AlphaRhythmicAfterBeats
At best, or at the very least,
Everything else is straight no chaser
Be - Bop - Beatnik and Beatitude
Concern subterranean acts
Divining the Ted Joans of things -
© 2003 Hammond Guthrie
My artist wife Ilene and I first met at a Ted Joans poetry reading in 1958.
It was at the long gone Phoenix Gallery on Third Avenue near 9th St.
We kept running into Ted at various points after that, once when he was again reading
I had first got to know him two years earlier in 1956
Ted seemed to be luckiest of all, perhaps because of the sign with his picture
Ted Joans, Poet / Available for Readings.
Despite the black shirts we all wore, it was a fairly colorful time.
Ted, my wife of 44 years and I will both miss you.
FOR TED JOANS
Afterwards everyone including Ted ended up at a drunken party around the
corner, where one guest passed out and was pulled by his legs around the
large room, leaving a trail of moisture on the floor from his beer-soaked hair.
his poetry downstairs in the lie-down theatre at London's first Arts Lab ca. 1967 and
a few times informally when he passed through NYC. I remember once hearing him tell me
about his trip to Timbuktu in far greater detail than I was capable of understanding.
at the original Cafe Figaro, where Ted, a poet-artist named Ed Dickman,
the film maker Jud Yalkut, myself, and a whole cast of others used to hang
out at one particular table for hours, encouraged to do so by owners Royce
and Tom Ziegler in the hope that the atmosphere we provided would draw in the
squares as customers. Of course we all wore berets. Occasionally we got lucky
and ended up going home with the girls who were also drawn to our table.
in the window. I can no longer remember exactly how it read, something like