were broke. Won the west-coast slams but couldn't afford the tickets to go East to compete. Lived only to write, to perform, to read. Many were without jobs (with notable exceptions), or disabled, or addicted, or worked in the sex industry. Most struggled to pay the rent, or eat well, wore thrift-shop clothes. IQs were the highest, hearts the biggest, poems what mattered most. Was all about feeling their voices, their words, their lines, their lives." This collision of wild and diverse poets, writers, musicians and performers created the ethos of that moment including: Laura Conway, Joie Cook, David West, Eli Coppola, David Gollub, Vampyre Mike Kassel, Kathleen Wood, Zoe Rosenfeld, Sparrow 13 LaughingWand, Q.R. Hand, Alan Kaufman, and numerous others who would go through the baptism of fire that was Cafe Babar. These writers and many more are featured in this exceptional collection of poetry.
Emerging Form: Richard Silberg in his introduction to The Barbarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell says, "As opposed to movements that have centred on magazines, a college, a writers group, the Barbarians have forged their work in a performing space." He goes on to say, "Barbarians focus on that performing voice. The Barbarian voice goes for personhood, somewhat like the voice of Bob Dylan's lyrics, or a comedian's voice, or the voice of a TV newsman. Emphasis is shifted from the page to performance. The poem on the page is more like a script of a score." Berkeley Poet Laureate Julia Vinograd told me, "This period was an explosion of poetry and Cafe Babar was at its epicenter. The work was unlike anything that had been done before; we fed off each other. New things were being said in ways that were forceful, serious, and funny. The best of the young poets of their time read there alongside total unknowns."
The November 4, 1992 issue of the San Francisco Bay Guardian described the poets reading at Cafe Babar as, "The best poets working in America today. The cradle of the American avant-garde tradition. Formed in the crucible of real economic despair and political threat. Poets of lowered expectations & political rage. Cafe Babar is the symbolic crucible of the spoken-word scene where gather the keepers of the flame - the poets doing poetry before it caught the public eye."
All the poems in this collection were written to be heard and grasped quickly. They speak to the world in which the writer lived. Here was a tribe and a moment in time that personified what is best about poetry - raw, straight forward revelation. Emotional honesty delivered in a manner that demands attention.
Here are two short excerpts from The Barbarians of San Francisco. The first is from "I Was a Teenage Godzilla" by Vampyre Mike Kassel. "When I was ten / I was hit by a very small nuclear warhead / which slipped out of a torpedo tube / while my cub scout pack was visiting / the Navy submarine U.S.S. Caligula / on a field trip. / The incident was hushed up. / The other cubs perished / but I mutated into a Teenage Godzilla / just like in the movies. / Only I was still only five feet ten inches tall / Just a friendly li'l two legged radioactive Komodo dragon / It wasn't so bad / My parents were pissed / but the government paid them off / and they just had to kind of live with it." And another from Sparrow 13 LaughingWand entitled, "Larry said": "Oh the filthy chalice of his skull / blown apart in New York / Oh, his razorback heart and his lead sugar mouth, / Larry said his mother died in a house fire / while he was in the joint / Larry said it was political. / Larry told / the dumbest arrest story I ever heard / how he broke in to a liquor store and got too drunk to escape. / The Nevada beauty of his tomcat ass could / scratch your eyes out. / Larry said he was an honest thief. / Larry said I wasn't queer / because he loved me. / Thanksgiving we had lentils under my tarp / in a storm in Davenport. / Larry wasn't a queer / because I really wasn't a man."
They stood stripped naked before a crowd of true believers and had to sell it. They had to make it real, and they had to make it work or they were shouted down. Posers were persecuted at the Cafe Babar.