.Reliving Poetry’s Heyday

Laureates line up for Valentine's Day poetry benefit.

During the ’70s, when he was the Bay Area’s most popular FM-radio
personality, Wes “Scoop” Nisker’s trademark challenge was: “If you
don’t like the news, go out and make some of your own.” He’s a Buddhist
sage, a meditation teacher, an author, and a comic. And a poetry fan?
Heck yes. “I came to the Bay Area partly because of poetry, after
reading Kenneth Rexroth, Allen Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and
Gary Snyder,” says Nisker, who will emcee “Hearts Gathering: Poets,
Laureates, and Music for Valentine’s Day
,” a benefit for KPFA and
Poetry Flash, in the King Middle School Auditorium (1781
Rose St., Berkeley) on February 14 ($15 – $20). The event’s headliners
include U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan, California Poet Laureate Carol
Muske-Dukes, jazz bassist Dan Robbins, and local literary legends Diane
DiPrima and Michael McClure.

Nisker, whose new comic monologue “Crazy Wisdom Saves the World
Again” is available on DVD through his web site ScoopNisker.com, remembers when “poetry
was a vibrant and public affair:” when, well into the ’70s, poetry
readings were major events. Back then, “poetry was sharing the stage
with rock ‘n’ roll, offering messages of freedom and defiance. Who can
forget Allen Ginsberg onstage with his harmonium, chanting ‘om’ and
singing out his incantations against war and injustice?” With its
impressive roster of icons, “Hearts Gathering” harks back to the Bay
Area’s beat heyday, that postwar, pre-’60s era “when poetry began to
come out of the academic closet and into the streets,” Nisker
remembers: That’s when poetry “came off the page and found its literal
‘voice,’ becoming a spoken, public experience.” Since then, like much
of what once counted as counterculture, poetry has branched out to
reach specialized niches. Nisker cites hip-hop as well as “astoundingly
popular poets like Mary Oliver and Billy Collins touching the hearts of
the liberal intelligensia. And in the Buddhist and yoga circles I
travel in, you’ve got the great mystic poets like Rumi, Hafiz, and
Kabir being quoted profusely. So poetry is still alive and well across
the land, because it is so necessary — especially in difficult
times — to hear the deep, eternal verities as well as the hard
truths.” And these days, hard truths abound.

“These are difficult economic times for everyone,” Nisker
acknowledges, “but most writers and artists are used to some level of
poverty. If your motivation for creating art is to offer your insights
and help diminish the world’s suffering, then these times are rife with
opportunity.” Petitions, he points out, are “being circulated to
request that President Obama start an agency dedicated to supporting
the arts, which I think is a grand idea. I personally have been
advocating for a Department of Wisdom, which would be staffed by poets,
philosophers, anthropologists, historians, maybe a few mystics and
jesters. … We need some ‘right brain’ thinking inserted into the
predominately ‘left brain’ government, to achieve a real balance of
power.” 8 p.m. KPFA.org/events

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