Reading Poems at the 2024 Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Now that I'm soon to be "skyin' up" (as a good friend of mine would call it) in a flight to New York City for more poetry readings, in this year of launching my new poetry book God in Her Ruffled Dress, I realize that I never blogged about going down to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books (LATFOB) in mid-April to read on the poetry stage.

 
What a choice gig! Two full days of 20-minute sets by poets with new books out that year. On the beautiful USC campus. Staying for the cost of less than the usual fortune, because of conference rates, at the gorgeous, historic Millenium Biltmore in downtown LA (DTLA) in an unusually large room with a window that opened. 

I loved hearing so much poetry and being among so many poets. And I really loved the festival, which featured many other events with authors from all sectors of publishing and all genres. Free, with thousands of attendees who were strikingly diverse and excited about books strolling the many aisles of book-related booths. A rare chance to be among a teeming crowd that was there for book culture.  

A homey thrill was connecting with Bay Area poet friends and organizers Joyce Jenkins, of Poetry Flash, and Jennifer Joseph, of Manic D Press, whom I'd known for decades but not talked with much in the last decade or two, who had a booth together. 

And it all was a well run machine, with the organizers of the festival on top of their game at every step, providing not just a green room but an entire green building for all the presenters, whose enthusiasm was palpable. It was fun seeing gaggles of panelists partaking of the generous buffet along with  famous actors and entertainers who had published recent memoirs. 

 

But I confess that on this second visit to DTLA, after a vacation there with my sweetheart about five years before, I concluded that I just didn't vibe with the neighborhood. Big, windy, no there there. (Ironic, as that's the phrase that Gertrude Stein assigned to my current longtime hometown Oakland.) It seemed to offer the familiar but strange combination found in big U.S. cities today of expensive warehouse space converted into condo lofts and their stylish residents juxtaposed with down-on-their-heels addicts and homeless folks. 

And I was lonely traveling alone this time, especially as a COVID-cautious holdout amid people gaily eating indoors unmasked. I did enjoy discovering pockets of old L.A. and ethnic culture -- that alley street filled with maybe 10 different Greek restaurants, the old Fashion District, the Jewelry District. The largely Mexican-American staff of the hotel were courtly in their old-fashioned uniforms and warm.

   
Frankly, my sense of isolation was underlined by a feeling of not being in the poet in-group. But maybe that's inevitable for all poets whether they show it or not, usually being introverts. Yet it was clear that my situation was rare among the other poets: the scene has changed since my first book, The Transparent Body from Wesleyan University Press's prestigious New Poets Series, was published in 1989, becoming a lot more academic along with the explosion of creative writing programs and a lot more studded with prizes and contests. Getting a book published now fulfills the academic need to publish, and winning a prize or award is even more helpful to a professor's career. Not that I blame poets; it's good to be able to have a poetry job. But I could taste the flavor of the academy there and in many of the poems no matter how subversive the content. 

In between my two books, I had kept writing poetry and publishing it in excellent literary magazines and anthologies, but the bulk of my artistic focus had veered to producing and releasing my original jazz/groove music over seven albums and figuring out the rapidly changing music business, although I must note that my songs include both spoken and sung verse. I had cofounded a literary magazine in the '80s in San Francisco and been deeply immersed in the local and national poetry scene for quite a few years, even teaching and serving as Associate Director of The Poetry Center at San Francisco State for two years, where I'd received my master's in English Literature/Creative Writing only eight years before taking that job. But gradually I had come to feel that my artistic scene was the jazz-and-beyond universe. Even though many jazz musicians also have academic jobs, they are by no means largely academic in style or art; many still play in clubs and are still connected with the Black culture that is the foundation of the art form. 

So here I was in a concentration of the poets of 2024, who were mainly nice to me but who tended to already know each other and want to hang around with each other rather than me. I was maybe one of three poets among over 50 poets there who was not a poetry professor, and certainly not one who had been attending the profession's big annual gathering, the Association of Writers and Writing Progams's (AWPs's) annual conference. 

And I noticed that, here at least, the vibe of poets is different from that of musicians: the art is solitary by nature, not collaborative, and poets are a lot more in their heads relative to musicians, who live and work more in their bodies, and who are more oriented outward toward performance vs. the inward focus of writing poems. The readings were good but mostly they still felt as if they were being delivered by non-performers. And that's fine. I don't feel comfortable in the more performance-oriented poetry slam scene either, as the craft is so different from what I crave from poetry; it's just that sometimes more literary poets don't do justice to their own work in presenting it. 

I have often experienced that dichotomy between poet and performer within my own being. Was I Emily Dickinson or Barbra Streisand, to choose two iconic figures?  Here in this group the dichotomy was made external and even clearer. 

Still, great fun and a great opportunity. And I bridged the dichotomy for myself by including some a cappella singing in my set. I also bridged the feeling of isolation by writing all of the other poets who had read there once I returned home. Connections were made and books traded. A good feeling. 

 
Afterward I drove off to see my pals in 29 Palms, where I've visited many times. Lots of desert and conversation and a pool in which to find my compass again. 

It's been wonderful to have an excuse to travel after the pandemic isolation I felt was necessary, even though I'm still masking indoors and using other mitigations such as air purifiers. This festival was outdoors, and I'm off in a couple of days to two more outdoor readings in the Big Apple! Freedom, the joy of sharing my work and reading with other excellent poets, and what promises to be a homier experience in the city of my ancestors.