zeitgeist | the shop

Zeitgeist Press

started in 1986 to publish work from a group of poets generating tremendous heat at the Cafe Babar readings in San Francisco. It was originally a collective more than a traditionally structured press, which explains both the press strengths and weaknesses. All the way back to the late 1950s North Beach Coffee Gallery, there was a Thursday night open reading in San Francisco. This community spawned some incredible poets– Bob Kaufman, Richard Brautigan, Jack Micheline. Other top poets of the era passed through as well– Diane di Prima, Ginsberg first drafted Howl at a cubbyhole in North Beach, Jack Gilbert, Corso & Kerouac, Rexroth, Ferlinghetti, etc. The reading had died down, lost energy, by the mid-1980s when it moved to the Mission District in 1985. Bruce Isaacson and David Lerner, Julia Vinograd, Bana Witt, were the original partners in the 4 books that came out on Zeitgeist Press at the end of 1987. Lerner named the press and did publicity. Isaacson handled the business side, the mechanics, and acted as publisher. Both edited books by various authors, as did poets and others.

The future in Poetry may be in your lit class, right now, and just need a little nudge and understanding and open-minded guidance. Sometimes, you’ll see people treating poetry or lit like a joke, a leftover, a piebald child. But it’s important, what we’re doing, it’s the mission of Zeitgeist, it’s a beautiful child that has yet to reach its prime. And those new voices will make their own demands, cause their own raucous ruckus, get certain groups pissed off and turn the structure of things on its head. It’s going to be fun to watch, and it’s a reason to stay around, stay open, and keep an ear to the wind.

As David Lerner once wrote, the future of poetry is to do whatever the fuck it wants. Over the long haul, we don’t have to guide and direct it– it will guide and direct us. There’ll be more variety in medium, perhaps, in the future. Maybe today’s Dante, instead of writing about the circles of hell, will make a video game representation. Or maybe it’ll kick into the realm of politics, as America thickens into empire.

Poetry’s moving towards a more responsible, democratic representation of the human future, towards the divine average. We want a greater appreciation for the divinity in each of us. We’d like to see society overcome more of the base qualities of human nature, greed, jealousy, lying, rigid-thinking. Poetry can be key to that evolution, and will be. Lerner, referring to the zeitgeist, the spirit or genius of the times, used to say, the mission of poetry in the 21st century is to drive a cherry red Mercedes Benz into the heart of hell, and place a bet on God. Still today, that sounds just about right.

Please read the complete ZEITGEIST story here…

The Graceful Arc of a Missile

by David Lerner

It’s a neat thing that the book was translated and published in Germany, a great homage to our American Outlaw Poet David Lerner. In English & German (facing pages).

Lerners Leben war nicht undramatisch, obgleich eher eremitisch, eingekapselt in Armut und unweit vom Wahn. Er starb 1997 in San Francisco an einer Überdosis Heroin. Vier Gedichtbände hatte er bis dahin publiziert. In seinem Appartement fand man tausende Seiten weiteres Material. Sein Bild wird noch intensiver zu zeichnen sein. Das Bild eines modernen Narren, dem es nicht um sich selbst ging. Das glaubt der Poet, dass er stellvertretend für alle Gescheiterten und täglich Scheiternden die Tragik durchleben muss, die eine sich selbst vergessende und sich selbst entwertende Figur dem Leben schuldet. Da ihm der Weg zum persönlichen Glück verbaut scheint, will er das Beispiel, entwertet sich selbst und seine Kümmernisse und braucht sich auf, um das Plakat zu sein, auf dem er der Gesellschaft die Wahrheiten entgegenschleudert. Der moderne Narr belustigt nicht, sondern zeigt dem Kollektiv das Leben vom Rand her, um das Geschehen der Wahrheit entsprechend umzulabeln und die Wirklichkeiten genauer einander zuzuordnen - so was kommt von so was her: der outcast lebt, was die Kollektivseele sich nicht gestattet, besser: weil sie sich nicht Tiefe gestattet. Mit der Narrenkappe der Poesie ruft Lerner wach, was niemand wahrhaben will. Je weniger die Gesellschaft an ihre eigenen Fehler erinnert werden will, umso mehr schwillt der Protest gegen diese Ignoranz an, so wird aus dem spoken word schließlich oft auch Rock’n'Roll, weil der andere Lautstärken und Reichweiten hat. source

ISBN: GermanTranslation

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Bone Needles

Bone Needles… [is] a masterfully arranged collection that touches upon a wide range of themes… and reveals a wonderful depth and diversity. From beginning to end, the poems in this collection are finely crafted and… certainly dispel those misconceptions that would relegate Las Vegas writers to a status not quite equivalent to artists in other large metropolitan communities. Indeed, it is the personal depths to which these poems take us that should engage the interest of anyone interested in the literary arts. Beyond question, the collection’s skillfully crafted pieces reveal that Las Vegas’ community of poets has become home to a number of writers whose works richly deserve our attention and praise.

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The Bruised Angels’ Almanac

Susan Birkeland

Susan Birkeland was a dazzling comet blasted into a world growing darker. A beautiful woman and fierce champion of justice and mercy. Willing to sacrifice all for love, she was propelled by love of the other. Grasping truth and beauty, she fed them back to us. Susan developed her gifts and shared her heart’s true motive of peace with love for her community and all life on earth. She pushed through her fears and met her life’s challenges head on . Following her heart’s dedication to Truth and Beauty Susan Birkeland sent her consciousness spiraling upward, a sunflower dancing, twirling, celebrating life. Illuminating herself, she illuminated us all.

A poet, a writer and teacher as well as a Drama Therapist, Susan was born in Hibbing , Minnesota, grew up in Texas, worked and performed original works in California and Texas for some years before finding her heart in San Francisco and becoming a respected and beloved voice among San Francisco’s poetic artistic North Beach community. Susan lived in the sunny Mission District until succumbing to Cancer at the age of 45.

Please visit her web site here…

“Love is no matter what
Mercy is no matter how
Justice is no matter who
Hope is no matter when.”

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The Laziest Secretary

Jennifer Blowdryer

Illustrations by Beppi.

“…hilarious, sexy, honest, and just a hell of a lot of fun to read” –Jonathan Ames, author of WAKE UP, SIR

Should I use the pronoun “she”, as if I am not writing it myself? Not for me, the well paid publicist, the agent, the cultural interpreter. No, I’m afraid I must present you with this brief sketch of a fascinating individual, myself, using my own peasant length digits to hammer it out. In 1978, at 17, JB began to sing with her very own punk band, The Blowdryers. This was before the days of documentation and ambition, so only one tape of a live gig at The Deaf Club exists on record, soon to be transferred to that state of the art vessel, the CD. She was pretty obnoxious, but fortunately that was in.

In 1983 – 84, she (well I) put together her first book, Modern English: A Photo Illustrated Trendy Slang Dictionary. This was a little project she’d started working on in her friend Ginger’s zine, Punk Globe, and Last Gasp kindly agreed to make it an entire book. Her ex-boyfriend had put out a book called Hardcore California and, because she dumped him, he made her a postage stamp size photo and had her singing the wrong song in the wrong decade. She was sick and tired of people who weren’t there documenting shit, and, fueled by snarky rage, she put Modern English together and it’s actually still pretty funny… Please read the complete Jennifer Blowdryer bio and much more on her web site here…

Download listen to Jennifer Blowdryer | Age of Beauty

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The Revolution of 1964 Mother-Daughter Poems

Lenore Waters and Jennifer Blowdryer

Anything I Call you
You deny
I don’t know where I got Socialist from
I don’t even know what it means
Except that when I said
Did you know that James Brown was once a janitor?
You snapped
“No one IS a janitor, that’s just a job that people do!”

In these short, untitled, conversational poems Blowdryer sometimes ends with the words: “shit, fuck, what the hell!” as if you were riding a NYC subway with her after last call, gossiping and grousing. “civilization on a dime/that’s us.” “The ones who used to ask me why my hair was blue? It’s blue because the world is fucked up/and I just want a little fun”.

Always clever and to the point, Blowdryer is a damn good writer with the gift to deliver an understated anecdote. This is a combination chap with her mother, Lenore Waters, who is equally as talented. The coupling of a punk icon and her Beat Generation mother provides great insight into two generations of rebellious women.

Lenore Waters weaves a story well in “Beat Poet,” when in 1980 her daughter tells her about an old drunk Beat hanging around-“never heard of him”, her mother, realizing it is Corso, then reflects on the man she knew in his better days. Lenore Waters’ poems are emotionally driven as well as entertaining, a talented writer I hope to read more from. Blowdryer is witty as fuck and punker than you. source

Please visit Jennifer Blowdryer’s web site here…

6 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Wheres My Wife?

Jennifer Blowdryer

“… a great observer and a fine writer, sending out reports from circles most of us would never enter.” – Factsheet Five

One of the first things people ask me is “Where’d you get the name Blowdryer?” “From a punk band I fronted in 1979, in San Francisco,”

I’m always proud to reply. I jokingly call myself a low level counter-cultural icon, but I see myself as a new kind of teacher. Operating in both academic and non-academic venues, I have tried to synthesize nontraditional sources with the established literary canon to represent a truer spectrum of American culture. This diversity of influences is also reflected in my work, which as been taught at Sarah Lawrence and, most recently, in Stephen Beachy’s USF course on memoir writing. The best professors I had in college and in life shared their passion for work I’d never been exposed to, and showed me how to be ruthless in executing my own craft. I would like to do the same for others.

Please visit Jennifer Blowdryer’s web site here…

Download listen to Jennifer Blowdryer | Thief

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Wrong Wrong Wrong

Jennifer Blowdryer

“…funny

and

smart,

with a self

deprecating tone

that’s all too

often

missing from

young

urban fiction

these days.” – LA Reader

Please visit Jennifer Blowdryer‘s web site here…

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Virgin Eyes

MK Chavez

Berkeley writer MK Chavez writes poetry about real things, love, strippers, the beauty that can be found in ugliness, the mystery of feeling bad about feeling good, little birds, big consequences. Her work has been anthologized in both print and online literary journals.

She is co-host of Acker’s Dangerous Daughters, a San Francisco reading series of Cherry Bleeds. Her work has been published online and in print. You can find more information about her poetry at her web page littlebrownsparrow

“VISITATION” Chavez’s second chapbook is available through Kendra Steiner Editions. Most recent and upcoming publications include Literary Fever,Drown My Own Fears, Poems-for-All, Snow Monkey, Underground Writers, and Sisters of the Page

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Without Doubt

Andy Clausen

“The expensive bullshit of Government TV poetics suffers diminution of credibility placed side by side with Mr. Clausen’s direct information and raw insight. Would he were, I’d take my chance on a President Clausen!” — from the Introduction by Allen Ginsberg

Andy Clausen is a co-editor of Poems for the Nation (Seven Stories Press), a collection of contemporary political poems compiled by the late poet Allen Ginsberg. Clausen is the author of nine books of poetry, including 40th Century Man: Selected Verse 1996-1966 (Autonomedia), and Without Doubt (Zeitgeist Press). Born in Belgium in 1943, Clausen was brought by his mother to live in Oakland, California at the age of two. He describes his unique family life; his brief stint in the Marines; his various jobs, including work as a construction worker, cab driver, and teacher of poetry in schools and prisons; his growth into artistic and political consciousness; and his friendship with Beat Generation writers, including Allen Ginsberg, Janine Pommy Vega, Gregory Corso, and Neal Cassady in a video made by Vivian Demuth. Please read more on this here…

ISBN: 0-929730-32-1 | Copyright 1991

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The Cities Of Madame Curie

Laura Conway

“Laura Conway is a fine poet, a unique human being whose broad vision encompasses this nation and the world. Her love of life moves out across the cities. Read The Cities of Madame Curie out loud to yourself. Bravo Laura!” – Jack Micheline, December 1988

Laura Conway spent many years in San Francisco as poet, editor and publisher in its thriving poetry scene before moving to Prague in 1994. She is the author of four books of poetry including My Mama Pinned A Rose On Me (Red Flower Ink, 1987), and The Cities of Madame Curie (Zeitgeist Press, 1990), co-editor of a forthcoming Czech translation of 20 of San Francisco’s underground poets, editor of Optimism, a monthly Prague literary magazine, & consultant and literary editor for San Francisco-based Watchword Press. You can read her work online in the 3:15 Experiment.

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Habitat

Joie Cook

NEW from Beatitude Press, Habitat, the long-awaited Selected Works (1981-2006) from poetry firebrand JOIE COOK. Joie’s books and performances are legendary in San Francisco, though her habitat has included New York, New Orleans, Baltimore, Provincetown, San Diego, Portland and Seattle. Especially beloved in bohemian poetry communities in North Beach and the Mission district of San Francisco, Joie Cook was the first featured poet inaugurating the infamous Cafe Babar series of the 1980s. Her work is widely appreciated and admired, hence this new Selected Works is cause for great celebration at Zeitgeist Press. Thus, for a limited time, the book is available at the special price of EURO 10 (100 pages) in celebration of the classic work by this Zeitgeist author.

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My Body Is A War Toy

Joie Cook

Since the age of three, Joie Cook has spent most of her life. She’s a well-known firebrand of San Francisco’s poetry haunts.

Joie Cook is a performance artist par excellence and a well-known firebrand of San Francisco’s poetry haunt. Joie’s chapbooks include Cash for Color TVs, Gorton Press, 1984, My body is a War Toy, Zeitgeist, 1990, Acts of Submission, ManicD Press, 1990, Lust for Life, Mel Thompson Publishing, 1993.

Her work has also been published in other periodicals including the recently published New American Underground Poetry Vol. 1: The Babarians of San Francisco- Poets from Hell, of which she is a celebrated member. Joie Cook has been on the San Francisco poetry scene, both in the Mission (now defunct Café Babar) and North Beach, for a long while. In recent years, she discovered painting and divides her time between that imagery and writing. Currently, she is working on her tumultuous memoirs which often give her writer’s block. “Poetry saved my life,” she says, “it is as much therapeutic for me as it is euphoric joy.”

ISBN: 0-929730-26-7 | Copyright 1900

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Flying at Cafe Babar CD

Eli Coppola

CD Recorded in March and June of 1988. Readings by Eli Coppola. Outstanding!

Eli Coppola was born on November 13, 1961 and was a poet of turn-you-around wit, intelligence, anger, tenderness; she was truly a poignant talent. She died of a heart attack on April 2, 2000 her death a total surprise. Eli Coppola entered Bay Area poetry through the readings at Cafe Babar, the spoken word scene in San Francisco from the mid-eighties to the early nineties, the only poet there who could hold the crowd spellbound with poems of frailty and intimacy. In the last ten years, she had been invited to read at over fifty venues, including street fairs, battered women’s shelters, academic conferences, workshops with the homeless and at-risk youth, and other readings in the Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, North Carolina, and the United Kingdom.

She published five books of her poetry: The Animals We Keep in the City (Zeitgeist Press, 1989), Invisible Men’s Voices (Blue Beetle Books, 1991), As Luck Would Have It (Zeitgeist, 1993&emdash;available from Zeitgeist Press, 1630 University Avenue #34, Berkeley, CA 94703), no straight lines between two points (Apathy Press Poets, 1993), and ANY WAY (monkey business books, 1999). She was previously the administrator for the Beatrice M. Bain Research Group on Women and Gender at UC Berkeley, earned her M.F.A. at San Francisco State University in 1994, and at the time of her death had been the business manager of The Poetry Center at SFSU for two years.

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Some Angels Wear Black

Eli Coppola

Issued by Manic D. Press. Distributed by Zeitgeist-Press. “Eli inspired me to give in to my own wildest nature, my own violent claw at love, my own hunt and impatient struggle. She taught me to pet and expose the part of myself most desperate for love, taught me that desperation for love and its most basic expression, sex, is nothing more than a desperation to live, which is holy.” – from the introduction by Michelle Tea

Eli Coppola held contradictory extremes together in her self the way a good poem can contain opposites linked in the tension of metaphor, antithetical ideas melded together in a single image.

She was physically vulnerable, struggling with muscular dystrophy, but she was also fierce, a person of backbone & fortitude. She could be slyly funny, sweetly flirty, but also full of fiery anger and sarcastic indignation. When she died suddenly in the spring of 2000, she was only 38, and the San Francisco poetry community lost one of its most gifted lyric voices. Although she travelled widely and gave readings often during the last 15 years of her life, and her poems found permanent homes in the hearts of many who heard her, her work didn’t reach the larger audience it deserved. Please read the complete Bob Holman & Margery Snyder review here…

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Street Talk

Harry Fagel

…a street cop gone poet or maybe poet gone street cop…(only you can decide).

Most poets have day jobs. No one expects a poet to feed the fam-ily on verse (physically anyway). People are quick to inquire as to a poet’s “real job.” Still, most poets respond with reluctance as though it taints the body of work to be a working stiff, or worse, that a true artist needs to give up the security of a conventional career. What some inquisitors (and poets) miss, is that a unique position in society may enhance rather that detract from the truth, beauty and outright funkiness of the creative product.

Harry Fagel is a cop. I’ve observed him on duty, his stiff torso ensconced in bullet-proof vest, his watchful eyes. I’ve done a “ride-along” in his cruiser (a benefit of my being a lawyer for the County). He’s god. With guns and drug-addled citizens abounding, I felt safe under his watch. Yet there’s no doubt that Harry isn’t fully comfortable with the two roles. In fact, on occasion, he’ll balk when I include “cop” as an accomplishment when introducing him at a reading. ” Please read the complete ‘About Street Talk’ by Dayvid Figler here…

ISBN: 0-929730-63-1 | Copyright 1999

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Undercover

Harry Fagel

“Enjoy the safety of your armchair now, the streets will look very different from now on…” — Dayvid Figler

Please visit Harry Fagels web page here… and read this first before you enter his page.

“All poems and essays and photographs on this site are COPYRIGHTED by the Author, Harry Fagel and may not be reproduced for advertisement, profit and/or other capitalist or non-profit ventures without the express written permission of the author. Violators may be sued by an army of determined undergrad law students I know, or even something worse. If you find something offensive on this site, tell a monkey. It will give you more favorable feedback than I will.”

14 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

As For Us

David P. Gollub

David Gollub was born in 1951, the son of an opera singer and a trial lawyer. He got a BA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from Stanford. He met David Lerner in Palo Alto in 1973. Lerner got him his first poetry publication. He has been on the Bay Area poetry scene since April 7, 1983, when he showed up at the Old Spaghetti Factory in North Beach. He participated in the Cafe Babar reading series in the Mission, and for a time ran the series. It was at the Babar that he re-encountered David Lerner.

He also edited and published Bull Horn, a monthly photocopied poetry magazine. His most recent books are As For Us (1990), Special Effects (1992), and As Needed For Rage (1996), all from Zeitgeist Press. He is in a 3-way marriage with the Berkeley poet Debra Grace Khattab and her other partner Ken Siegel, though for a time he is keeping a separate apartment in Oakland. As For Us is his second book of poems on Zeitgeist by a fugitive from academia who became a Babar host.

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As Needed For Rage

David P. Gollub

David P. Gollub is the older of two sons of a trial lawyer and an opera singer. He lived in San Francisco for many years and now lives in a triad in Berkeley. He has worked a variety of jobs as a substitute teacher, an administrative assistant for a small computer consultant company, a library assistant, a telephone fundraiser for progressive causes, and the keyboard player in a number of bands with Vampyre Mike Kassel including “The Welfare Cheats” and “The Mysterious Ice Wyrms.”

Among his favorite artists are J.S. Bach, I.B. Singer, Thelonious Monk and Billie Holiday, whom he has declared his muse. He has published in various magazines and anthologies including The Outlaw Bible Of American Poetry and has published 6 chapbooks: As Needed For Rage; As For Us; Special Effects; Nel Mezzo; Outside The Word; and Beans And Rice, Chicken Soup, And Lady In My Heart Singing, Billie Holiday Poems.”

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Special Effects

David P. Gollub

a
“These poems are as relentless as daybreak / or eating a slice of bread.

And of the / processes that have to be done to stay / alive.

And therefore come to be known / as natural.

They are the mail your mother never got / from the priest or the game show.

But / Should have.

It is our good luck that / they are now discovered.” — Paul Landry

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Poems by q.r.hand, jr.

q.r.hand, jr.

“we all free

to be as we can

lords and ladies

in the streets

we be in

buildin on facts

in all

the sounds happenin”

q.r. hand, jr.

Q.R. Hand, Jr. is a counselor in the San Francisco community health system. He is the author of I Speak to the Poet in Man and the forthcoming How Sweet It Is. He is also a member of the Wordwind Chorus, a group of poets and musicians who perform together. He was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937.

ISBN: 0-929730-55-0 | Copyright 1996

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whose really blues

Q.R Hand Jr.

“Q.R. Hand’s poetry traverses the terrains of form, music, and language. This is an inspired, well crafted poetry that is political in intent and sprited in execution…” - Reginald Lockett, author of The Party Crashers of Paradise Taurean Horn Press.

WordWind Chorus is an ensemble of performing writers. q.r. hand, jr., a native New Yorker, is the author of i speak to the poet in man, and his work has appeared in many journals as well as two seminal anthologies, Black Fire and Outlaw Poets. Brian Auerbach hails from Atlanta, by way of Philadelphia, and has written about jazz for several publications. He is the author of ear to the heart. Saxophonist, poet and playwright Lewis Jordan, from Chicago, has performed as a member of United Front and with bassist Mark Izu in a duet format. His recording (with Izu) is Travels of a Zen Baptist. He’s the author of the acclaimed play And Time Will Take You Out. A mainstay of the Black Arts Movement in the Bay Area, Reginald Lockett’s work has appeared in over 30 anthologies and periodicals. He has authored three books of poetry. Working together in words and music, wordWind chorus plays an urban based world poetry sound reaching from the personal to the cosmos, from around the corner to around the world. Whether talking about love or history or just hangin’ out, the sound vibrates out of the streets, nightclubs and communities sometimes in struggle. These sounds mean, and mean to mean.

16 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

The Satin Arcane

Jack Hirschman

Jack Hirschman is the author of more than 55 books of poetry and translations from eight languages. He has taken the free exchange of poetry and politics into the streets, where he is, in the words of poet Luke Breit, called, “America’s most important living poet.” He uses his skills to help awaken the American people to homelessness as an expression of a system that can no longer take care of its people. His impassioned readings challenge his audience. He speaks on the artist’s role in social transformation.

Jack Hirschman (born December 13, 1933) is an American poet and social activist who has written more than 50 volumes of poetry and essays.

Born in New York City, Hirschman received a Bachelor of Arts from City College of New York in 1955, and an A.M. and Ph. D. from Indiana University in 1957 and 1961, respectively. While attending City College, he worked as a copy boy for the Associated Press. When he was 19, he sent a story to Ernest Hemingway, who responded: “I can’t help you, kid. You write better than I did when I was 19. But the hell of it is, you write like me. That is no sin. But you won’t get anywhere with it.” Hirschman left a copy of the letter with the Associated Press, and when Hemingway killed himself in 1961, the “Letter to a Young Writer” was distributed by the wire service and published all over the world.

Hirschman married Ruth Epstein, a program director for National Public Radio, in 1954. The couple had two children. In the 1950s and 60s, Hirschman taught at Dartmouth College and University of California, Los Angeles. The Vietnam War, however, put an end to Hirschman’s academic career, and he was fired from UCLA after encouraging his students to resist the draft. His marriage disintegrated, and he moved to San Francisco in 1973.

His first volume of poetry, published in 1960, included an introduction by Karl Shapiro: “What a relief to find a poet who is not afraid of the vulgar or the sentimental, who can burst out laughing or cry his head off in poetry — who can make love to language, or kick it in the pants.”

For a quarter century, Hirschman has roamed San Francisco streets, and cafes, and readings, becoming an active street poet and a peripatetic activist. Hirschman is also a painter and collagist, and has translated over two dozen books from the German, French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, Albanian, and Greek. He is an assistant editor at the left-wing literary journal Left Curve and is a correspondent for The People’s Tribune. Among his many volumes of poetry are A Correspondence of Americans (Indiana U. Press, 1960), Black Alephs (Trigram Press, 1969), Lyripol (City Lights, 1976), The Bottom Line (Curbstone, 1988), and Endless Threshold (Curbstone, 1992). Hirschman is an avowed Stalinist and has translated the youthful poems of Joseph Stalin into English (Joey: The Poems of Joseph Stalin [Deliriodendron Press, 2001]).

In June 1999, Hirschman married the English calligrapher Agneta Falk. In 2006, Hirschman was appointed Poet Laureate of San Francisco by Mayor Gavin Newsom. He also released his most extensive collection of poems yet, The Arcanes that year which comprises 126 long poems spanning 34 years. source

6 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Bad Dog Blues

Bruce Isaacson

In 2000 he made the news after Metro cop and Zeitgeist Press author Harry Fagel was ejected from Barnes & Noble for using “the f-word” in a poetry reading and Isaacson returned with eight other civil guerrillas, selected classics from Barnes & Noble shelves (all containing profanity), and began reading aloud to protest the censorship. Bruce Isaacson has an MFA from Brooklyn College and has published 7 books of poems, including his latest, Ghosts Among the Neon (Zeitgeist, 2005).

ISBN: 0-929730-01-1

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Dumbstruck at the Lights

Bruce Isaacson

Who among us hasn’t been dumbstruck at the lights in the sky or the light in the refrigerator for that matter?

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Ghosts Among the Neon

Bruce Isaacson

“…uses ‘pop’ language and images from news media, advertising, chews it up and spits it back, for subversion, and no one is slicker or deadlier at that than lsaacson… the ideal poetic guerilla… a master of irony, the offbeat metaphor, poems that keep on ticking on the mind after they end in a sudden silence.” –Richard Silberg, Poetry Flash

Bruce Isaacson founded Zeitgeist Press in San Francisco in order to see into print poets from the Cafe Babar series. In Las Vegas, where he lives currently, Isaacson helps edit the Red Rock Review. Bruce Isaacson earned degrees in drama, economics, finance and poetry from Claremont McKenna, Dartmouth and Brooklyn College, where he submitted a thesis to noted American poet Allan Ginsberg. He is known in the San Francisco Bay Area as a poet and publisher of Zeitgeist Press and is often associated with the Cafe Babar series, part of the San Francisco spoken word revival. He is known in New York as a finalist in the inaugural season Nuyorican Poetry Slam. He is known in Los Angeles as a participant in the Hollywood Review readings at Helena’s and Largo. He currently lives with his wife and son in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Please click on the covers to enlarge the images.

12 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Going For The Low Blow

Vampyre Mike Kassel

“…the rightful heir to the mantle of Charles Addams” – Inland Books

Michael Alan “Vampyre Mike” Kassel – writer and musician, born December 3, 1953 in Boston to Milton ”Quinn” Kassel and Beatrice Kassel, brilliant underground poet and talented musician Vampyre Mike passed away after a long battle with hepatitis March 22, 2008 in his room at San Francisco’s Marina district Bridge Motel (one of the few San Francisco SRO Hotels not located south of Market). He resided at The Bridge for over twenty years. In high school in Boston his first band was Self Winding Onion and in 1973-1974 he was in Automatic Slim with Fred Pineau (who later gained success with The Atlantics).

He moved to San Francisco in 1974 and earned his sobriquet when punk fans at the Mabuhay Gardens started calling for “Vampire Mike!” when he appeared there with his band The Hellhounds. In 1980 Mike sharpened his teeth on musical theater in San Francisco, putting on Bat Soup which ran for 86 performances at Hotel Utah and combined Dracula and the Marx Brothers. In 1982 he released the 45 single “Fortune Teller/Guru Massage” under the name Mike Kassel… please read more on this here…

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I Want To Kill Everything

Vampyre Mike Kassel

“The creator of ‘anti-normal wonder’ “ — Scavenger Neweletter

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Wild Kingdom

Vampyre Mike Kassel

“poetry [of]…the supernatural horror story told with color and restraint.” –Fritz Leiber, LOCUS

6 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

In Memoriam

Ladies and Gentlemen. For some time now the bully pulpit of American poetry has been like a bull in a Chinese laundry. Stifled by limp, wet sheet. In the bivouacs of Borders & espresso bars of Barnes, emptiness. Our friend is gone for want of two pills a day for a week. Go ahead, let’s drop the dime, it’s San Francisco French revolution time. Some crimes continue after the sentence. Some sentences go on longer than an open reading twenty years ago. Our friend is gone, so let it be said… the Robespierre of American poetry is dead. We cannot take this lying down. Remove depression. Remove your frowns. Remove your berets to show the gnobby horns on your head, the Robespierre of American poetry is dead. No time for uncertainty. No time for hurtin’ me. There’s a young beauty back in the last row who ‘s already showing us everything we need to know. Remove the horns from atop your head. Put them where they can do some good instead. There’s no need to outcall his name. We’re all here celebrating his fame. We’re here to sing his songs of the glorious undead. The Robespierre of American poetry is dead. I flatter myself, as I get to the 4th beer, that he would’ve liked seeing us here. He’d have been almost as happy as if it was his own band to hear so many poems written in long hand. Let’s do what for our bodies were bred. Let’s cavort with demons. Let’s bake this town red. There’s a guy doing some angel back there in the head. Who gives a shit. Who’s really been fed. The Robespierre of American poetry is dead. He lived a hard life. He inspired us with humor and viciousness that shown bright. He’s the Berlin cabaret Jews who finally learned to fight. He spoke in tongues. He’ll be forever young. Be snappy, time to revel & make happy. His ghost is watching your lovely young bod with a devilish smile and a cattle prod. No time to get stuck in the muck of your worldly dread. the Robespierre of American poetry is dead. The Robespierre of American literature…. Uurggh….© Bruce Isaacson

A Boy’s Guide to Arson

Jarret Keene

“…an extraordinary collection. At times elegiac, at time angry. Spiritual. Philosophical. Incantory. Experimental….” –Jim Daniels

Jarret Keene is an innovative and engaging poet from Las Vegas, Nevada. In addition to teaching literature and creative writing at UNLV, Jarret is the A&E Editor at Las Vegas Weekly Magazine. Jarret Keene was born in 1973. His Pushcart-nominated stories, essays, and verse have appeared in recent issues of American Literary Review, The Carolina Quarterly, The Chattahoochee Review, The Greensboro Review, The Florida Review, Louisiana Literature, The New England Review, Passages North, The Texas Review, and Utne Reader. His most recent book is Monster Fashion (Manic D Press 2002).

Please visit Jarret Keene’s web site here…

14 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Kept In The Pocket Of My Poems

Paul Landry

A selection of poems by the late elegant poet of North Beach, opening new surprises with every page.

Paul made chapbooks on a little press, hand building the blocks of type as if he were coming full circle to childhood. Every Thanksgiving he cooked a feast for all the poets, some of whom besieged his apartment like starving saint-zombies crawling up through manholes. One time he and I, members of an artists group, were preparing a huge feed for homeless people in Washington Square Park, when Paul got word that Jack Hirschman was planning to incite the gathered crowd to riot for justice.

We knew Jack could probably pull it off, exhorting the throngs like Mayakovsky, and we’d end up running, leaving a trail of ladles and wooden spoons. We chose not to run, and so didn’t cook. source

6 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Hell Soup

Sparrow13 LaughingWand

“His inimitable character portraits and depiction of life on society’s fringe are at once haunting and unforgettable.” Sparrow 13 LaughingWand /Manic D Press

Sparrow 13 Laughingwand was born Taurus with Pisces rising in the coal and cornbread heart of West Virginia. After leaving school to pursue a career in vagrancy, experimantal mysticism, and small villainies, Sparrow 13 traveled a million miles with his right thumb.

Whether he’s writing about drug deals gone bad, hobo camps at war with local rednecks, queer love or radical faerie magic, Sparrow 13 Laughingwand’s writing is at once unique, original and powerful.

ISBN: 0-916397-43-2

9 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

The Queen of Shade

Sparrow 13 LaughingWand

“…i love intense print media, hard rock music, poetry, getting high, deep weirdness and movies that leave scars on your brain. My life is rich in friends and awash with drama.” –Sparrow 13 LaughingWand

6 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

I Want a New Gun

David Lerner

BACK IN PRINT David Lerner published four books of poetry. His articles ran in the San Francisco Examiner- Chronicle, Mother Jones, California and other newspapers and magazines. He was also a founder and editor of Zeitgeist Press.

When this, his first book, was published, he was thirty-six, living in Berkeley, California, and was an energetic participant in the Thursday night readings at Café Babar in San Francisco. David Lerner died in 1997. Want a New Gun, David Lerner, with poet Anna Wolfe, Cafe Babar, 1987.

Lerner was a fixture at the poetry nights at Café Babar in San Francisco; the regulars called themselves The Babarians. The San Francisco (and Berkeley) that Lerner emerged from no longer exists. That San Francisco, with the Mission’s fertile edginess, and a plethora of thorny, irreverent reading venues (the Chameleon, the Paradise Lounge) was destroyed (or at least badly damaged) with all the dot.com money that poured in, in the late 90’s, altering the city’s dynamic energy and making it much harder for scruffy, hand-to-mouth artist-types to survive… please read more on this here…

13 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

Pirate Lerner

David Lerner

AUDIO CD Zeitgeist-Press and the Estate of David Lerner

Dear David Lerner…

by Brian Morrisey

I borrow from your promises
raindrops that fall on the face of truth
and wonder how far I have to walk
to find the unpaved road
down to the “Last Five Miles to Grace”

I’ve sat with Joie
staring into these pictures of you
that dissolve from salting
minor cuts on unwashed hands
that want to find the mix of tone
to trace the shadow of your thoughts
that try to trace your footsteps
through unforgiving streets of Berkeley
Your scent wanders into the nooks
of a well-kept secret only you were able to tell.

Maybe
when my hair is as tousled
or curls like yours
when the frame of my glasses
are wider and more than black
when my stomach is nearly as full
and more than a two days growth of my beard
will justify a voice deep as yours—
bold enough to hear
the call of the muse
asking you to sacrifice
your everything

That owl is
still alive
sitting out on the branch of loneliness
feeling the force of sway
in the wind of unborn fury
still asking who
who will carry the load upon their back
that pulled you to your knees
when there was no mercy.

My arms are not nearly as scathed as yours
but are strong enough
to carry the burden
down the “Last Five Miles to Grace”
I will meet you there with a new gun
to shoot down
all the tweaked stars in the sky
that don’t shine so bright
with bullets tipped with passion
sure to break the skin —
You never missed.

We can heal them
with purified raindrops
fallen from the face of truth
that runs with the ink in my pen
keeping your dream alive
that poetry will save the world
while you wait
at the end of the road.

10 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

The Last Five Miles to Grace

David Lerner

“Lerner was a broken-down saint if there ever was one. He was an eloquent screamer, a soft-spoken rageoholic, a madman with a great manuscript. His poetry will always be a reminder of a time when poetry in the Mission was spontaneous, magical, and more than a little bit dangerous.” – Bucky Sinister, San Francisco Bay Guardian

David Lerner and I were friends, and he’s gone. David and Julia Vinograd and I were in the first round of Zeitgeist books, 1987. But Zeitgeist had books today that needed to be in the world. Julia Vinograd’s work continues to appear on Zeitgeist, and my new book, Ghosts Among the Neon… well, it had been 15 years since the last one.

And Lerner’s The Last Five Miles to Grace needed to be published. Not only had his three Zeitgeist books sold out, but used copies were selling for $70 and up on Amazon. There are still hundreds of pages of unpublished Lerner poems. So the new book has both a Selected Works and 50 pages of new poems.

And since his death, Lerner’s poetry seems more relevant and important than when it was written. It’s a book of faith and tragedy and brilliant longing, set at the cragged edges of the American dream. I don’t think you’ll see anything similar anywhere else, and that’s a healthy mission for a press. There are other unique books we’ve wanted to do, and I hope we’ll go on doing unique things. Bruce Isaacson. Please read the complete interview with Bruce Isaacson here…

Please click on the covers for bigger image sizes.

13 EURO incl. shipment world-wide

In the Seasons of My Eye

Marty Matz

“The definitive collection by the Beat Surrealist Master. Marty died in 2001, but his inimitable voice and brilliant imagery live on in this collection.” –Goodie Publications Panther Books. 189 pgs.

The poet Martin Matz died in the evening of October 28, 2001 at the hospice unit of New York’s Cabrini Hospital. I believe Marty was 67 years old. I met Marty in the Chelsea Hotel in 1989 and we remained close till his dying day. This is some of what I remember him telling me about his life. Because we were usually pleasantly loaded when we talked, some of my memories could be off a bit.

Marty was not a prolific poet, but he was a poet’s poet. Marty’s poetry was a unique fusion of Surrealism, Lyricism and Beatitude. He was inspired by, and refined, the traditions of vagabond poesy. Look on the back cover of his book Time Waits: Selected Poems 1956-1986 (JMF Publishing, 1987; privately revised and expanded, 1994), and you will find encomiums from the likes of Gregory Corso, Jack Micheline, Harold Norse and Howard Hart. Beat eminence Herbert Huncke wrote a stirring introduction to Matz’s book of opium poems, ‘Pipe Dreams’ (privately published in 1989). Huncke wrote that Matz “…draws support for the solidity of his statements from the earth, the soil–all of nature; trees, rocks and gems–upheaval and restless winds