A 1978 photo of a few of the poets on stage, eating and reading their works simultaneously, which was the center event at the Baader Meinhof Mutual Dog’s Evening of International Terror. Art, costumed saboteurs, and performers lined the walls of the hall, and the public was already losing any inhibitions by the time ‘the dinner’ was staged. Enthusiastic psychotics raced around with some of the electric bullhorns we had passed out, bellowing natural poetry and tearing holes in spacetime once they’d discovered the horns could create feedback. Vito Paulekas, who’d been part of the show for the early Mothers of Invention, had, at our invitation, come as promised with his troupe (Freestore). I noticed him and the group (which consisted mostly of his family, including some small kids) directly below me on the main floor, all wrapped in toilet paper and enacting a sort of broad-gesture Commedia, at the top of their voices, naturally, so as to be heard above the general bedlam. I promptly forgot about them and yelled through my own declaiming and dining until I heard Vito’s troupe let out a great shriek together, then tear off the toilet paper and disperse, running back into the crowd completely naked.

In this photo are (L to R): Daniel Newton (seated in front of the stage, in white); Unknown poet; Philip Newton; Sherry Margolin (facing Philip); Tristan Winter (center); John Hays (in feathered hat, face hidden, reading large broadsheet); Bearded poet reading a newspaper, Unknown poet in cap.

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