Poets who want to read their works at Jack Kerouac’s St. Pete house now have the opportunity.
Coffee and Poetry at Jack’s House launched earlier this year by The Jack Kerouac House of St. Petersburg Inc., the nonprofit that manages his former home.
Ken Burchenal, president of the nonprofit, says he’s pretty sure Jack would love that his house has become a venue for other artists. Burchenal taught Kerouac literature off and on for 30 years in Texas.
Jack Kerouac’s most memorable works include Mexico City Blues, On the Road, Dharma Bums and Big Sur.
Kerouac was born March 12, 1922 in Lowell, Mass. He was a pioneer of the Beat Generation alongside Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.
According to Britannica, beat poets sought to transform poetry into an expression of genuine lived experience. They read their work, sometimes to the accompaniment of progressive jazz, in such Beat strongholds as the Coexistence Bagel Shop and Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s City Lights bookstore in San Francisco.
“Jack Kerouac advocated a kind of free, unstructured composition in which the writer put down his thoughts and feelings without plan or revision in order to convey the immediacy of experience,” the publication said.
Burchenal says that Kerouac wrote prose, poetry and most importantly prosetry.
“In fact, he explored the use of poetic devises in prose works more than anyone before him except perhaps Joyce,” Burchenal shares.
241st Chorus by Jack Kerouac
from Mexico City Blues
And how sweet a story it is
When you hear Charley Parker
Tell it,
Either on records or at sessions,
Or at official bits in clubs,
Shots in the arm for the wallet,
Gleefully he Whistled the perfect horn
Anyhow, made no difference.
Charley Parker, forgive me–
Forgive me for not answering your eyes–
For not having made an indication
Of that which you can devise–
Charley Parker, pray for me–
Pray for me and everybody
In the Nirvanas of your brain
Where you can hide, indulgent and huge,
No longer Charley Parker
But the secret unsayable name
That carries with it merit
Not to be measured from here
To up, down, east, or west –
–Charley Parker, lay the bane,
Off me, and every body.
After falling extremely ill in the bathroom at his St. Pete house on October 20, 1969, Kerouac was taken to St. Anthony’s Hospital where he died the next day at 47 years old.
More than 50 years later, his legacy continues with performances at his house.
Folks gathered at June’s open mic that featured St. Pete Poet Laureate Gloria Muñoz who gave the audience a sneak listen to new works that haven’t been released yet.
A published work, Your Biome Has Found You, was read as she stood at the microphone in Jack’s dining area. . .
Your Biome Has Found You
And who will kiss open
the spine of the resurrection fern
hunched like a widow, like a shamed child?
How it locks and hides and browns
under the sun—a laborer’s hands
picking blistered tomatoes
or a pile of bones, perhaps
bird bones—small, dry, silent.
Here is the damp and thickest marsh
of your interior wetland. And here,
your tundra of moss, rock, and shrub.
Here is the thing you lost,
perhaps the saddest or loveliest thing
—remember? It was suddenly taken—
as a fish spine is plucked from
its open body on an open plate.
You are helpless and wild here,
a murmuration of starlings in your chest.
Cicadas scream petrified from treetops.
The feral sounds of wilderness
sharpen your teeth.
It is November. Goldfish scales crunch
under your soles, the autumnal scent
of a fire inhales you, the aerials come and go.
Adding up all the dead things you carry,
you realize there is so much dirt in you.
Still, your nautilus ears listen, waiting
to hear your native sea.
– Gloria Muñoz, from poets.org
Muñoz says she wasn’t inspired by Jack Kerouac or other Beat Generation writers, however she did love how outspoken they were and that St. Pete is part of their history.
Other poets who shared their works included Tyler Gillespie and the Kerouac House poet-in-residence, Larry Jaffe.
Jaffe, Coffee and Poetry at Jack’s host, says it was his dream to create a poetry reading at Jack’s house to continue his legacy. He pitched the idea to the Jack Kerouac Board and they thought it was a great idea.
Gillespie, a poet known for his work, Florida Man: Poems says it’s so cool to hear and perform poetry in the house of a literary legend.
Gillespie performed a form of poetry that he invented based on St. Pete’s history with shuffleboard.
According to the St. Petersburg History Museum, the “regulations and rules” for shuffleboard were established in the city during the 1920s as the game “spread throughout the United States, particularly in tourist and retirement communities.”
The form’s three stanzas represent the court’s triangle, and each stanza consists of seven lines with a syllable pattern of 10, 8, 8, 7, 7, 10, and 10 to match the scoring areas, Gillespie explains.
Gillespie’s shuffleboard poem, Doing My Best to Artistically Describe an Impending Shade of Blue was written for the SHINE Festival’s Mural in Mind series last summer.
I say to someone’s sun then dive into
Swimming pool color – shades lighter
Than summertime rain. Hold my breath
As I catalog past blue.
My last lover’s eyes looking
Afar. Bad berries & delicate flames.
Breath in the skyway when I get to deep
sea jellyfish bioluminescent.
Have you seen their rainbow strobe?
I ask sun while I drip dry.
He works in STEM. Always takes
Science, seriously. Says: cells give glow.
Then, we kiss. Because we are alive,
Today. Because the sea can turn so dark
We forget our light. Let’s be real.
Nothing I write will help readers pay rent.
Or afford health care. Still, I hope
Think pink could poem reminds
Us to see. Bright, pretty things
Refracted. A kaleidoscopic you.
Me. It’s us. We are the city’s sunshine.
Adding to the culture of poetry at Jack’s is Shelley Jaffe, a local chef, who bakes pastries from each featured poet’s native beginnings. Muñoz is a Colombian-American writer and Shelley prepared Colombian pastries for the guests at the June event. She does this at every open mic.
Florida Beat Poet Laureate Larry Jaffe says there’s just something special about reading at Jack’s house.
“This is the house that Jack built after all,” he explains. “I feel that Jack’s spirit endows the location and provides something special to the poets that are reading. I have spoken to the poets that have read here and they acknowledge they feel that spirit and wear that mantle.”
Larry’s been hosting poetry readings for 30 years and he simply loves giving poets a place to read that is not just a creative one but is safe and validating.
Larry read his poem, Unprotected Poetry. . .
I had unprotected poetry last night
it was unexpected you know
spontaneous and we did not use anything
we just went at it to keep the mood.
It was incredible but not safe
and now I am worried
because it can be infectious and dangerous
to say things without a condom.
It could be disastrous to speak without protection.
A guy should not have unprotected poetry
he should take more responsibility than that
not just leave it up to the girl.
It was so irresponsible of me
to have unprotected poetry
to not even ask or consult
her about poetry control methods
she might be using or gulp not using.
What if she gets poetically pregnant
and wants to have my poem?
Or what if she has some kind
of poetically transmitted disease
you know PTD –
and we have to wait
and see what happens
taking regular poetry tests
to see if we’ve got it.
But wow
we actually did it last night –
We had poetry…
How many people
in this day and age
have pure, unprotected poetry?
We should be thankful for that
after all, it was good poetry
we both really enjoyed it!
We soared like angels
without wings
never coming down
just coming
poetically, that is.
But what a high
to hit that climax
and feel like you
will never be mortal again…
Now that you’ve had
unprotected poetry
who can protect you?
Now that you’ve had
unsafe poetry
and want to do it
again and again
and again…
Cause it don’t feel
the same
with a poetic condom
blocks off the all feeling
and the flow.
And the words
the words
are stopped short
with safe protected poetry
and I will never
write that way again!
The next Coffee and Poetry at Jack’s House, 5169 10th Avenue North in St. Petersburg, is scheduled Sunday, July 28 from 3-6 pm.The featured poet is Dennis Amadeus.
Bring your poems and sign up at the sign-in table to share at the open mic.
Tickets information is on eventbrite.
