Dinner with a beat...Poet

It is Sunday afternoon and I'm sitting in the Back Fence, a bar at the corner of Bleeker and Thompson Streets, at the smallest table I have ever seen. The floor is covered in saw dust and peanut shells. After she buys me a Coke, I listen to Brigid Murnaghan, the show's emcee, start off the Back Fence's weekly poetry slam - the longest running one in New York City. Murnaghan, a poet who hung around with the likes of Kerouac, Ginsberg and Dylan eventually joins me at my table. "I know you have questions" she says, "but I'm going to tell you some stories."

Murnaghan has lived on Bleeker Street nearly her entire life and has been running the poetry readings for nearly thirty years. "My only rule is you can't be stoned," she explains. "You can do anything on stage except that; in the early beginning, I allowed it. Then I saw what it did...it's no fun" she continues. As she explains this to me, a poet on stage, almost on cue, evokes a wave of laughter from the audience as he reads, "Brigid says you can't be stoned on stage, but Brigid, don't you know, I'm always stoned?" As it got later, she gave me her card and told me to call her one night so we could have dinner.

A week later my roommate Rebecca and I headed up to Brigid's apartment. She read us some poetry she had written in response to being called a "sort of poet" by Joe Lesueur. "You have to honor it," she said, in reference to her writing. "[My poetry] was a secret I kept for many years, but I always honored it."

Our conversation generally focused on writing, specifically, the current poetry scene. "I've seen the whole poetry scene from the beginning to what's going on now, and I like some of it, but what's really wrong with [the current scene] is academia, because they're the only ones that get published." Brigid had explained a similar sentiment earlier at the Back Fence when she told me how English professors especially seemed too stuffy when it came to writing. She mentioned how she could always tell which readers were the teachers by their writing style.

I had known from talking to Brigid at the Back Fence that she had been friends with all of the East Coast beats, but what I didn't know when I was sitting in her apartment was that she also knew Bob Dylan. Though they had never been close friends, she was well acquainted with him. After Dylan became famous she recalled, "I saw him once, while he was waiting for some girl, and I said hi, and we sat down and talked."

Not all of Brigid's friends kept in touch with her after they achieved fame. Mary, of the group Peter, Paul and Mary (who she also knew from the bars) refused to speak to the old bohemian crowd after she became well known.

Brigid has worked at the Back Fence bar as a cocktail waitress for most of her life. The bar has had a few celebrities drop by to play on open mike nights, including Billy Joel, who wasn't let in at first because the doorman didn't recognize him and wouldn't allow him to bring his daughter in on a week night while alcohol was being served. Britney Spears, oddly enough, also ventured in to play for the crowd, but the band on stage refused to give up their slot to let her sing.

While minors are not allowed in to the Back fence on weeknights because they serve alcohol, on Sundays the place is open to anyone for the open mic. poetry reading, which begins at 3:30 p.m. It's worth the trip, even if you're just going to listen to Brigid tell you stories and step back in time to a bohemian New York City.