I last lived in Berkeley in 1984, my senior year of college. One day that Spring, I was sitting in the Cafe Mediterraneum on Telegraph Avenue, when the well-known street poet Julia Vinograd walked up hawking her books. I was fresh out of cash at that point, having blown my last buck on a cup of oolong. But I did have a stack of photos of various tissues taken with the electron microscope that very morning. So we swapped-- one book of poetry for one electron micrograph of cardiac muscle.
Last week, I was back in Berkeley to give a seminar and I wandered into the Med, feeling nostalgic. Who was still there peddling her poetry, 24 years later? Julia Vinograd of course. Her newest collection from Zeitgeist Press is called "America is Hiding Under My Bed." It's good stuff and a deal at only five bucks. From her poem We Need More Words:
We need living words, dangerous and shining.
Words we can light like farts
Because it's dark outside.
Portrait by Deborah Vinograd