Philomene Long


I share two childhood heroes with Jack Kerouac: Saint Therese and Huckleberry Finn. At age eight I smoked a corn cob pipe, went barefoot, wore patches on my pants knees, was always running away, sailing an imaginary raft down the Mississippi of my mind. I was a strong-armed Huckleberry. So if I went up to a group of boys to play and they said “No girls allowed” I would say, “If you don’t let me play I am going to beat you up.” After I beat up each one they would let me play. I did that repeatedly because in the 1940s and 50s boys were always saying: “No girls allowed.” Many (not all) men of the Beat Generation tried to make it so that only they could play. That kind–I think I scared them. Did they sense I could beat them up?
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Hen House Studios Anthology Volume 2-2002Los Angeles Bards – Live In Pasadena is an anthology that continues the long and distinguished relationship between poetry and baseball. Michael C Ford has scoured the sandlots of Southern California to compile a stellar lineup of heavy-hitting and rubber-armed literary figures, eager to take their swings and toss some metaphors for the newest team on the sporting scene, the Los Angeles Bards.

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