Kevin Opstedal: California Poets Part 9, Four Poems

Kevin Opstedal

December 22nd, 2025

California Poets: Part IX

Kevin Opstedal

Four Poems

For Snake Charmers & Other

Fans of Viper Jazz

A preconceived notion of fate

vs the roach of whatever

like virtue or poetry maybe

mutually exclusive but

casually coherent

which may be the point of it all

pointing due north

but we’re headed west

a day late & $32.00 short

expecting to be elbowed past

the Encantadas

& who knows what the

score is there

You sing, I count syllables,

the air just flips & dies

Later it’s all about Mexican fan palms

                        swaying in the sunset breeze

            & the way yr eyes catch the light just so

                                                   cradled in that satin glow

Some things never change although

they are often precariously

altered by the telling

1

Dealing w/slings & arrows

a short detour thru the Anima Mundi

for all intents & purposes

real or imagined

I should have brought a fungo bat

2

raindance birdsong some kind of

cactus flower blink

a muscle memory

3

Back in Tokyo

(I’ve never been there)

I found myself yearning for the sun-bleached

pavement of my native land

empty streets

diving down into the

neon eyes of the sea

the bluish silver-green haze

tied w/a pink ribbon 

One Size Fits All

Floating to the rock

bottomless

empty night of

dream tangled in

highlight reels

so much for the

emotional jingle-jangle,

string quartets & the

hi-ho Lone Ranger guitar hero in waiting

slanting precipitous to that place where

                                    shadows gather & disperse

                        taking on human or near-human form

                                                wrapped in feathered kimonos

& so the voices merge

more often than not

threatening twang & climax

like Captain Nemo & the Rhythm Rockers

plus a truckload of I would if I could

w/all the bells & whistles

1211 Venice Blvd

Nothing really belongs to us. We can’t afford the clutter. If only time would lag a bit between X and infinity. The late-night street traffic a distant pulse. In this zone we are given formulas to sustain crime & divinity. Why not the tropic denial? Streets dark w/ragged palm trees truncated by the fog, lopped off telephone poles, invisible high-tension wires. I was raised in this marooned city, the glow of a lava lamp behind smoked glass framed by Spanish tiles & stucco. Corinthian columns by way of Tijuana. Any given moment doctored the script. Beach town neon pharmacy parking lot. Felt the heat of the midnight pavement radiate up thru the soles of my sneakers. This must be the fourth corner, the one the earth turns upon. It doesn’t belong to us. My ankles are sore. Light played on the surface of the stagnant brown sludge of the canals. That was a memory. It’s all different now. Sherman Canal where I smoked hashish w/a girl who had a broken nose. The sidewalk stained with rust, or blood. Money would change that. Them. The sea breeze stalled out at the intersection of Venice & Lincoln Blvd so that I could cross the street without looking. Heard the wave’s message whispered in a bottle at 3 a.m. the door latch broken & the still night air eaten up by a candle flame. Incense. Nowhere to take it finally. We never owned any of it. The tide shifted. It was too subtle for anyone to notice. No apologies. I remember now, everything has been forgotten. We never asked forgiveness. Slight bend in the streetlights. Sand in yr clothes. Drive by in an old beat-up Chevy looking over yr shoulder. I still consider this place to be home, although it no longer exists. The sound of waves reclaims the distance I have traveled since.

Interview

December 23rd, 2025

California Poets Interview Series:

Kevin Opstedal, Poet, Writer, Editor

interviewed by David Garyan

DG: Having been born in Venice, surfing, along with the sea in general, are big themes in your poetry. Did you pick up a passion for waves and writing at the same time or did they develop at different points?

KO: I was about 16-17 when “The Poems” entered and became the whole damn show, the prime focus my life. The ocean, the waves, they grabbed me a few years earlier and just never let go.

DG: Your work, both here and in general, features creative line breaks but also more prosaic lines. Do you already have a clear structure in mind before you compose a piece or does the form influence what you write and how you’ll write it?

KO: There’s no roadmap, no blueprint. I’m always scrawling down words, lines, and broken phrases in my notebook without any clear notion of where or how they will work in a poem or appear on the page. It’s a flicker, a feeling, something I heard or misheard, read or misread, remembered or misremembered … that’s the little trigger. Then I go back to those scribbles and eventually catch a sense of what they are telling me and how they fit together. It’s Negative Capability or something related to whatever G. Lorca sensed of “duende”. Just deeper word-spirits moving on their own time. I sometimes feel like Cocteau’s Orpheus tuning in to the Muse on a car radio.

DG: You’ve recently released a fascinating historical study of the Bolinas poetry scene over a thirteen-year period, aptly titled Dreaming as One: Poetry, Poets, and Community in Bolinas, California, 1967-1980. Could you talk a bit about the writing process? What were the challenges and surprises of taking on a project like this?

KO: Sometime in the late 70s/early 80s I suddenly hit on the fact that many of the poets I was continually reading and studying had all either lived in or visited Bolinas for extended periods. I wanted to learn more about the Bolinas poetry scene, but there was really nothing except the On the Mesa anthology published by City Lights in 1971. So, I visited Bolinas and really dug the beauty and the vibe of the place and continued researching the poets, combing through their books and hunting down magazines and other publications that were produced in Bolinas during the 70s. In 1985, I began corresponding with and interviewing the poets, with the intent of writing a “Literary History of the San Andreas Fault: Bolinas Section” (which is what Philip Whalen dubbed the project when I interviewed him). Sometime in the late 90s/early 2000s I wrote the first draft and sent it around to the poets for their review, and they were all very encouraging and enthusiastic. Lewis MacAdams suggested several potential publishers, but we were surprised to find that no one wanted it. In 2008, Joanne Kyger mentioned the book to Michael Rothenberg, and he offered to publish it in his online literary journal Big Bridge. So, it was only available online, although several poets asked me to print out hard copies for them. Then, in 2024, at the urging of poet Micah Ballard, the folks who run FMSBW, a small literary publisher in San Francisco, finally published the book as I had originally intended it to be. Personally, the most important thing that came from all of this was the close, long-lasting friendships I formed with many of the poets I respected and had studied for years.

DG: I’d like to talk about your activities as an editor, mainly the selfless work you did with Blue Press in supporting both established and emerging writers. The challenges associated with being an editor are immense—much less running a press. In 2012, fellow poets whose career was greatly shaped by your efforts helped launch a fundraising campaign to save the publishing enterprise. Could you talk about how it all started, what you enjoyed most about publishing, and what led to the events that transpired thirteen years ago?

KO: The poet Michael Price and I started Blue Press Books in 1998 because we both wanted to publish The River by Lewis MacAdams, and The River: Books One & Two became the first Blue Press publication. There have been 67 Blue Press books published from 1998 to 2025. The first few Blue Press books were printed by a friend I had who worked for a commercial printing company. The rest were printed, collated, trimmed, stapled or hand-stitched by me, using the beat-up equipment I have at home. It was a one-man printing/publishing operation. Working with poets, typing and formatting their work for publication, the whole process is a blast. That being said, I’m closing down Blue Press in 2026. It seems like the right time.

So … back in 2012 I had been unemployed for nearly 6 years, trying to get by on my 401K, the occasional temporary job, and selling used books on Amazon. The 401K was depleted by 2012, and I was way down in the hole with no idea how I’d survive. Poet friends managed to secure me a small grant from Poets in Need, which helped some, but then a poet named Todd McCarty got me a copywriting gig with the internet marketing company he was working for in Chicago. I could work at home and make some coin. That saved my ass. I continue to do copywriting work online, but on a part-time basis now that I’m receiving Social Security. Getting by is still a struggle, but then it always has been.

DG: In the early ‘90s you also edited GAS, a magazine that published some of the most notable writers, both from California and beyond. What were the aesthetic differences and similarities between what you published in these pages as opposed to Blue Press?

KO: Is there a difference? I don’t think so. You’ll find many of the same poets featured in GAS, Blue Book Magazine, and in the series on one-shot mags I edited, and the style of all these publications is influenced by the mimeo mags of the 60s and 70s. Of course, the books published under Blue Press have their own style which has remained fairly consistent over the years.

DG: Throughout your career you’ve remained prolific, publishing more than twenty-nine books of poetry. It would be right to say you don’t wait for inspiration. What does your writing schedule look like?

KO: No schedule. I’m always writing. Even when I’m not. As I’ve told younger poets, poetry is like a wound that you’ve got to keep picking at so it won’t heal up.

DG: Your influences range from Ovid, to Rimbaud, to Pound and everything in between. If you could spend a day surfing and talking about poetry with one of the writers you admire, who would that be and why?

KO: Rimbaud. I told Duncan McNaughton years ago that the older I get the more essential Rimbaud’s poetry becomes for me. I’m pushing 70 now and my deep dives into Rimbaud’s work, especially Les Illuminations, continue to get deeper.

DG: You currently reside in Santa Cruz. What are things you miss about Venice and what are your favorite places in the city you currently live in?

KO: As the poem “1211 Venice Blvd” featured above says, my Venice no longer exists and hasn’t for decades. It was a raw, scruffy, lower working-class town, and I miss cutting around the gritty streets and alleyways, paddling out near the pier, and scanning the dial for the sound of gulls. Santa Cruz has that on-the-edge beach town quality, but gentrification is oozing in. I broke my shoulder some years back which has made paddling out on a surfboard and swimming problematic, so I don’t get into the water anymore. I sorely miss it, but I haul myself out to the beaches in town and up the coast whenever I can, just to read the waves and load up on some negative ions.

DG: What are you reading and working on at the moment?

KO: I’ve a core group of poets that I rotate through repeatedly and have for a long, long time. It’s like an old jukebox with the same scratched up records and I spin them again and again. Some might think it’s boring, but I always find a new drop of turpentine in the bottom of the glass. Right now, I’m back to Shakespeare’s Sonnets, fortified with side trips through scattered poems by Philip Whalen, William Blake, and Charles Olson. I just finished sweeping up the confetti from a 70+ page manuscript of my dust, called A Hazy Shade of Later. Will anyone ever publish it? Who knows. Meanwhile, I’m busy hammering away at the next one. No title yet.

Author Bio:

Born and raised in Venice, California, Kevin Opstedal is the author of over 29 books of poetry including Like Rain (Angry Dog Press, 1999), California Redemption Value (University of New Orleans Press, 2011), Pacific Standard Time (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016), and Exile on Beach Street (FMSBW Press: Page Poets Series, 2025). He has also authored a literary history of the Bolinas poets, Dreaming As One: Poetry, Poets, and Community in Bolinas, California, 1967-1980 (FMSBW Press: The Divers Collection, 2024). Along with having been the editor and publisher of several little magazines, including GAS: High-Octane Poetry, Blue Book, and Yolanda Pipeline’s Magazine (to name but a few), he has published books by Joanne Kyger, Lewis MacAdams, Jim Carroll, Duncan McNaughton, and many others under his Blue Press imprint. Opstedal currently lives in Santa Cruz, CA.