Wednesday, April 25 - More Mohr on LA Poetry

Tonight at 8 on KPFK:  BILL MOHR, Part II.  I’m back tonight through the magic of radio with the second half of my conversation with Bill Mohr, author of Hold-Outs:  The Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance, 1945-1992. It’s an essential story of our cultural history, with surprising and provocative and, yes, poetic insights into a period often overlooked, underestimated, misunderstood, with urgent themes about place, politics and the people who contributed to what poet-printer-editor Mohr argues has been an essential and influential epoch.  In tonight’s episode, Bill Mohr talks to me about, among other moments in the story, the creation and enduring influence of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts Foundation, an institution which shaped much of the scene along with other important community cultural arts organizations, as well as the emergence of some important players --- writers who came out of this community.  Before researching and publishing Hold-Outs, Bill Mohr developed a CV as long as your arm:  as publisher, editor, workshop leader, booster of other poets, and published writer himself.  Which is to say that he himself figures both in the living and in the telling of the story of the Los Angeles Poetry Renaissance 1948-1992.  If you missed the first part of his reading and our conversation, please have a listen at the station archives.  Bill Mohr is an associate professor of English at Cal State Long Beach.  His own writing has appeared widely, including in Antioch Review, Chicago Review, ZYZZYVA and is collected in three volumes:  Hidden Proofs, Vehemence and Bittersweet.  He was the editor at Momentum Press for fourteen years, and published two groundbreaking anthologies of LA poets:  The Streets Inside (1978) and Poetry Loves Poetry (1985).  Thanks for listening.  This show available as a free download from the KPFK station archives under “Shows,” “Bibliocracy.”