Out There :: Succumbing to the Lures of Poetry

Poetry distills language to its essence, finds music in words and in the spaces between words. So reading poetry is a great palate-cleanser between courses of fiction, or a necessary relief after wrestling with the horrors in the day's newspaper.

Out There was drawn to the poetry collection "After Lunch with Frank O'Hara" by California poet Craig Cotter (Chelsea Station Editions) because its cover design so clearly recalls the famous City Lights edition of "Lunch Poems" by the late great gay poet Frank O'Hara. Once we began reading it, we found the same accessible, conversational, gay-as-a-box-of-birds approach that O'Hara championed, though Cotter's poetry is not at all an imitation or a parody of O'Hara's style.

In an afterword, Cotter makes his artistic inspiration explicit. "Frank O'Hara's mock-manifesto 'Personism' taught me that a poem doesn't have to have a big-bang at the end where I'm going to change your life with my brilliance. A poem can simply be a message to a friend full of personal references. People can figure it out or not. This idea gave my writing new freedom - blast away and ignore the old rules of the self-contained machine."

Gay novelist Felice Picano, in an introduction, confirms the revolution O'Hara offered in 1964, when "Lunch Poems" was published. "O'Hara's book of poetry was the opposite of the accepted poets of his day, such as the confessional and anguished poems produced by the likes of Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton. Instead, O'Hara's poems were fun, amusing, citified, arty, casual, urbanely referencing singers, painters, and even brand names that everyone did or should have known. At all times, his book was intimate and confiding, letting the reader into the poet's emotional and daily life, not recollected in tranquility but with wry amusement between sandwiches and martinis."

Cotter is direct, even confrontational on the page. "You need me to have spiritual understanding/you're piss out of luck./That would be another poet./I give you flaming Kleenex." We like the drift of Cotter's understated expertise - in nature, automotive history, Thai culture, sex. "I pick a lavender hepatica blossom/stem thinner than a toothpick/lay it on the straight European porn magazine/you'd hid in the basement of the abandoned house." His convictions are ours. "Definitely be alone instead of with people/who fake smile/and talk/to fill space/Can you dig it?" His sex drive seems phenomenal. "i jacked off 6 times yesterday/between 4 p.m. and midnight/each time dreaming of a man/i don't have/remembering a real guy, making/composites of guys,/creating imaginary guys./here's your art./is it satisfying/with no puffy clouds?"

In a word, yes. But here's OT's fussy caveat, and by no means is it confined to this volume. We wish books still had editors, still had copy-editing. A small sampling of boo-boos we could have bandaged: "trying to unbotton Alex's jeans," "Did Guillaume think his loves flowed down the Siene?" "19 Napalese hostages." Poets, we love you. Editors can save you.

A self-published book of gay, accessible, conversational poetry also seduced us. "High Summer in Endurance" is by San Francisco poet Chuck Teixeira, another writer well-versed in nature, Buddhism, and male attraction. From "Epiphany on 26th Street (Mission District, San Francisco)": "Patrolling the block, I steal a glance/At handsome men in the corridor/Between Valencia and Folsom - /Day laborers milling so far into the street/I could reach out and stroke them/If I had the courage, appetite and cash.

"Sunlight, eager hands, then suddenly,/Draped against a cyclone fence,/A crotch scratcher with a big smile/Gives me back my eyes."

Pleasurable Habit

Familiar music greets the audience to the Eureka Theatre before the start of the return Theatre Rhino engagement of Alan Bennett's "The Habit of Art," which brings Benjamin Britten and W.H. Auden boundingly back to life. It's Britten's "Four Sea Interludes," which put us immediately in mind of San Francisco Symphony's powerful "Peter Grimes," closing the season just ended. Britten's centennial year is right behind us, so he got lots of posthumous press, including in these pages. But Bennett's wonderful play is really more about Auden, the great late gay poet. We'd quote him ("We must love one another or die!") but know he hated having his own verse sung back to him.

This wonderful production was reviewed earlier this year in the B.A.R. (a rave!), so let it suffice to say, if you have any interest in either of these great artists, skip don't walk. The cast is superb. Donald Currie disappears into his role as Fitz as Wystan; director John Fisher shows restraint as Benjy and hamminess as a fussy housekeeper; kudos all around. Through Aug. 23. Tickets: 1 (800) 838-3006 or therhino.org.

Fonda Foul

With this week's review of the new book "Watching Them Be: Star Presence" on the Screen from Garbo to Balthazar by James Harvey, we offer this upsetting anecdote from its pages: In 1954, Charles Laughton was directing Henry Fonda on Broadway in "The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial." Fonda disliked the play and his role as the prosecuting attorney. Laughton made a comment to Fonda about military behavior. Fonda snapped, "What do you know about men, you fat, ugly faggot?" Laughton said nothing, but never spoke to Fonda again, even when they appeared together in the 1962 film "Advise & Consent." Good for Chas.!