Poetry Books a Room at the Chateau : Nationally known poets are paired with actors at free readings in the Hollywood hotel’s elegant lobby

Los Angeles poets and their fans survive on scraps, gathering in cramped coffeehouses and bookstores or the stale air of university auditoriums. This city that rolls out searchlights for the opening of a mini-mall relegates its verse to dimly lit rooms.

Spartanism is certainly a badge of distinction--it would be difficult to imagine the raw words of Charles Bukowski emerging from the rarefied atmosphere of a Parisian salon--but perhaps, from time to time, the local poetry scene deserves better.

“Luxury,” said S.X. Rosenstock of the Poetry Society of America. “Poetry should be presented in an elegant environment like something you imbibe.”

Like sipping sherry at an afternoon party, said Andre Balazs, president of the Chateau Marmont hotel. So he and Rosenstock and several comrades have organized a series of monthly readings that begin today at 4 p.m. in the relative splendor of the hotel’s lobby. The free events will pair a nationally known poet--Mark Strand or Carolyn Kizer, for instance--with an actor such as John Lithgow, Helen Shaver or Tim Curry.

Today’s reading will feature poet Amy Gerstler with Michael Ontkean, of “Twin Peaks” fame, who will read works of an established poet.

“The actors won’t read their own poetry,” Rosenstock warned. “We’re not Cafe Largo.”

The Chateau may seem an unlikely haven if only because it is a symbol of Hollywood’s halcyon days. Yet it is a symbol because it served as a refuge from the madness. Actors, musicians and screenwriters traditionally locked themselves away for weeks at a time, either to concentrate on their work or escape it, in this grand palais of the Sunset Strip.

Looming over the boulevard, the European-style hotel bespeaks seclusion as much as luxury. The wood-floored lobby, often unpopulated, is furnished with thick couches and wing-back chairs. Gothic arched windows present a view of an English garden bordered by slender Italian cypresses and an immense palm, a space that is intruded upon only by a towering Marlboro Man billboard adjacent to the grounds.

“I think a lot of people will be curious about the setting,” said Gerstler, who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her 1990 collection “Bitter Angel.” “It’s very highbrow.”

The seed for the series was planted in February when the Chateau hosted a benefit that included several poets, a far greater number of actors and “a hundred paparazzi,” Balazs said. Women’s Wear Daily dubbed it the “Hip Poets Society.” Balazs had harbored visions of a more pacific gathering.

But the reading’s success attracted the attention of the New York-based Poetry Society of America, which had previously limited its activities--readings, workshops, contests--to the eastern half of the country. Balazs is a longtime friend of Elise Paschen, the society’s president, and the two began plotting.

Their strategy relied on upping the poetic ante, bringing in visitors such as Strand, the poet laureate of the United States, and nationally respected locals such as David St. John and Carol Muske. The actors could attract listeners who might not otherwise come to a poetry reading, but to subdue any risk of a circus atmosphere, the organizers decided to present only one celebrity per reading. They enlisted Darrell Larson, an actor and director who had gathered an impressive list of film and television names to read short stories for the current “Great Writers Series” at Hollywood’s MET Theater.

“With the poetry series, there was this question: Will serious poets want to read with, well, actors?” Larson said.

The answer was yes.

“Film and TV are the most popular mediums in America. Literature and poetry are possibly the most under-recognized art forms,” Gerstler said. “What seems really generous is that these actors who get a lot of attention are shining their light on people who don’t get many kudos.”

The actors seem equally eager. Curry, whose career has encompassed everything from “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” to the Broadway version of “Amadeus” to playing in a rock ‘n’ roll band, believes that both sides can benefit from what he calls the “cross-fertilization of artists.” For Ontkean, the dual performances hold more personal relevance.

“I was introduced to poetry by hearing it rather than reading it,” he said. “I lived with my grandmother and she was blind. The Braille Society in Canada would send records every month.

“I have these memories of sitting with her and listening to great poetry coming over a scratchy record player.”

The verse delivered at the Chateau may take additional luster, according to Balazs. At the February reading, he said, recitals were spirited because the poets were infected by the actors’ flamboyance. Having actors bring their stage talents to bear on verse is no doubt seductive, but both Ontkean and Curry warned that there are inherent dangers.

“When poets read their own work, they tend to deliver the words in dry, unemotional ways which reveal the true structure of the poem,” said Curry, who will appear with James Merrill in February. “Actors can have too romantic an attitude.”

Such drama would be no stranger to this hotel. Howard Hughes once spied on sunbathers from his penthouse railing here and Edith Piaf sang in her room. Larson is hoping that Sunday afternoon readings at the Chateau will become a mainstay in the literary life of the city, satisfying people who have been heretofore neglected.

“There are millions of literate people in the Los Angeles basin,” he said. “I believe that.”