Jack Hirschman is the last Beat poet I like, and he is one of only two "political" poets I like. A couple years ago, I sang and danced with Jack Hirschman at Specks in North Beach. We drank the night away. The last time I saw him, his voice was wrecked by medical problems. That ragged voice read the erotic poems in "All That's Left" in a way that was somehow heart-breaking, and my heart breaks a little bit writing about it.
I think the reason why his polemic poems work is because they are infused with a kind of sensuality that turns issues as hopeless as Katrina and Iraq into songs of hope and love without letting on. To some people Hirschman seems like just another poetic whiner, but that would be a mistake in that such a position dismisses a movement and a tradition that placed the Bay Area on the map, the Beat Poets, the ones who writhed and railed beneath the boots of conservatism and still found time to love and lose and wish on stars to angel midnight.
If you email me your address, I will send you this book for free.
No comments:
Post a Comment