Alejandro Murguía, Michael Koch, and Cara Vida

Ye culture vultures of refined disposition, you’re not going to want to miss this one, at the Beat Museum: three very original voices from out the depths and breaths of poetry will deliver unto the public altar the treasures and jewels they have ferreted out of the soil and mists of human complexity.

Cara Vida

An unrelenting hipster whose eyes remain wide and attentive even in the smokiest of anabolic poker games. Part vaudevillian, part free-lance detective, she shoots from the hip before the fog of your favorite assumptions can obscure the mounting insurance premiums that are burgling their way into you living room, where you were content to see replays of the best of your favorite Ed Sullivan shows. Her respect for the experiences we all must endure alights like crow in a rented tuxedo, the perfume of the circus and carnival intact…

Michael Koch

Artist, musician, and brilliant translator of both Spanish and French is my favorite high-wire act of the sublime.
I can still see the delicate starlight in the eyes of the alligators who had invited him for dinner the very night he’d resolved to fast in contempt of the bloated of dictators ever spoon-fed by the slimy cuisines of imperialism…He’s the kind of guy who opts for the hole in donut for his last meal, and before the firing-squad can apply the blindfold, he’s already adjusted his 3d glasses. Life is a spectacle, and this is Koch as Koch can.

Last and not least the Poet Laureate of San Francisco, the great

Alejandro Murguía

That rarest of all things, a real revolutionary, and a man who has put his boots where his mouth is, and every bit as funny and real about it as Ernesto Cardenal. No stranger to the ironies and complexities of belief, he has come through the fray with a clear mind and conscience, and a heart full of wit and resolve. A man not likely to back down from a good fight, he’s emerged from the crucible a gentleman and a scholar, with a keen and relentless sense of self-examination, humor and love. And you’ll be relieved to know that he’s never had to stoop to “political correctness” because indeed he lives his politics!

—Ronald F. Sauer