Small Press Poet 2

Back in Manhattan (1974), the Scribblers, began as an open reading on West 85th Street. Vincenetta Gunn, an actresss, and I were living together in a brownstone. Suzie Kaufman was our next door neighbor. Vinnie enjoyed entertaining. She agreed to host the poets who came in from the Street. Suzie and I designed a small poster which we hung on a nearby lamppost. An Australian entrepreneur, Norman Bright, arrived and promised to make us all famous. He gave us the name Scribblers after Jonathan Swift’s Martin Scriblerus Society. Norman was working for Wisdom’s Child, a weekly penny saver that listed cultural events among its classified ads. Through his contacts we were able to host a weekly Saturday morning poetry reading at the English Pub across the street from Carnegie Hall. Mary Grace Bookhart invited the Scribblers to read at the Sunday evening coffee house at the Church of Saint Paul and Saint Andrew on West 86th Street. We attracted young writers like Clint McCown, Patricia and Russell Kelly, Marty Asher, Janet Bloom, Billy Drago, Arlene Rosen, Matthew Laufer, Magdalena Gomez, Barbara Holland, and Lydia Raurell. Rissa Korsun, a senior poet, who had trouble climbing the stairs to our apartment, brought us to the Goddard Riverside Community Center where Patricia helped us publish the Scribblers newsletter.

Scribblers 1