Sunday, October 16 – 2 pm

Maestro David Meltzer
The Stuntman!

Interviewed on  the Bird & Beckett stage by Gerry Fialka

David just wowed ’em in the Mission, at our Litquake reading at Kaleidoscope, trading “fours” with his new bride Julie Rogers and then dazzling ’em all with his fleet-footed delivery of the newly penned mini-epic tale of derring do and crashing calamity called “The Stuntman,” a worthy latter-day successor to one of our favorite poems of his, “The Red Shoes.”  From ballet to action flicks, does this man never tire of soaring to new poetic heights of quotidian life??

Son of a cellist and a harpist, Meltzer was born in ’37, grew to the age of 17 in Brooklyn and nearby Rockville Centre, then came west with his pop to Los Angeles.  Roosted there for three years, left high school unfinished, made his way up to San Francisco, fell in with Duncan & Spicer and all the Renaissance & beat gang, worked in Discovery Bookshop, pioneered the jazz/poetry cross-pollination alongside the likes of ruth weiss at the Cellar, formed a psychedelic poets’ rock band called Serpent Power, performed brilliant pedagogic improvisation at New College of SF, and on it has gone from there…  Scholar of jazz, of the Kabbalah, of manifold deep and felicitous subjects… 50 books to his credit, so many of them exquisite productions of small press geniuses like Haselwood and Hawley… a wonderful set of interviews with his colleagues in poetry, San Francisco Beat, a Penguin Poets’ volume, David’s Copy, and now, in 2011,  #60 of the City Lights Pocket Poets series, When I Was a Poet…  When was this man not a poet!? Yesterday is here now and happening!

David will be interviewed on the Bird & Beckett stage this afternoon (Sunday, 10/16) by Gerry Fialka, film curator, writer, lecturer, and paramedia-ecologist!

“The confusion is not my invention… it is all around us and our only choice is to let it in.  The only chance of renovation is to open our eyes and see the mess,” says Samuel Beckett.  Gerry has taken Sam’s notion seriously, and has merged it with insights gleaned from Marshall McLuhan’s media investigations to concoct a “public interviews” series he calls MESS – Media Ecology Soul Salon – following the lava flow of thought wherever it goes… Prodigiously researched and daringly executed, his interviews have been conducted with a fascinating range of thinkers/artists, and he’s gained accolades for their depth and the marvelous insights they’ve produced.

“Gerry Fialka’s MESS series is a unique opportunity to meet special artists in a unique, intimate and revealing setting. His intelligence and dedication to research leads to a stimulating and highly interactive interview that is both entertaining and amazingly enlightening.” – Phil Proctor of the “Firesign Theatre”