The love affair between pen and paper

Forty-year Newport Beach resident Lee Mallory said he was once voted

one of OC Weekly’s “31 Scariest People” because of his in-your-face

delivery and his incessant and shameless promotion of his poetry

shows. It’s an honor he embraces.

He’ll get in your face and creep you out with a lustful swagger,

but that’s what separates Mallory, 58, from the rest. He says it

drills up respect for an endangered art form. A publisher of seven

poetry books, he’s helping the movement along.

“To paraphrase Jack London, I’d rather go out like a blazing

meteor than a dull, sleeping planet,” Mallory said.

As a performance poet, Mallory lyrically seeks refuge from

traditional meter and what he calls “singsong moon-tune-June” verse,

promoting instead the outspoken, free form spoken word at Alta Coffee

House in Newport Beach and the Gypsy Den Cafe in Costa Mesa.

In addition to his own readings, Mallory teaches English at Santa

Ana College and promotes young, edgy, lovesick wordsmiths for the

coffeehouse performances. Chris Tannahill and Leigh White, poets with

attitudes and rocky pasts, should fit the bill at 8 p.m. Wednesday at

Alta, he said.

The Daily Pilot’s Jeff Benson sat down with Mallory at Alta Coffee

House to discuss his self-described disregard for rhyme and reason.

You’ve been called ‘The Love Poet.’ How well does that title fit

you?

I’ve also been called the grandfather of Orange County poetry. At

least they didn’t say “great-grandfather.”

Somebody dubbed me the love poet, which sounded so hokey when I

first heard it. It sounded like some late night disc jockey from

Oklahoma broadcasting over staticky radio. But then when I stopped

and thought about it and I looked at my work, everything was about

love and male and female relationships.

Then I thought, “OK, I’ll take the rap.” As stereotypical as it

sounded, I just had to embrace it. Then I asked myself the question,

“What’s more important than love?” Beyond the hype, beyond the war,

beyond the empty communication, beyond the stresses between the

sexes, what we need overall is something that’ll bring us all

together -- and that’s love. The poem is the best way to telegraph

it.

How much of an impact does performance have on what you do?

The performance dimension is so important. You could call yourself

a performance poet, but you need to be a good poet first. I see some

performance poets so dramatic and elegant that they can stand up and

read the Sears catalog and make it seem like art. But that’s when a

seasoned poet has to look at the poem on the page first and say, “Is

it worth the time? Is it worthy of publication?”

Then, if it’s a good “page poem,” or “print work” as we call it in

the industry, the poet can add the performance dimension -- the

dramatics, the hot breath on the face, the intensity of the eye

contact.

How do people take to this type of poetry, compared with what

people have been taught?

People who came to the poetry readings at Alta and the Gypsy Den

would be surprised, sensitized and shocked. I think 75% would be

surprised and 75% would come back and be hooked. They’d suddenly see

the relevance and the stereotypes that they thought poetry was would

be shattered.

In this age of political sound bites, cryptic e-mail and shock

radio, we need poetry more than ever. In its inspirational sense,

it’s communication on its most visceral and seminal level. We make it

honest, we make it from the heart and we craft it into the best

free-standing work we can.

Why do you think the stereotypes have negatively affected seasoned

performance poets such as yourself?

We’re working against generations of bad teachers of poetry who

have turned people off, and who browbeat the students with rhyme

scheme and meter. Teachers get so focused on technique and forms and

traditional poets’ and mechanics that the young students can’t see

the relevance to their own lives.

How else do you try to shatter the stereotypes?

I’ve run 11 marathons. Running is a metaphor for writing. They’re

both very hard and they’re both very lonely. A runner looks at 26

miles on the hot streets of Los Angeles, while the writer at midnight

faces the horror of the blank page.

Part of the reason I run is to shatter stereotypes that poets are

effete intellectuals who only come out after dark.

How does teaching writing at the community college level compare

with inspiring young performers to express themselves verbally?

Talk about teaching both ends of the spectrum! During the day I

teach letter writing, paragraph writing and support sentences. Then I

step into a different setting at night -- show me the free verse,

tell me about imagery. Make me understand the wedding of sound and

sense. Make me know how poetry is the perfect expression of the

deepest sentiments. Make it come to life.

I also teach them the importance of writing for making things

permanent, for recording high moments in life.

I’ve written 3,400 pages of journals because I write every night.

It’s important for a writer because a single journal entry may become

a work point, a centerpiece in a poem or a short story.

Does living in Newport Beach affect your poetry?

Living in Newport has always been kind of an anomaly for me. One

luxury I give myself is that living near water helps my writing. It’s

really kind of a paradox because I work in Santa Ana, which is like a

whole other world. I refuse to get a cell phone, I don’t carry a

pager and I commute to work by bus.

But a poet needs some “meat” for writing. You keep things in

perspective.

What is Orange County about? Poetry can help with that, too.

Orange County is materialistic and politically insular. Poetry, in

overarching spirituality, in its basics and its emotions, can soften

some of the crassness and materialism that modern society is all

about.

I make time for my surviving daughter, Natalee, because she’s all

I really have left. I lost another daughter, Misty, in 1999. I

probably belong in Santa Ana because that’s where my values are, but

most poets are that way. We embrace each other.

Do you dedicate any of your writing to Misty’s memory?

Someone once said, “Lee, if you died, what would you do with all

these notebooks?” At that point, I had two daughters and I said, “If

I died tomorrow, take all these notebooks, give them to my kids and

tell them, ‘This was your dad, in all his hopes and dreams, in his

successes and his failures. In his best and worst moments, this was

your dad.’”

Misty had just published her first poetry book right before she

died at 23. I had to name it, and I called it “Two Sides Now.” She

was suddenly gone, but all of her writings talk back to me.

Writing makes you permanent. If you die tomorrow, writing will

survive you. Writing will make you immortal.

Suddenly she was gone, but her book is still on the coffee table.

When I want to talk to her, she’s there.

The point is that I have her book and I learned my own lesson. We

leave our own legacies and I had to take my own advice.