painting by Charles Curtis Blackwell

Charles Curtis Blackwell’s poetry is suffused with soul, drenched with blues, sparked by jazz. His painting and drawing is likewise deep and personal. He’s one of a handful of poets we know whose articulations of joy, pain and insight always jump from the page, and from his mouth when he reads his work before an audience, We expect that we’ll have a good audience for him tonight.

Ronald Sauer’s cosmopolitanism, his intellectual ardor, his engagement with the arts, make him an extravagantly deep poet as well. A frequent translator of the French decadent and surrealist poets of the late 19th through mid-20th centuries, today he will concentrate on translations from the Italian of contemporary North Beach painter and poet Lucia Gonella.

Jerry Ferraz, a philosopher as much as a poet, referees the whole wrestling match, including the open mic that follows the featured readers.

We should note that we have also thrown the doors open from 6 to 9 pm to folks who are game to try to influence Electoral College members to vote for the winner of the national popular vote rather than the candidate they’ve been sent by their states to elect. To do so, they’ll need to pay a fine, but they have that right in our political system. We’ll provide postcards and postcard stamps, along with the addresses of a couple of dozen electors located in states that went narrowly to Trump in the recent election.

We ask that those participating in this exercise in influencing our democracy respect the poetry reading that will be in progress during the evening.  Indeed, everyone is welcome to participate as a poet in the open mic if they’re inclined.