August Kleinzahler

August Kleinzahler, LRB Bookshop, London, Tuesday 20th October

Whoa, baby. Now that's what I call a poetry reading. Kleinzahler has been a bit of a favourite of mine for some years now and so it was never in doubt that I'd get the new cheap Greyhound bus service from Portsmouth to London for this appearance. And it was all that one might have hoped it was going to be. He starts with a disco spin and introduces himself as Archie Bell & the Drells and we are off into some extracts from his new book on Music, not least among them Liberace, with poems incorporated in among them and as the reading progresses it transposes into a poetry reading.
Laconic but lyrical, world weary but sympathetic, Kleinzahler's accent and delivery combine to make him one of the great voices. Perhaps the best I've seen (heard, to be epistemologically accurate there) with the exceptions of Ted Hughes (about which I remember precious little, to be honest- it was c.1977) and Paul Durcan, the utterly spell-binding Irishman who left his propeller in Bilbao.
The poems were from Sleeping it off in Rapid City, the recent new and selected, and included two parts of his History of Western Music as well as the title poem which was highly eponymous.
But he was engaging, serious and self-deprocating to an extent not to be expected in one quite so hip and gun-slinging in his debonair, stylish and knowing demotic. You couldn't mistake him for a bad guy. He was authentic and honest and not to be confused with the garbled concept of 'cool' which in any case must lie in the eye of the beholder and can't be achieved by practice or effort.
(Yes, Miles Davis and The Velvet Underground might well be the epitome of 'cool' but it still doesn't mean anything.)
The poems have an elegiac, Romantic music, as often as not, whether quoting popular songs or listing the contents of a missile silo. It would be difficult to think of a poet to put alongside him. Well, it is for me anyway.
Alongside last year's highlights, the Maggi Hambling exhibition and talk and The Magnetic Fields in the Cadogan Hall, this went straight onto the short list of 'best things I've ever been to', being a long-standing favourite and exceeding all expectations, which are the pre-requisites. Then I noticed a common denominator in that Fatty Rimmer came with me to all of them. In fact, I suppose with The Magnetic Fields I went with her. I should make her come more often. Imagine what a good time we'd have then.
But another parallel with the Maggi event was the handing out of complimentary wine. That is just the sort of optional extra that we like. Free booze, A-list creative artist, small but appreciative audience. Perfect.
They didn't need to do that to persuade me to buy one of the books August has brought over himself on the plane (although they'd have needed more than a few glasses of champagne to make me spend £15k on a Hambling canvas). It's not likely to be cheap on e-Bay for some time and it won't have his name written in the front by him either. I had taken a copy of TLOTGD to give to someone else but they weren't there so I gave it to August. He seemed delighted but I suppose it might have rattled the bottom of the trash can before I'd made it back to Victoria Coach Station, stepped happily from the sidewalk into the Greyhound bus and disappeared back into the night.