THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, March 14, 1996 TAG: 9603120094
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: SAM MARTINETTE
LENGTH: Medium: 70 lines
When a colleague called to advise me that there would be a sort of literary tea party at Coffee Tea & Sympathy next Monday night to showcase area authors whose work appears in the new Tidewater Community College Blackwater Review, it brought back memories of Ghent in 1974, when a group of aspiring writers gathered to promote our own literary magazine, sponsoring readings at Cogan's.
Monday night's reading will begin at 7:30 and will be held in the eclectic Victorian parlor, or ``chandelier room'' of the Colonial Avenue eatery. Blackwater Review co-editors Robert P. Arthur and Juliet Crichton will read poetry, and Port Folio film writer Tim Cooper will read the prose of fellow columnist M.F. Onderdonk. Karl Bermann will read his own prose.
Any room with a chandelier is a far cry from the setting of the first poetry reading we staged that cold November night so many years ago to start what eventually became The Ghent Quarterly, which was essentially the start of my professional career as a writer. We circulated fliers and brought five poets together - one of whom refused to read at all and a second who insisted on reading twice - charged a dollar a head at the door and began a six-month-long march to publication that would far exceed our wildest dreams.
I had been writing poetry and short stories for years, trying to teach myself the craft white working at the Social Service Bureau (as it was called then), when I realized it was time to sink or swim. I quit my job, determined to survive as a writer. Being young and ignorant of what was to come provided much bravado. Rent was cheap in Ghent, and there were plenty of other artists and writers to visit for a night out.
A review in Santa Fe accepted one of my poems and led to a plan by a group of us to publish our own work. Our combined desire to express ourselves led to the founding of the quarterly, which never met a single deadline and was more of an annual than a periodical during its short life. But we found we were onto something as people turned out in droves at Cogan's for poetry and prose readings, one-act plays and jazz jam sessions.
When we finally published our first issue in April of 1975 we had an interview with exiled Russian poet Joseph Brodsky and some of the first poetry he had written in English. He would win the Nobel Prize for Literature a little more than a decade later and recently passed away. Other contributions came from all over the United States as word spread through a literary underground that a new publication was born.
Being editor of an unfunded art review is no way to get rich, however, and later that summer I took a job as a night manager of an interesting little tavern near City Park called Sir Buddy's, which led me to The Intermission, back in Ghent, then Courtney's and so on. My combined experiences as a writer and restaurateur led me to this column in January 1988, and there you have a direct line from a single published poem to a career in words.
That is why I have a soft spot for any sort of poetry and prose reading. The fact that Bob Arthur was published in the second issue of The Ghent Quarterly and that a review of a book by poet Jane Ellen Glasser - one of the founding editors of the earlier magazine - appears in Blackwater Review also brings it full-circle for me.
As for the fare at Coffee Tea & Sympathy (612 Colonial Ave.) the night of the reading, I'm told that soups, salads, sandwiches and omelets will be available, and that there is usually a pasta dish in the $6.96 to $11.95 range. There is no ABC, but a range of espresso drinks, specialty coffees and imported teas are available. Call 622-8933 for information or to let them know you're coming.
I'll tell you more about Coffee Tea & Sympathy in a later column. The Mrs. wants to go one Sunday afternoon to high tea (4-6 p.m./$8.95), and we have to get a baby sitter for the three kids. My, how times have changed. by CNB