AlphaRhythmicAfterBeats
At best, or at the very least,
Be - Bop - Beatnik and Beatitude
Concern subterranean acts
Divining the Ted Joans of things -
Everything else is straight no chaser
FOR TED JOANS
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. 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.
We kept running into Ted at various points after that, once when he was again reading 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.
I had first got to know him two years earlier in 1956 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.
Ted seemed to be luckiest of all, perhaps because of the sign with his picture in the window. I can no longer remember exactly how it read, something likeTed 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.