Get Underground Interview with S.A. Griffin by Jordan Erlich

 

Interview What sparked you to begin writing? The universal heartbeat, a genetic toss of the dice, innate madness, visions, dysfunction, various forms of abuse, childhood, nightmares and dreams, many wonderful people, weed, a cup of human kindness, libraries, great books and writers, four long years in the Air Force during Nam, old Cadillacs, lying politicians, females, a legacy left by those before me, those that will come after. I was a desperately lucky young fool to have encountered a few great teachers who were with the word and were exemplary in passing it along. I used to memorize poems for extra credit in 8th grade, and being a bona fide dork I also spent as much time as I possibly could browsing the stacks in whatever libraries were available. In the now defunct neighborhood of my youth, Easter Hill in Richmond, Ca., we had no library, but rather a book mobile; a bus full of books that made sure that we had literature available to us. We were damned lucky, I was lucky. I experienced the cliché childhood from hell. The poem spoke to me, shouted out loud, pulled me up and out of a lot of what was happening all around me at the time, I was 12-13. A bit like reading secret messages, salvation in the metaphors and between the lines. Frost, Poe, Kipling, Sandburg, Edna St. Vincent Millay… also around that same time I was exposed to short story writing, and a specific story by Anton Chekov sealed the deal and I was struck. The word, The Lady had me. However, the poems that really sent me over in my teens were The Road Not Taken by Robert Frost, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's 43rd Sonnet, If by Rudyard Kipling and the most powerful of all that seemed to speak directly to me and poked me point blank third eye was Invictus by British poet William Ernest Henley written sometime in the latter part of the 19th century (excerpt): "Out of the night that covers me, Black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul…" Later in life, it was Bukowski, the Beats and the city of Los Angeles itself that would inspire me, and still do. But to tell the truth, my friends and fellow poets have been the real source of the river. They have all contributed quite heavily: Scott Wannberg, Mike Bruner, Doug Knott, Mike Mollett, Carter Monroe, Mark Hartenbach, Pris Campbell, Tammy Trendle, Bobbo Staron, Laurel Ann Bogen, Harry Northup, Wanda Coleman, Ellyn Maybe, Allen J. Freedman, Linda Albertano, Julie Stein, Pleasant Gehman, Eric Lyden, Iris Berry, Eric Brown, Bob Flanagan, Jack Brewer, John Dorsey, bree, Marc Olmstead, Nelson Gary, Amelie Frank, Rafael FJ Alvarado, Ed Ward, John Macker, A.D. Winans, Todd Moore and the late Jack Micheline, Cait Collins and Tony Scibella to name a few. I tell people all the time that I cannot believe how lucky I have been to have encountered such tremendous writers and poets, to somehow be counted among them; astonishing. I am truly blessed. We really do have a world-class resource of talented, gifted individuals and spirits among us. The Venice Beats and the amazing mimeo revolution out of Cleveland lead by d.a. levy are huge influences on the poem and how I see myself as a poet. The Internet has also played an undeniably direct part in much of what has happened to me since 1994 as well. The Carma Bums jumped onto the Internet in 1995 with what was considered the first poetry website of its kind at the time with text, graphics, hyperlinks and sounds files. Also, pretty much everything I have created or been a part of in hardcopy form has been a direct result of email and/or the net including The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. And/or become serious about writing? I had dabbled with the poem off and on for years, however, when I was living in the MacArthur Park area on Grand View St. back in 1980, an old college friend gave me an ancient metal typer with a long legal bale; I still have it, it weighs a ton. So the beast sat around collecting dust until literally one night I sat down and began pounding out poems, obsessively. It seemed as if I woke up with this rage to write, so I did. It was a fire that seemed to come out of nowhere. As far as that big metal set of keys, I really had to beat on that baby to make it sing. Those early efforts were awful, horrible things that I have yet to burn (and I shall), blackmail material. At about the same time, somebody gave me a ragged, yellowed and dog-eared copy of On The Road, which literally changed my life and set me on the path with no looking back. I also had a next door neighbor at the time, Gracin, who turned me on to the poetry of Leonard Cohen and Charles Bukowski, who wasn’t afraid to tell me that my work sucked, or conversely, when it was good. I listened, read and learned. I kept writing all the time. A lot of 2 dollar weed helped too. Went off looking for anything Bukowski or Beat which lead me to the late Red Stodolsky and Baroque Books in Hollywood. Back then, it was damned hard to find any of this stuff on the eastside. Nobody gave a shit about the Beats by 1981, and Bukowski was still viewed as "obscene", so Red’s was it. I voraciously read everything I could get my hands on, everything. Also in ‘81-82, I found an ad for a new open reading/poetry series at a place in Hollywood called The Water Espresso Gallery at Hudson & Santa Monica, which was directly connected to the old Lhasa Club; an ad in Dramalogue of all places. We met on Wednesday nights, maybe about a dozen people every week (which grew over the next 3 or so years), but they were hard core, fucked up crazy types that not only read their own material, but the great poetry of many others as well. This is where I met my pals who would become The Lost Tribe and The Carma Bums. Punk was also a major influence. Punk brought community, wonderful energy and the feeling that we could affect change, were changing ourselves, and the world around us. The muse really had me as I very doggedly tempered myself and began to transform. I really do see my life really as the journey of the book. What specific themes and topics do you feel most compelled to write about? I feel that what might define poetry, as the debate rages on in the clubs and coffeehouses, on the streets and in the academies, is that the poem elevates the ordinary and somehow transcends to then become ordinary once again. Brings light to object and illuminates. I like to believe that I address exactly that in most of my work; the ordinary. I also believe, and have been taught, that poetry is candor. The poem should lead the horse to water and then the critter should drink willingly, never even believing that it has been taken for the ride, much less saddled. The poem is process, and the process is everything. Therefore, I try to be as open and as honest in my work as I can be. You will find sex, obsessive behavior, drugs, cars, booze, women, violence, the poem/poetry – you will also find a lot of politics in my work as well; homelessness, themes that deal with bigotry, the ‘system’. I am often openly ranting and railing against class warfare, capitalist fascism, antiquated theological ideas, war and violence, abuse, the cancer of apathy. I would like to think that here in this culture, in present day America, there are those among us who must speak out, be heard thru the poem. In the words of the good doctor, William Carlos Williams, from Asphodel That Greeny Flower (excerpt): "It is difficult to get the news from poems yet men die miserably every day for lack of what is found there..." I am not my brother’s keeper, however, as poets it is quite possible that we might report the news. In small press circles, we write the wild history of the time and times we live in. I see the poem as a call, a calling, a way home. Or, as Neruda has written, "poetry like bread." For myself then (and many others among us, here and there), the poem is holy. You can laugh if you like, point fingers and snicker, but it is true; the poem is a meditation, a prayer. Think about it, all theological text is written as poetry. The Bardic tradition precedes written history. Therefore, the poem was and is history. The poem can also laugh out loud, cry and see inside the darkest night, or undress the blighted day with desire. Hopefully, each poem has elements of any or all available to the reader. Not that I think of poetry and the poem as being so sweetly precious, but rather, I have been touched with a trust. I have fallen in with a sort of outlaw set that sees the poem/poets as a holy gang with a bit of an unspoken promise to hold up with the poem and the process, to go with my boots on, pens blazing. I go willingly. A few years ago Mark Salerno asked me if I wrote about Los Angeles and I answered that as far as I was concerned, everything that I write was somehow about Los Angeles because this is where I am. This city and the people are so far inside me, that I honestly cannot imagine ever living or being anywhere else. As Charles Bukowski writes to his foreword for Laugh Literary, "I think it is important to know that a writer can live and die anywhere. I think it's important to know that a writer can live in Los Angeles for a lifetime without ever having visited Grauman's Chinese or The Wax Museum or Barney's Beanery or Disneyland, or without ever having attended a Tournament of Roses Parade. I think it is important to know that a man or woman, writer or not, can find more isolation in Los Angeles than in Boise, Idaho. Or, all things being fair, he can (with a telephone) have 19 people over drinking and talking with him within an hour and a half. I have bummed the cities and I know this - the great facility of Los Angeles is that one can be alone if he wishes or he can be in a crowd if he wishes. No other city seems to allow this easy double choice as well. This is a fairly wonderful miracle, especially if one is a writer." Why do you feel they are important topics to explore in your writing? There isn’t anything that isn’t important to explore as a poet. Whatever it is, is important because the poet sees and feels it, there is no other reason. What role does writing poetry play in your life? As I have already stated, process, and the process is everything. Is it more cathartic, artistic, something that could play a role in improving society in some way? A mixture of all three? Any or all of the above, or none, I really don’t have much choice except to go with it, to be invisible inside the poem and the process. S.A. Griffin has been widely published and is the author of a number of books of poetry. Named best performance/poet by The L.A. Weekly, he is the co-editor of the award winning Outlaw Bible of American Poetry. His new collected work Numbskull Sutra from Rank Stranger Press and his Greatest Hits from Pudding House are both due out in 2007. He has been a member of poetry performance super groups and toured the U.S. and Canada with The Lost Tribe, The Carma Bums, White Trash Apocalypse and New Word Order. He is presently performing with Saccharine Trust lead singer Jack Brewer as The Lofty Canaanites. In October of 2006 he co-produced Rabbits Over Clevyland with Bree Bodnar. A weekend long poetry festival celebrating the life and work of Cleveland poets d.a. levy and Tom Kryss. S.A.'s imprint Rose of Sharon Press began spreading ink in 1988 with the publication of Sharktalk by fellow Carma Bum and bad brother Doug Knott, followed in 1989 by Scott Wannberg's masterwork, The Electric Yes Indeed! Recently, David Smith, long time friend, heart beat and the publisher of Ouija Madness and Scott Wannberg's first book, Mr. Mumps came on board to form the Rose of Sharon team: Manny, Moe looking for a little Jack so that they can continue to produce fine periodicals, chapbooks and perfect bound volumes of poems. Over the years, the Los Angeles Rose has produced many a fine poetic small press bloom. In the coming months, expect to see books from FrancEye, Scott Wannberg, John Dorsey and Amanda Oaks, more MEAT broadsides and a few truly fine anthologies of poetry intended to make some noise in the void to get folks to talking and hopefully, reading. Most recent publications from the sweet Rose are sometimes city undercovers: levyfest 2005 with Bottle of Smoke Press, Teaching The Dead To Sing by John Dorsey, Harvey Keitel, Harvey Keitel, Harvey Keitel by John Dorsey, S.A. Griffin & Scott Wannberg and the just released Interchangeable Goddesses by Pris Campbell & Tammy F. Trendle, available for $8, postage paid. Rose of Sharon Press POB 29171 Los Angeles, Ca. 90029-0171