Trafford Publishing Presents: 'New American Underground Poetry, Vol 1: The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell'

SAN FRANCISCO, April 23 /PRNewswire/ -- Cafe Babar (named after the storybook elephant) is a little cafe on 22nd & Guerrero behind Mission District in San Francisco. From there on the West Coast from the mid-late '80s up through 1994, a unique group of poets gathered on Thursday nights for a feature, followed by an open mike. Their work is faithfully recorded in "New American Underground Poetry, Vol 1: The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell" (Trafford Publishing).

Poets performing or reading their work there became known across the United States and Central and Eastern Europe as some of the best poets in the U.S. They valued emotional honesty and their poems captured it. They found academic writing boring, disregarding the bohemian beatnik poets of North Beach.

Babarian poets were broke. Won west-coast slams but couldn't afford tickets to go East to compete. Lived to write, perform, read. Many were without jobs, disabled, addicted, or worked in the sex industry. Most struggled to pay rent, eat well, and wore thrift-shop clothes. IQs were high, hearts big, poems mattered most. Was about feeling ... in their voices, words, lines, and lives.

A genre of new, impatient Babarian voices emerged: personal, vivid in the modern world from TV to MTV to sex clubs - a voice influenced by the L.A. slums of Bukowski and NY slums of Jim Carroll - but undeniably San Francisco; the San Francisco tourists never see.

San Francisco Bay Guardian - "Best poets in America today! ... crucible of spoken-word! ... cradle of American avant-garde! ... keepers of the flame! - poets doing poetry before it caught the public eye!"; S.F. Chronicle - "They join the ranks of Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Corso!"; Modern Maturity - "[Poets] at Cafe Babar are 'Babarians.' [These] new San Francisco poets love to attack the established social order, are the incursion of poetry into popular culture!"; Der Speigel - "Subversive!"; S.F. Examiner - Danielle Willis - "... normal as the kid next door - if your neighbor happens to be a vampire-identified dominatrix lesbian Satanist stripper who loves transvestite men - [she] drips with venom."; Poetry Flash - Eli Coppola - "Tender; fierce honesty; intimate." - Laura Conway - "Prophetic." - Bana Witt - "Flamboyant." - David Lerner - "Clever-savage rap" and Factsheet Five - "Ezra Pound of the Babar scene."; S.F. Chronicle - Nancy Depper - "a showstopper."; S.F. Weekly - Maura O'Connor - "fragile spirit of William Butler Yeats with ability to finesse emotional rawness." - Mel C. Thompson - "Skews fears and ruthlessly scrapes away to expose stark horror." - Bucky Sinister - "Punk ... unpretentious."; S.F. Bay Guardian - Julia Vinograd - "spirit & constancy of the poetic heart, spiritual conscience." - Dan Higgs - "Drives language to pure song." - Vampyre Mike Kassell - "Heavy metal magick punk style; entertaining." - Dominique Lowell - "Janis Joplin of spoken-word."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alan Allen's, Old Rails' Tales, was reviewed by NYT as one of the best books of the year. Info: http://www.trafford.com/Bookstore/BookDetail.aspx?Book=177783

"New American Underground Poetry, Vol 1: The Babarians of San Francisco - Poets from Hell"

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SOURCE Trafford Publishing