San Francisco’s Finest Raconteur Shares Stage with The City’s Dullest
Ernie Beyl and John Briscoe will read from their newest books Tuesday, April 4 at 5:30 p.m. on the patio of Sam’s Grill at 374 Bush Street in San Francisco. Appetizers will be complimentary and drinks abundant (though not complimentary). The books will be available for purchase.
Globe-trotting Ernie Beyl, a fixture in the San Francisco writing scene for sixty years, always returns to sink back in the comfort of his 49-square-mile home that is San Francisco, and tell in the bars and write in his columns of his travels. But his best stories are always of San Francisco. A verb should be formed from raconteur, because only such a verb could convey how Ernie affectionately writes of his town and its people. San Francisco Appetites and Afterthoughts, recently published by Grizzly Peak Press, is the finest walking tour of San Francisco there is. It’s all here—the jazz, comedy, the poetry scene, the restaurants and all the bars and celebrities famous and infamous. You’ll find yourself reading it more and more slowly, lest it end.
Ernie’s book can be purchased at City Lights, Books Inc., and all reputable and, come to think of it disreputable, book sellers in the Bay Area. It can also be ordered from Amazon:
You can purchase the book at this event for $17.95, cash, credit card or check payable to Grizzly Peak Press.
Briscoe’s The Lost Poems of Cangjie, published by Risk Press, are translations of recently discovered poems of the Chinese historical figure Cangjie, storied inventor of the Chinese system of writing during the reign of The Yellow Emperor, Huangdi, in the 27th century BCE, approximately 4700 years ago. These poems are now the oldest known poetry on earth.
(Some scholars do not believe there was a Yellow Emperor, or Cangjie, just as they once believed there was no Xia dynasty. Evidence unearthed in the city of Yanshi in 1959, however, proved the existence of the Xia, which ruled after the time of the Yellow Emperor from approximately 2100 to 1800 BCE. The discoveries of Cangjie’s poems may prove the existence of the Yellow Emperor.)
Briscoe’s book contains the recently discovered poems of Cangjie, translated by his client E. O., who also writes an afterword explaining the provenance of the manuscripts that led to the translations, and the place of Cangjie’s poetry in world poetry. Cangjie’s poetry seems a ballast to the great Chinese poetry of the Tang Dynasty (roughly, our seventh and eighth centuries CE). E. O.’s Afterword tells the remarkable story of the discovery of the poems, nearly totally lost for almost five thousand years.
The Lost Poems of Cangjie may be purchased at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco book store, other fine book stores, or online through Amazon or other sources. Copies will be available for purchase for $29.00, cash, credit card or check payable to St. Mary’s College MFA Scholarship Fund.
