Mysterious Writers Like Him

August 14, 9:56 AMSF Literary ExaminerSonny Smith

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Ovid in Exile

A fella plays around with words, puts them together in different ways- when he gets the words down on paper he can put them together in such a way as to make you feeeeeeel something. 

This fella mighta hitchhiked back and forth between Michigan and Texas. Then maybe to San Francisco then back to Texas. Say at one point he was living on the street. Then in a park, sleeping here and there on a park bench. Scalping tickets for ball games and concerts, stealing food, stray floors, flirting with the gutter, scribbling out sketches. Fantasizing futures in tomes, stories, articles, poems, musicals.

Busted by the cops a summer night in North Beach, right over there by Kerouac street, which was fitting cause later he’d fall under the tutelage of Diane Di Prima and anyway he was a little bonkers for jazz just like the old beats. This was about the time he was always chasing around German girls. Who knew why he had a secret affinity for German girls but maybe it was connected to his love for Rilke.

Hired a detective to find his biological mother and he found her in Detroit. Except she was from Germany. Took her maiden name Hadbawnik. Somewhere around then he was going out with an older gal with a real obsession for art bordering on the religious. They cut around town digging paintings and drinking wine… in the bohemian way. They were on a bus together and a man harassed her. Let’s say he stepped in here, the poet, and got clocked in the nose, eye, mouth.

Squatting in a warehouse by the docks. Trips to Mexico, ecstasy, a kleptomaniac phase, sexual adventures with known felons in drag? Did he carry a knife at one point? Can’t quite tell. A cravat and a big black overcoat.

Married a writer from Slovenia, caught stealing razors from a grocery store- none of this in order- Texas, Buffalo, Texas, Buffalo, San Francisco, Texas, Slovenia, Ovid, interpretations of Creeley, smashed car windows, blown radiators, black and white photograph of his grandfather standing on a street in Germany with a bicycle and a big black overcoat. Prison guards, night dogs, fireflies, biological father unknown, big wooden desks full of hundreds/thousands of notebooks full of words put together in such a way to make you feel something.

See this man read his poems at Moe's Books in Berkeley, Friday night with Mary Burger.