Dogtown Ink

I met a lot of peculiar and interesting people at Venice West Café — none more interesting (or more peculiar) than poet Claire Horner. He read at VWC alongside people like Bukowski and Taylor Meade, and peddled mimeographed “books” of his poetry with names like “Please don’t step on the Bacon”.

In 1965, when I was fifteen, I started hanging around the Venice West Cafe, a dank little hole in the wall with wooden benches and tables. Of course they served espresso. And the place was always full of (to me at that age) coolly romantic hipsters, complete with shades, turtlenecks — yeah, even berets.

“Poetry is a way of taking life by the throat” said Robert Frost. In Sharp Teeth, a novel written in the freest of free verse by Toby Barlow, poetry is evidently taking a vicious bite down to the esophagus, ripping apart bloody limbs, gnawing on bone and sinew and discarding the refuse in the trash can of a gas station bathroom.

Readings and literary events take place several nights a week at cultural landmark Beyond Baroque, so make sure to check Beyond Baroque Events Calendar