Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About The daily Astorian. (Astoria, Or.) 1961-current | View Entire Issue (March 6, 2015)
4C THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015 PARTING SHOTS A weekly snapshot from The Daily Astorian and Chinook Observer photographers A log is sprayed with WD-40 to resemble a smile before a crosscutting round at the Timber Festival at the Clatsop County Fairgrounds Feb. 7. JOSHUA BESSEX — The Daily Astorian Beat:µ,W¶VVRELJDQGVRGLI¿FXOWWRGH¿QH¶ Continued from Page 1C Voices rising One by one, people read. They shared their own po- ems and stories and recited the work of authors whose writing cheered them, excited them and touched them. Some selections — like Ginsberg’s poem, Ameri- ca, read by Tracy Abel, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s I Am Waiting, read by Mark Mizell — fell neatly into the Beat genre. Others — like what Pe- ter Lindsey called a “piece of doggerel” by a Reed College professor about his unapolo- getic love of tobacco — rather GH¿HGFODVVL¿FDWLRQ Lisa Kerr, the program co- ordinator of the arts colony who organized the Beachnik Café, read her poem, Habana, recently published in the fall issue of Agave, a literary and art magazine. Her daughter, Ariel Kerr, inspired the big- gest laughs of the evening with her deadpan reading of poems by Bill Watterson, cre- ator of “Calvin and Hobbes.” Keyaho Rohlfs, who has written plays performed at the Astor Street Opry Company, read a stream-of-consciousness- style monologue he composed. Jeanie McLaughlin read three original poems: a hai- ku called Impressions, written when she was pregnant with her one “blood son”; a free-verse piece called Ode to Beach Log; and a third about meeting a fam- ily who taught her the meaning of “mi casa es su casa.” In honor of Valentine’s Day, Vinny Ferrau read a poem he wrote at age 19 upon falling in love with the wom- an who later became, and still is, his wife. And Jennifer Childress, whose husband, Watt Childress, emceed the event, read a passage from David James Duncan’s novel ERICK BENGEL — EO Media Group Frank Milan, aka “The Red Snapper,” reads from his recently published book, Beat Poet- ry from the 1980s at the Beachnik Café. He snapped his way through the performance, which often sounded like hip-hop. Mark Mizell, right, an English teacher at Seaside High School, chats up Watt Childress, co-owner of Jupiter’s Rare & Used Books, moments before the Beachnik Café kicks off at the Cannon Beach Gallery. Allyn Cantor, man- ager of the White Bird Gallery, mingles in the background. 10 folks who had attended the arts colony’s two-part Beat Poets workshop held at Tolo- vana Hall that Friday and Sat- urday. Taught by Mizell, an En- glish teacher at Seaside High School, the workshop covered the usual household names, as well as the underappreci- ated women writers of the Beat movement, including the still-living Diane di Prima. A conversation ensued about whether the Beats had mar- ginalized women, consigning them to groupie or cheerlead- er roles. At the time, “they didn’t get much play,” Kerr said. The workshop also touched on the role drugs played in the movement, she said, pro- ducing questions like: Were drugs necessary for the Beats? Were they a catalyst for cre- ativity? Could the Beats have Wearing a headlamp to help him read in the dimness, Peter Lindsey, a Cannon Beach resident, recites his own work and others’ work during the Beachnik Café. He was the first of many readers that evening. ERICK BENGEL — EO Media Group The River Why: (L)ove really is like poison oak: it’s highly contagious. Scratch it, it gets worse. Touch other people with it, they catch it, too.” Then there was “The Red Snapper” (aka Frank Milan, a Portland pianist). Dressed for the occasion in a scarf, black turtleneck and red-rimmed sunglasses, his wavy gray hair pushing out from beneath a tilted green beret, the Snapper read from his recently self-published anthology, Beat Poetry from the 1980s. True to his name, he snapped his fingers to the rhythm of Kerouac’s free verse, his lyrical delivery sug- gesting that Kerouac had writ- ten the hippest of hip-hop. What is Beat? Though the Beachnik Café was open to everyone, it was also a reward for the roughly “loosened up” without them? Would the Beats have been the same artistic and intellec- tual forces without marijuana, peyote and LSD? But there remains an un- derlying question, one that is perhaps unanswerable: What, finally, is “Beat”? When Steve Allen, on his show, posed the question to Kerouac, the writer respond- ed: “Sympathetic.” Childress posed the same question at the Beachnik Café. Beat is so much larger than a subculture, fashion statement or literary style. As with anything humans affix a label to, naming the Beat movement somehow narrows the movement, “deprives it of something,” Childress said. “It’s so big and so difficult to define,” he said. “But it means something compelling, because we’re all here.” ERICK BENGEL — EO Media Group GE T Y O U R CO PY TOD AY ! D iscoverO urCoa st.com