LSU Graduate Writing Program, Andrei Codrescu, NYC

 NY in the late 60's

"I just moved to NY in the late 60's

but then $60 a month bought you two rooms

& a bathroom in the kitchen

& two $5 grocery bags"

                  -----Andrei Codrescu  

____ 

I met Codrescu in Lawrence, KS, at the Bottleneck, where Robert Creely was doing a poetry reading as part of the River City Reunion, 1987. Codrescu needed a table/chair so he and his lady friend joined me. This occasion was also one of the few times I saw William Burroughs in public there in Lawrence. Butthole Surfers played the Bottleneck a few times I was there in Lawrence, Flaming Lips as well. There were lots of pool tables, the capacity of the Bottleneck was maybe 200, 250. First time on stage there with a mandolin, a friend and I played Friend of the Devil and Mountain Dew. I visited Codrescu in New Orleans, my mom taught undergraduate English in Baton Rouge for a year. We had a beer somewhere. I sent him some poems from Portland and he printed one in Exquisite Corpse. That was the last publishing for me, about 33 years ago. 

   I have however written several hundred poems since then, and played with some Other beatnik musicians or of their NYC ilk: the Holy Modal Rounders, Steve Weber, Peter Stampfel, Robin Remailly, Roger North, Teddy Deane. And while not a Rounder or NYC, an Unholy Rounder (Have Moicy) Jeffery Fredericks. Jim Boyer invited me onto that gig with Jeffery at the Belmont Inn, when they still had live music there.....like the Bad Livers. Jeffery died a couple years after I met him. Boyer didn't drive, so I drove to get Fredericks (NE Portland?) before the gig and drop him home. He barely fit in the back of my Toyota pickup with its low canopy. He was pretty big. Have Moicy is one of my favorites, and the first Rounders records too. 

"NY in the late 60's

but then $60 a month bought you two rooms

& a bathroom in the kitchen

& two $5 grocery bags" 

***

It's amusing to think of the Romanian poet perhaps tripping at a Fugs or Rounders hootenanny.  Who'd remember. 

                  

FLB

SE Portland, Or