California Poet Laureate Al Young, along with four local poets, including Bakersfield College professor Nancy Edwards, participated in a poetry recital at Beale Library on April 18.
Young, a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, was appointed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger on May 1, 2005 to compose poems for state events and for “educating Californians on the state’s great literary history,” according to a pamphlet for his statewide tour.
One such poem was commissioned by California first lady Maria Shriver for the California Governor and First Lady’s Conference on Women and Families.
While there have been many self-proclaimed Poets Laureate of California, Young is only the second official laureate selected to “fulfill the role as created by the legislature,” said the pamphlet.
Young is touring the state from Mendocino County to San Diego County as part of his “Top to Bottom Tour,” a collaboration with the California Arts Council and the California Center for the Book. Accompanying Young was jazz bassist Dan Robbins, who has performed in solo, duo, trio, big band and orchestral settings.
Young’s performance was a mixture of prose and free verse with occasional bebop and blues rhythms in the background from Robbins. Robbins played his jazz bass with and without a bow. Young scatted, snapped his fingers and clapped to Robbins’ dexterous bass solos between poems.
Young sang a couple of songs he remembered loving growing up, even acknowledging when he messed up a note.
“My apologies to the lyricist,” Young said after singing a note off-key.
The subject matter of his work ranged from “Doo-wop,” about listening to doo-wop music and dancing with a woman while growing up during the McCarthy era, a time when “people danced with each other, not at each other,” according to Young, to “Globalism, or God Speaks To The Attorney General,” about former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft, decrying “the heavy holy oil your staff anoints you on.”
Nancy Edwards, professor of composition and creative writing at BC, was asked, along with three other local poets, to recite approximately five minutes’ worth of their material before Young came on the stage.
The majority of Edwards’ poems revolved around Bakersfield and the Central Valley. One, titled “Downtown Mary,” was about a local bag lady who lived downtown and begged for money by newsstands. “They talked about her like she was trash,” said the poem.
LisaAnn LoBasso, called a “poetry minstrel” by Las Vegas City Life Weekly, read “Her,” with the subversive line “God is a cannibal,” “My Red-Headed Man,” about a friend of hers who recently died in a car crash and said, “You don’t spoon me like savory ice cream,” and “Sugar Loaf,” about how she can’t understand how people find her daughter attractive.
Marit MacArthur, assistant professor of English at Cal State University Bakersfield, had two poems about landscape, “East of Oakland” and “Dusk at 33,000 Feet,” as well as a poem she had translated from Polish titled “Here Come The Partisans.”
Lee McCarthy read two poems about parenting, which she describes as “remaining being concerned in the face of being helpless.” They were “The Mother of Jonah” and “Talking To People You Can’t See.” McCarthy is a regular contributor to “Valley Writers Read,” a program on public radio station KPVR.
After Young’s performance, he had a book signing for his new book “Coastal Nights and Inland Afternoons, Poems 2001-2006.” For more information on Al Young, visit his website at www.alyoung.org.