Not Your Typical Oilfield Poets Society
The Los Angeles Times has a nice story about poetry readings in my hometown of Bakersfield, Calif. The story, by Fresno native son Mark Arax, is one of the first Bakersfield stories I've seen in years that doesn't rely on all the easy clichés about the place. New Yorker Ed Mazza flagged the story for me. Here's a few excerpts:

But Bakersfield does have a soul, and it's not what you think. It reaches past the oil and farm fields. It rises above the dusty twang of Buck Owens and his Buckaroos. This town, of all things, has become one hot ticket on the American poetry circuit. It's not quite what Ashland, Ore., is to Shakespeare, but some of the country's most respected poets have been making the trek down Highway 99 to read their stuff to fans in Bakersfield. ...

Bakersfield would hardly seem to lend itself to such distinction. This is, after all, a place where authors have come to find fodder, not fans. From John Steinbeck to Carrie McWilliams to native son Gerald Haslam, writers have discovered their prose and poem songs in the dirt of Kern County and then high-tailed it out of town. When "The Grapes of Wrath" came out in 1939 depicting the mythical Joads and their cruel life here, Steinbeck was celebrating a safe distance away while copies of his book were burned on the front steps of the local library. ...

Bakersfield's sudden embrace of verse has little to do with civic redemption, though. It is mostly the hard fight of one stubborn lady, a retired schoolteacher and local poet named Lee McCarthy, who calls herself "the meanest, most persistent woman in Kern County."

"This isn't a podunk town any more than any other town," McCarthy said. "And if you want humor and humanity to thrive in your place, you feed it. I believe in the power of words. I think beautiful words can feed people."

- posted by Amy @ 6/03/2002 09:42:00 AM