“o po-ets, you should getta job.” — Charles Olson
And if no one will pay you more than minimum wage, why not just set yourself for hire?
Meet the Long Beach typewriter poet helping strangers navigate heartbreak
As a thought experiment, imagine the Venice Boardwalk with fifty such individuals as Nico Patino offering to write a poem for anyone who stopped and requested one. It’s probably the case that Patino would get more requests than many of the other poets. There are several conjectures I could offer about why Patino would attract more passersby, but all of them involve trust. It’s not that easy to write a poem that doesn’t judge the subject of the poem with words “not untrue and not unkind.” With that talent at work, Patino has become the founder of “The Predisposed School of Poetry.” I don’t mean the title of this school in any way to disparage Mr. Patino. In fact, I hope he pounds out a short statement along the lines of O’Hara’s “Personism” that he will attach to his first self-published collection.
I cannot help but admire him.
About Bill Mohr