Quite a week here in Pittsburgh for the arts sector. The International Poetry Forum is folding up, as I had suspected in the fall. There was something about the new season and Sam Hazo's annoucement of it that suggested he was worrried about cash flow. I've been covering the IPF for more than 20 years, so when the founder sounds unenthusiastic, I can feel something in these old bones. Folks,realize, I am one of the few neutral observers of the forum, an organization that is so Pittsburgh it makes the Terrible Towel seem like an after-thought Kleenex your mother gave you just in case you sneezed before your class picture. This organization was created on money from A.W. Mellon Charitable Trust in an era when the literary landscape was firmly rooted in the East. Universities like Pitt and Carnegie Tech, as it then was, were pushing metallurgy, not MacLeish or, God forbid, Mailer.
Sam was a visionary in mid-1960s Pittsburgh. At the risk of sounding like somebody out of a Rick Seback rehash on the history of bingo night in Western Pennsylvania, I remember those times of a low-key intellectual life in the Smoky City. There were poetry readings and other bookish programs. but nothing on the radar of the common folk. When I could get the old man's station wagon and find my way to a prehistoric Walnut Street to sneak into the original Casbah for espresso, bongos and some third-rate Ginsbergian beat poet, it was like a trip to the moon.
Hazo changed that scene. Oh, it was still button-down shirts, rep ties and penny loafers, but the chance to hear poets your English professor mentioned was exciting. I hope I can hear more from readers about those days, but I fear my readers don't read blogs.
Just a plug: T.C. Boyle was on his game for a PG web site chat with me. Please check it out and if you compare it with the one the NYTimes Book Review did, you'll not only find it longer, but more informative.
http://www.post-gazette.com/multimedia/?videoid=101534
Posted
Feb 14 2009, 12:06 PM
by
Bob Hoover