This event will be on Friday, December 2nd, at 7:30pm, in our basement
As the fiftieth anniversary of the Summer of Love floods the
media with debates and celebrations of music, political movements,
"flower power," "acid rock," and "hippies";
The Explosion of Deferred Dreams
offers a critical re-examination of the interwoven political and musical happenings in San Francisco in the Sixties. Author, musician, and native San Franciscan
Mat Callahan explores the
dynamic links between the Black Panthers and Sly and the Family Stone,
the United Farm Workers and Santana, the Indian Occupation of Alcatraz
and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and the New Left and the
counterculture.
Callahan's meticulous, impassioned arguments both expose and reframe the political and social context for the
San Francisco Sound and the vibrant subcultural uprisings
with which it is associated. Using dozens of original interviews,
primary sources, and personal experiences, the author shows how the
intense interplay of artistic and political movements put San
Francisco, briefly, in the forefront of a worldwide revolutionary
upsurge.
A must-read for any musician, historian, or person who
"was there" (or longed to have been),
The Explosion of Deferred Dreams
is substantive and provocative, inviting us to reinvigorate our
historical sense-making of an era that assumes a mythic role in the
contemporary American zeitgeist.
A landmark work of bio-romanticism, Mephistos and Other Poemsis the first completely new collection in five years from legendary Beat and SF Renaissance poet Michael McClure. The title sequence, "Mephistos," stems from McClure's ongoing "grafting" experiment, growing new poems from fragments of his older works. "Some Fringes" is a series of haiku-like nature poems, while the 17-part "Rose Breaths" derives from the poet's practice of meditation. The freestanding poems grouped under the title "Being" pay homage to many of McClure's collaborators and fellow travelers, such as Bruce Conner, Terry Riley, and Dave Haselwood. The book climaxes with "Song Heavy," recounting McClure's recent encounter with a beached whale in Rockport, MA, and recalling his classic "For the Death of 100 Whales," which he read at the Six Gallery in 1955—the inaugural moment of American eco-poetics.
Garrett Caples is the author of Power Ballads (forthcoming from Wave Books, 2016), Retrievals (2014), The Garrett Caples Reader (1999), Complications (2007), and Quintessence of the Minor(2010). He is the co-editor of The Collected Poems of Philip Lamantia (2013). He is the poetry editor at City Lights Books and curates the Spotlight Poetry Series there. He is also a contributing writer to the San Francisco Bay Guardian. He has written articles and blogged for the Poetry Foundation and occasionally blogs for blogcitylights.com. He has a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and lives in San Francisco.
