Depends on who you think is in that group, but I'd say Ed Sanders is the most important Beat poet left. I'd like to get him some attention, if I could. He sees the column as a continuation of his job as San Francisco's first poet laureate, 1998-1999. Poetry is a picture of Ma in her Woolworth bra looking out a window into a secret garden. His reading tomorrow night, sponsored by Counterbalance Poetry, is his first in Seattle in four decades.
People get sick of poets pretty fast.
If that's a rule, he's an exception to it. Somewhere between Monty Python and T.S. Eliot, Ogden Nash and Ginsberg is Ferlinghetti's own poetry, still going strong. I'm a figurehead. My friends do all the work. Nancy J. Peters is managing director of the store and editor of the press.