A few weeks before the Vietnam War ended, I met the poet ruth weiss without knowing who she was. The meeting occurred at Minnie’s Can-Do Club in the Fillmore district of San Francisco, on one of the weekly open mic poetry nights. A mélange of all sorts of people with all sorts of poems, put their names on a first-come, first-up list. Minnie, a small-framed no-nonsense black woman who owned the bar and who called everyone “honey”, ran the show. My name was on the list that night, and I waited along with others through many poems – some bad, some good.

The troops would soon return home, and there were indications that the countercultural values that were part and parcel of the sixties and the war were also starting to fall. Many people in their twenties now felt lost, living with a vague feeling that the present was failing to live up to what their past seemed to promise. For me, and probably many others, the promise was largely one of being discovered, of having remarkable magical encounters and wonderful friends. Many at Minnie’s were waiting to be discovered; some were already discovered though not largely known and part of a past that was rapidly becoming forgotten. 

The night I met ruth was also the night Jack Micheline had rushed in with a poem he had just written and told Minnie he just had to read it right then and there. Minnie knew Jack so she moved him to the head of the line. Those waiting their turn grumbled (softly), but it was Minnie’s place, and she called the shots. He read a poem called “Cockymoon”, a long poem that rambled up and down a highway of one-line memories of people he knew in California and elsewhere, that visited poets, non-poets, downtrodden people, all alive in a place he called “Cockymoon”. It was a poem read by a man who was part of the Beats (though he denied it); a man still searching, a breathless man who read a breathless poem that ended with one last breath:  

I love you Cockymoon

you are the only America

I ever loved

My America of backstreets

And dusks and drunks and madmen.

Jack acknowledged the applause with a smile, lit a cigarette, said something to Minnie, hugged her, and ran back out into the night. It was the first time I had seen and heard Micheline, though I would see him often, sometimes walking the streets alone or loudly holding court with friends in a cafe. There were perhaps a few people at Minnie’s that night who knew who he was and who also knew ruth weiss, another refugee of the once burgeoning Beat scene of San Francisco, a lone woman poet among the male-dominated Beats. She was also a refugee of a different sort, an Austrian Jew escaping the Nazi regime who came to America when she was sixteen. She read two or three short poems in a voice that ranged from high soprano to a guttural, hoarse-like whisper, taking puffs of a cigarette in a cigarette holder between poems. She read about light in the desert, lost and found love, the past merging with the present; her words fragments of fragmented sentences and fragmented thoughts. As with Jack’s poem, I heard a rhythm in ruth’s poem that spoke of jazz, but there were no instruments behind either of them that night.

the now is always past

the now is always once again

and myriad in game

of flood & flying

I didn’t write poetry; I wrote stories, or lately parts of stories that I wanted to be part of something longer, but wasn’t sure what that something was. I didn’t understand poetry, most of it anyway, but felt something not quite knowing what it was when Jack Micheline read Cockymoon, and when ruth read her short poems. Hearing their poems was like watching a movie, suspecting that the movie had more meaning than was being grasped at first viewing, that whatever was being said mattered somehow, and said in unforgettable and powerful ways. 

My turn to read came up shortly after ruth’s. It was my first time reading at Minnie’s; I read a story of sorts, mostly humorous, though I wanted to believe that it had something serious to say, even though the only thing serious about it was the doubts I had about it. 

Minnie called my name, and I came up to the mic. “This is called ‘An Interview, ’” I began.

Minnie, behind the bar, called out, “Get closer to the mic, honey, people want to hear what you’ve got to say.”

I started reading: 

“I asked the man across from me for twenty-three cents and he told me that twenty-three cents was not enough to ask for.”

Minnie came out from behind the bar. “Honey, if you’re not going to get closer to the mic, let’s get the mic closer to you,” she said. “Don’t be nervous, honey. People have been waiting for this. Don’t let them down.”

I thanked her and continued. 

“The man was six feet tall and looked to be in his mid-fifties. His lips were broad, as if he’d played the trombone.”

It was a dialogue in an unnamed place and time. The man in the story who the narrator asked for twenty-three cents had played the trombone in the Salvation Army Band. He tells the narrator that “The Salvation Army people were very nice.” But in the end, Jesus tells him that being nice wouldn’t work out for him. This got a big laugh and applause. 

The story went on; the man had worked in a steel mill in World War Two. The narrator asks him if that was what Jesus had wanted him to do during the war. “Everything I ever did was what Jesus wanted me to do,” he tells the narrator, who then asks the man what he wanted Jesus to do. 

“To leave me alone,” the man says. Loud laughter, applause, and cheers.

The story went on and ended with the man telling the narrator that “no one had ever really seen Jesus to remember him.”

During a break, people came up to me with various messages. One person said, “Way to tell it about Jesus,” and another said, “I like your comic timing; you could be a comedian. Have you thought of being a comedian?” I found this last comment irritating because I considered myself a writer, not a comedian. I was about to tell the person that when ruth weiss came up to me. She was short and middle-aged, with a pale face and short black hair that reminded me of a German expressionist painting.

“I loved your poem about the twenty-three cents,” she said.

“It wasn’t a poem,” I said.

“It wasn’t? What was it?”

“A story.”

“Yes, a story. Of course. Poems are stories,” she said.

“I’m not a poet,” I said.

“What are you?”

“I’m a writer.”

“Yes! I love it. You’re not a poet; you’re a writer. I don’t make a distinction, but I like that you do. I like how you write about Jesus. Jack wrote about Jesus, too.”

“Jack?”

“Kerouac. Yes, he wrote about Jesus. He said, ‘If Jesus is the son of God, so am I.’ Do you write about Jesus?”

“No, that was my only story where I mention Jesus.”

“What got you thinking about Jesus?” she asked.

“It was based on a visit I made to the Salvation Army Officer Training Center. I’m was writing a story about it,” I said. “Not a story-type story. An article story. For the Sunday magazine in the Examiner.”  

“You were writing it? What happened?” 

“I didn’t like it, so I wrote the story instead. It came out of one of the interviews I had there. Sort of. I changed things a bit.”

“Did you really ask someone for twenty-three cents? I loved that part. It reminded me of ‘twenty-three skidoo, ’” she added.

“I made that part up. I made up most of it, really. In case you’re thinking I’m strictly autobiographical.”

She laughed and waved to someone she saw walk in. She ran her hand through her short hair, making a ripple in it like a shallow wave, and turned to me. “Everything we write is autobiographical,” she said. “I think Kerouac said that, but I’m not sure.”

“You knew Kerouac?”

“Yes, I knew him. He and I got drunk on wine once. Well, he had wine; I had a beer. I like beer more than wine. We wrote haikus to each other. We didn’t say a word; we just wrote these haikus and passed them back and forth, and that was our conversation.” ruth looked wistful. She fished a cigarette out of her purse and placed it in her cigarette holder.

“I used to have the haikus, but I lost them,” she said.  “I wish I still had them. I’d be a millionaire.” She laughed loudly at this; it struck him that she had told this story many times. “Are you from here?”

“No,” I said. “I’ve been here a year or so.”

“What do you think? Do you like it?”

“I guess,” I said. “Sometimes I do.” I paused, thinking of the litany of things I didn’t like about San Francisco, and saw that she was waiting for me to go on. “I’m not sure if it’s where I should be. I’m thinking about moving to New York. I was just there.”

“Yes, New York is exciting. But so is San Francisco. You just have to discover it. Give it time. I came here in 1952.” She lit her cigarette, lost in the memory of her arrival.

“I had a cab ride into town, and the cabbie asked ‘Where to?’ ” she said. “I told the cabbie I had just arrived and asked him where he thought I belonged. He asked me what I did and I said I’m a poet. He dropped me right off on Columbus and Broadway and said, ‘This is where you belong. ’ I went into a bar called The Black Cat. This one person I met there, I told him that I just arrived and he helped me find a place. A small apartment on Van Ness. Ten dollars a month. The next day I heard typing. I knocked on the door and this person answered. It was Philip Whalen.”

She took a thoughtful drag on her cigarette. 

“Have you heard of him?” she asked.

“No,” I said. 

She smiled and said “We’re a dying breed,” and looked like she was about to say something else but instead her hand gestured to the room, the people, the stool and the mic up front. “This is where you belong,” and then seeing someone she knew she waved, shouting “Gary!” She turned to me. “I have to go talk to Gary. We’ll talk later, I promise.” She ran off to talk to the man named Gary and the two disappeared somewhere in the small bar. 

More poems were read. A young man named Dale who looked to be the same age as me read a piece about riding in the car with his father to New York City from Detroit. He talked about the turnpikes, what they looked like in the timeless eternity of early morning darkness, his father singing as he went through the tunnels on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. He sung a line from one of the songs, and everyone laughed. I was also from Detroit and had also been on those rides to New York with my father on his business trips, and he also sang in the tunnels. I went over to Dale when he was finished, excitedly telling him about this.

“That’s cool,” Dale said. “Your father had business in New York?”

“He was an art dealer; he bought a lot of art in New York,” I said. “He grew up in Brooklyn.” Dale’s father also grew up in Brooklyn, but wasn’t an art dealer.  

 “Yeah. I thought it was kind of a sad piece when I wrote it, but everyone laughed; I didn’t see it as a funny piece.”

“That happens,” I said. I knew the feeling well; the feeling that comes from being caught up in the nostalgia and emotion of the past. And given the comment I heard earlier about being a comedian, at play was also the fear that people would not take anyone to be a “serious writer” who wrote anything remotely humorous. Best not to mention it; Dale was undoubtedly on his way to discover such demons on his own. 

We talked about San Francisco; both of us had the same ambivalence, and without saying as much, it was evident that we were also waiting for something to happen without knowing exactly what that something was. It turned out that we both loved New York, and we wondered whether New York would be better. 

We talked about how we loved walking down Fifth Avenue from Columbus Circle down to Greenwich Village and beyond, taking little detours as we did so, stopping to eat here and there, stopping to look at the books at the Eighth Street Bookstore. We thought we were the only ones who did this.

Someone was getting up to read; a girl named Rita who had a wide toothy smile. “I was just in New York,” she said, adjusting the mic. Dale and I looked at each other in disbelief. “I wrote a poem about it.” Rita’s poem told about the walk she took whenever she was in New York; how she loved to walk down Fifth Avenue starting from around Columbus, taking little detours along the way.

“I don’t believe this,” I said to Dale.

“The library on Forty Second Street, and the people in Bryant Park in back of the library eating lunch, smoking cigarettes, some talking, some staring into space,” she read, taking Dale and I down the walk we had done many times. She took us further along the walk we both knew by heart.

“Air conditioners dripping on Waverly,” she said and Dale said “Oh my God, yes!” We both knew just where it was; a block past Eighth Street next to Washington Square. The summertime; hotter than hell, window air conditioners from the many-storied apartment buildings in Manhattan.

She continued her walk/poem, winding up in Battery Park and concluded “New York, New York, you’re a merry old soul!”

There was polite applause, and when she sat down, our feelings of instant propinquity with her pushed us to make a beeline to where she was sitting. 

“We loved that poem; what a great poem,” I said, breathlessly. “I love taking that walk. We both take that walk. We must talk! Let’s go outside!” I couldn’t believe I was saying all this and from the look of it, she couldn’t either. She laughed, and we all went outside in the soothingly chilly air. 

We were all from somewhere else, we found out, all of us settling in San Francisco. She was from Minneapolis.

“We’re all from the Midwest, then,” I said. “What do you do?”

She was a secretary at a law firm and wrote poems; Dale worked for an engineering firm. I worked for the Environmental Protection Agency, which no one really knew about because it was fairly new. 

“That sounds interesting,” Rita said.

“It isn’t,” I said. “I write letters that make no sense, and then they’re rewritten to make even less sense.”

We all disliked our jobs. And like Dale and I, Rita was also not too happy with San Francisco. “We have so much in common,” I said.

“San Francisco seems like it could be more than what it is; it just seems foreign to me. I’m not sure why,” she said. “Maybe it’s like the Joni Mitchell song: ‘You don’t know what you got ‘til it’s gone.’ ” 

“You mean this moment?” I asked.

“Time will tell,” she said and grinned her alluring toothy grin.

“So there’s hope!” I said. All laughed, and we then stood looking at each other. It seemed that there was so much to say, but nothing more was said. While such situations are often awkward, it didn’t feel that way. 

It was getting late on a weekday; work tomorrow crossed all our minds. Dale and Rita decided to call it a night and went down the street. I stayed where I was, and while trying to decide whether to go back inside or go home, ruth came out. 

“Ah, there you are. I thought you disappeared,” she said.

“Nope. I’m still here.”

“Good. So am I. It’s good to be here,” she said. “Will you be coming back?” 

“I think so. I mean, yes. I come here a lot,” I said.

“Good. I want to hear more of your poetry. I mean stories. You’re a writer, not a poet. I love that. Twenty-three cents! I love it.” She laughed loudly. “Like twenty-three skidoo.”  Her refrain for the night.

“Will you be back?” I asked.

“I never go away,” she said, and went inside.

The two of us met often at Minnie’s after that, though I never saw Dale or Rita again. Later that year, ruth invited me to read at one of her poetry readings held in a coffee-house in North Beach. She performed first; the place was packed with her friends. Then she left, and most of her audience left with her, leaving only five or six people to hear me read. 

Some thought that rude of her, but strangely I did not. We’re all looking for something, I told myself. I continued to see ruth at Minnie’s, but eventually, Minnie’s closed. I would sometimes see ruth, and Jack Micheline and others who I knew from Minnie’s, at bars, cafes, poetry readings, sometimes walking the streets of a constantly changing city that was moving on from the small city it had once been. 

ruth continued to write poems and give readings until her death at the age of ninety-two in 2020. She had developed a large and devoted following of people. Left in her wake were many poems, some of them published in small publications that had long gone out of business, and some captured in documentaries made about her.

I’ve moved on as well. I still write stories – not poems – and still consider myself to be a writer rather than a poet, if I have to choose, though I’m not asked to do so. I often think back to the night I met ruth at Minnie’s, how the magic of the moment escaped me. There have been other moments that escaped me over the years, of course. How can there not be? Moments now lost but loved as discoveries, like memories of a child now grown.

-

Originally published in Beatdom Magazine May 2024.