Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without books?

Where would we be without good?

No, to bird.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we be without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt. This is Bookworm. At a certain point,

the center of L.A. poetry was a art center called Beyond Baroque. It was founded by George Drury Smith.

Most L.A. writers and poets passed through there at one time or another. Members of the band X.

Tom Waits, but at a certain point, a new generation arrived.

Its captain was the writer and poet, Dennis Cooper, but present as well were Bob Flanagan,

Amy Gersler, David Trinidad, Shary Rose was in many ways its recorder,

she took photographs, many of which can be still seen at her archive at USC.

It was a real poetry scene, and members from this poetry scene would welcome young New York poets to come read it Beyond Baroque, and when we would go to New York, we would be brought to the St. Mark's Poetry Project.

It was pretty thrilling.

And in the last throws, a person came from the world of punk rock. Now, for anyone who's listening, who I've forgotten,

this means you, Jack Skelly, this means several others. I'm not forgetting you intentionally.

I'm forgetting you because the subject of our show today is Ed Smith. He came

from the world of punk rock. None of us had ever seen anyone like him before. I suspect there

wasn't anyone like him, even in the punk scene. He was amazing. And now David Trinidad,

editor extraordinaire, has gotten from the over a hundred notebooks that Edd left behind him, I think, kept by his wife?

...