Gerald Nicosia, the Proust-cum-Don Quijote of the Beats, looks at Jack Micheline, whom he calls "the last Bohemian poet." He makes the case for Micheline's poetry, which is important. The so-called "Beats" left behind a lot of poets who were too drunk to get on the ship before it sailed. However, if "the Beats" are in quotes (and they have to be because they exist mainly as a media fiction) then there was no boat. But there were a lot ofpoets who clambered atop the drunken boats in the imaginary port full of them. Jack Micheline was one of them. He was a good poet.
This collaboration by Ted Berrigan and Anne Waldman rocked the Seventies. In the opinion of the Corpse board, which met in a secret session in Little Panther Cave, this is the greatest last poem of the 20th Century. This is also one of the first live readings shot in video: its techno-pedigree is equivalent to the first poetry recording on a wax cylinder of Lord Alfred Tennyson's "Charge of the Light Brigade."
