San Diego Reader

• Always three in red and six in black;
• always at least one lined face;
• always a few on display;
• usually a headache, and absolutely always
• a hangover;
• 2 or 3 God-struck ones.
• 2 blond kids hoping to get laid.
• 6 ex-junkies, 4 homosexuals.
• 17 bisexuals, and 2 sad celibates;
• possibly four with talent, all
• secretly knowing themselves the nation’s greatest;
• always two dropped-out musicians:
• “I used to play alto,”
• “I played drums”;
• one ex-beauty, one nervous lady with short hair.
• one male late-adolescent sexual posturer;
• always a babbling refugee from hallucinogens;
• one with a long poem called “The Ultimate List,”
• one meshugina talking about corduroy tulips.
• and one Visiting Star.

Dan Propper (1937–2003) grew up in Brooklyn. His poem “The Fable of the Final Hour,” from a collection of his poetry of the same title, was published in Seymour Krim’s famous anthology The Beats. In 1977, Energy Press published a collection of Propper’s Pablo Neruda translations, Pablo Neruda: 23 Poems, and that same year a full collection of his poems, The Tale of the Amazing Tramp, was published by Cherry Valley Editions. Three years later, Energy Press published For Kerouac in Heaven. Associated with the Beat Poets, Dan Propper spent a number of years living in Ramona, California, and the final years of his life in the New York towns of Woodstock and Saugerties. “One, Two, Many Poetry Readings” is taken from his collection The Tale of the Amazing Tramp.