NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX : NIGHTMARE ON C STREET by CHRISTINE TRZYNA

This was a feature article in the November 1994 Next Magazine, by me, Christine Trzyna.

NIGHTMARE ON C STREET

Last night Pan was trying to seduce me into the Poetry Cult. Maybe it wasn't the old cloven footed trickster himself, but a naked surfer waving the latest copy of Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, from Dutton's. These definitive reference books for the 90's wordsmith keep flying off Dutton's dusty NoHo shelves like B-52's with UFOs on their tails. Maybe Pan, knowing I'm a poet, didn't think his stupendous butt or the long slender fingers of a slide-to-hell guitarist were enough!

He was dripping with seaweed. One piece of it hung seductively over his right nipple. He was carrying a surfboard with a screaming lime NEXT...logo airbrushed on it. Gosh! He looked like Killer Dana's Gary Wright...or maybe it was GMT himself!

His voice was full of maple syrup. "Hey you sweet young Pancake, you," he said. Definitely not Gary or GMT. "Wouldn't you like to enter into the dark den of the gypsies, tramps, and thieves?" he said.

He went on to mention the allure of the Anti-Menites, the Idealogues, and the Revolutionaries, like Psycho Boy did last month, but they all sound so like Jungian archetypes. This was my dream and I wanted crazy Sigmund and his coke addiction.

"Get involved in the poetry scene and before you know it, you'll get all the tarot and rune readings you ever wanted. Married women will turn gay and try to seduce you while their husbands are out paying off the charge cards. Pretty soon, even you will be working for cash under the table," Pan said.

"Wait a moment, Pan. This sounds a lot like a Music Business seduction to me. Did we meet at Lollapalooza? I asked.

"Nah. Too muddy," he replied. "Listen, Christine, follow me and you'll be important. You'll have friends all over the place. You'll drive...drive..drive to readings., No matter what, people will clap for you. I'll see what I can do to rig the slams. By the 30th of the month you'll be frantically searching for NEXT... so you can intelligently plan your month. And you'll start drinking coffee, even though it does taste like crap and puts cellulite on your thighs," he added, glaring at my skinny rump in a way that made me tremble.

"NO! NO! I heard myself moan. But I had sleep paralysis and my efforts to flee were canned. Somewhere in the background, like all good feminists, I heard Mick Jagger singing, "Under My Thumb."

"All I ever wanted was financial security!" I yelled. He vanished into thin air, but I heard his laugh all the way down the beach.

If you're reading this propaganda, you may already me a member of the poetry CULT. And Darling, there is no escape.

C 1994, 2008 Christine Trzyna

Commentary: When I read this silly article years later, I was impressed with my own sense of nonsensical fun and realized it had been a long time since I had written so freely. This was a first write so there wasn't time for both the editor in my head and the press deadline. Of course I see myself trying to tickle (with a jab) certain members of the poetry scene back then.

Duttons closed about a 2 years ago. It was a North Hollywood tradition. Hello to Dave Dutton! (The place is now a yoga studio!)

C 2016  Christine Trzyna / Christine Trzyna Blogspot

WE ARE EVERYWHERE (NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX)

From the March 1996 Next Magazine

WE ARE EVERYWHERE

by Christine Trzyna

Poets are sometimes performers, sometimes producers, sometimes workshop leaders or magazine editors. These are the high profile poets we know of. But poets can be found everywhere, even in unexpected places. AT LAVC's computer lab, where I culled my poetry file for an eventual chapbook, other students were surprised to see my poems making it through the printer between spreadsheets and graphic presentations.

You're the poet?" they asked. Later a woman timidly slipped me the song lyrics she'd written and a Russian man, an intense immigrant, presented me with a thick manila envelope and dashed out. It was full of poems he'd published in a Yankee literary journal.

Some complain about not making money through poetry. Conversely others feel that poetry is tainted by ambitions that include financial reward. But poets are not unemployed - they can be found in every profession,

Poets make "real money" in "real" jobs in the "real" world. I was once a member of a writing group that included a jet propulsion lab engineer, a landscaped designer, a telephone operator, and a retired IRS officer. Perhaps as we gossip, asking what certain poets "real" names are, we should also ask, what do they really do for a living? A quick survey of my poetry pals includes an office manager, a computer specialist, a teacher, a sociologist, a construction worker, a waiter, a cabdriver, temporary workers and coffeehouse counter clerks. Poetry is written from a vast variety of viewpoints and on "unpoetic" subjects. We are not stereotypes. We are everywhere.

What I disdain is the way some poets judge other poets, rather than praising diversity.

"Not really a poet" - a person who also indulges in other forms of writing.

"Idiot Savant" - a person whose great talent attracts jealous backstabbers.

"No Talent Bum" - a person who could give a damn about literary pretension.

"Bastard/Bitch" - a person who dares to read work inspired by bad romance, even though the ex is staring them down in the room.

"Overachiever" (No such thing!) - a person who keeps trying to perform although they bomb.

Worse of all "LA poet", as in, "Don't get known as an LA Poets!" - a person who is not approved of by the snob establishment, who some point to as "in San Francisco" or "Poets & Writers," or "The Lannan Foundation."

Such comments make me sad for the era when community had something to do with upholding each other's creative path. It makes me understand why some poets prefer to write, and remain, in secret.

***

Affirmed August 2025  First posted September 7 2008

FROM RIGHT TO JONG by Christine Trzyna (NEXT MAGAZINE redux)

FROM RIGHT TO JONG by Christine Trzyna

(This article appeared in July 1994 Next Magazine.)

I've worked a number of trade shows before, but the ABA Convention was the best. The Orange Ocean Press Booth, ion the Small Press area, was home base for me and visited by a horde of O.O.P's published poets.

When Moss Sheridan showed up with a substantial tote of autographed books - one from Allen Ginsberg- we realized that for a paltry $1. donation to help rebuild LA's earthquake ravaged libraries, we too could be the owner of a brand new hardback. The PR people at the convention center claimed 30,000 were in attendance and the book signing lines were hot and incredibly long - definitely requiring cushy flats to endure the waiting. I, never the less, circled in my corporate heels and braved the lines.

Somebody had to keep plugging in the Orange Ocean Press and surfing videos at the booth, so I planned my autograph hunting with discrimination. Though, OK, once I escaped by telling the guys I had to go to the ladies room. My prime target: Erica Jong.

I love Erica Jong and through thousands of books have passed through my life, each of hers remain in my permanent collection, making it through my many moves. But something went wrong and I found myself in the Disney gate instead, where I could only see her from afar. If I'd had more than a buck on me, I would've tried to "tip" the gate-keeper; instead I told the truth, tears swilling in my eyes. I got sympathy and was allowed int the FEAR OF FIFTY line.

Although I am not of her generation, Ms. Jong's seven poetry books and six novels, her many essays, have always spoke to me. She has always written honestly about the struggle for a woman to be an artist/writer/per. As I waited, I thought of all the things I I would say to her when it was my turn. When the time came I was too dumbfounded by emotion to do anything but smile.

FEAR OF FIFTY, due out in August (1994), contains an entire chapters, "Seducing the Muse," which is dedicated to her experiences as a poet back when a woman was called "poetess." It includes the ambivalence of sending work out, the glory of success, the poetry scene in which she read, and the way the publishing world turned its back on poets.

To quote Ms. Jong, "I returned again and again to poetry after each novel because poetry was guaranteed to be obscure, thus ambition-proof, so it was possible to write it with little thought for the outside worlds... The best you can do is work at not caring too much about the outer symbols and continuing to do whatever it is that centers you and makes you remember your true self... Poetry has remained that for me."

Affirmed August 2025  First posted September 2, 2008

NEXT MAGAZINE REDUX - Update

Earlier in this blog I mentioned that I would be presenting articles I wrote which were published in NEXT Magazine years ago. NEXT Magazine was a poetry scene magazine in start up when I gave a lot of energy to it for well over a year of my life. Like many such start up magazines it started up and sputtered, deficit of enough volunteers who shared the vision of what it might be by the editor and owner of the magazine, G. Murray Thomas. Like poetry magazines in particular it was started on small funds and failed to attract the kind of important advertising necessary to any magazine on any subject. But what was worse was the well known "fact" that poets were a stereotypically poverty-stricken group, bringing their own tea bags into independent artsy "coffee houses" and performance rooms because they just wanted the free hot water. Seems hardly anyone believed poets would read the magazine, read the ads, and actually spend.

Dealing with the poetry scene and the reality of poets who played upon those stereotypes as well was my forte. Coming up between music videos of songs that have come into my consciousness recently, I'll be running some of my articles from so long ago. Coming up first FROM RIGHT TO JONG, my review of the American Booksellers Convention of 1994...

Search for Erica Jong elsewhere on my blog...

Christine

Affirmed August 2025  Orignally posted August 30, 2008

Next...Redux THE BERLIN WALL IS DOWN - IT'S TIME THE ORANGE CURTAIN WENT TOO!

THE BERLIN WALL IS DOWN

IT'S TIME THE ORANGE CURTAIN WENT TOO!

(A feature article in Next... magazine circa 1994)

By Christine Trzyna

Southern California poets, all writers, all artists, have unique rights and responsibilities. We illuminate or cast shadows, have the power to increase understanding or wreck havoc. We can choose to work within the stratification of Southland society or vacation into another culture just a few miles away.

A decade ago as a new immigrant to California, and a neophyte California, I came here "knowing" only that Watts was the slums and Hollywood, wealthy and glamorous. Hollywood is in the process of urban renewal. Its very pavement, embedded with honorary stars, needs sweeping. Fooled by neighborhoods of houses with grassy lawns, I drove fearlessly through Watts, my Yankee points of reference rocked with the police pulled me over and told me to get out.

I can now call myself a native, having served their prerequisite seven years. I seem to have taken root in a place that takes itself seriously enough to call itself No Ho, yea, like So Ho in New york, it's getting know for its creative culture. I gradually learned which streets are "safer." Eight years ago I placed a personal ad and first learned that men from Santa Monica, only a half hour away, think Valley Girls are geographically undesirable. In Los Angeles, the West-siders are horrible snobs about us residents of The Big Valley. But ask any Angeleno, event he supposed enlightened ones, and they'll tell you terrible things about Orange County.

Determined to know my city's history and neighborhoods and encounter culture, I got the Thomas Brothers Map books, the AAA tour guides, and religiously referenced the LA Weekly, Reader, and publications like Out Loud to fill my free time. I'd make a fantastic tour guide of the city of Los Angeles. But I still don't know a thing about Orange County. It seems the Orange Curtain has kept me out.

Last spring I made a rare trip to Dana Point to participate in a Paper Shredders reading at a cool surf shop. We surf poets have since been pretty well received. The stereotype of the surfer is a guy with a three word vocabulary, someone instinctual who doesn't think too much or too deep - certainly not enough to write poetry. And the stereotype of the poets - all angst and intensity, extremely verbose. Can surfers wear black berets? Do poets get tans or go about in flip-flops? The Paper Shredders readings may just be particularly fascinating because they bust though some of that old-think that can do us all in.

When I told the Orange County poets that I'd always heard there was no culture in Orange County, they responded by inviting me to their readings. They pointed out that the Laguna Poets have the oldest poetry series in Southern California. And then one of the men there said, "When I have to drive to Santa Barbara, I keep both hands on the wheel and just keep going, I can't relax until I cross out of LA into Ventura County." This from someone who has fearlessly tackled Hawaiian surf?

If any one's going to cross boundaries, it's going to be the artists and thinkers. Let's join together, become foreign exchange poets, and make Next... Magazine a vehicle that we can use to participate in a "society" that disregards the status quo.

Christine Trzyna

original C by Christine Trzyna 1994 C 2008 all rights reserved includinig Internet and International Rights


Commentary 2008 : As it turned out, I myself was unable to travel very far to read poetry, and I found myself either a confident performer who seemed to be in some sort of symbiosis with the audience or a shaky nervous wreck of a reader who looked out upon the audience and saw a sea of gaping faces expecting me to pull off something "important." Eventually, I also turned off the reading scene. Too much earnestness at the time, I suppose. There was also this snobby idea afloat about who was a "real" poet. I don't think I made the cut. Early in my writing I felt it was very important to be poetical in a short story.
Poetical + the "Writing Well" philosophy of William Zinsser" = that was my formula. Some people thought my short fiction at the time was "too easy." Contrast that with the stream of consciousness, Doors and the Beat poetry that had such meaning it , well, had no meaning.

Affirmed August 2025  Orginally posted 1/12/2008

Next Magazine Redux CHRISTINE TRZYNA articles coming up soon!

I recently found my collection of Next..., a thin newspaper sheet magazine founded by G. Murray Thomas and Lawrence Shultz, in support of the Southern California poetry community which went into start up in 1994. I was one of the original volunteers for Next... after meeting Murray and Lawrence when we did a surf poetry reading in Santa Barbara, California, and a proponent of the burgeoning "street" scene and open mic phenomena at the time, particularly at the NoHo independent "coffee house" (actually more of a creativity space since the coffee was pitch in the pot) called The Iguana.

I rarely worked in the office of Next. Instead I responded to thematics and deadlines from a distance and distributed copies to various venues in my area such as Emersons Coffee House and California State University - Northridge. My writerly contributions to Next... were with the understanding that all rights returned to me after printing. I have to say while I was reading my articles thirteen years later I felt a sense of pride in my writing. At the time I wrote these articles I was a less secure writer primarily because I was not on the right side of the politics of the poetry scene. It has taken this distance to acknowledge my very original "voice" and viewpoint, and to no longer feel the disapproval that came my way because some readers thought I was supposed to be in service of their vision.

Soon I'll be sharing my articles and providing some commentary on my own thoughts and feelings at the time I wrote the articles and the reactions that readers had to them.

Christine Trzyna

................... Stay tuned for Next... Redux.

Affirmed August 2025