breakfast with the more-than-funny man

out of respect and admiration for the subject of this post, valley performance poet bill campana, lowercase will be used throughout, in the style (if not with the astonishing wit) of bill’s outstanding poetry.

bill took me to breakfast this morning. it was part of a deal we’d agreed on to put a ceramic vase i’d made, and bill had seen in my blog post “foom-bozzle-wozzle, part 3,” on long-term loan to bill. it is now in bill’s possession, and i’m proud as can be.

bill and i go back more than ten years, back to my early days of poetry performance, when i was still nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and bill was supplementing his income with serious money earned by winning poetry slam competitions. in 2010 bill was the host of a the open-mic poetry event “sound effects,” and in may of that year he decreed that may 2010 was “gary bowers month.” that decree incentivized me to write, and perform, some of my best poetry.

pondering why he “gary bowers month”ed me way back when, bill attributes it to impulse: “i just did it.” but once he did it, he stuck to it, and riffed on it, and made a real something out of his impulsive throwaway thought.

and that, i think, is some of what makes his poetry enduring and deep, and much more than funny. under the hilarity is solid structure and soul.

as for the breakfast, at the ranch house grill on east thomas road, it was magnifent. we both had the signature dish of the day, a pork chili verde omelet, with hashbrowns and toast–i had sourdough and bill had the rye. conversation bounced around from bill’s grandfather, to lingering terminal illness, to personal health, to connecting with grade-school friends, to books, to the three stooges, to lou grubb and his progeny, to local tv persomalities, and on and on. one of many interesting facts: in the first grade, bill read thirty books. by way of reward his teacher sent him a fancy book, and inscribed it “to william.” it was a book about dinosaurs. so bill was into dinosaurs long before “jurassic park” roused public interest in them.

i am going to rent a car and take bill to the matt’s big breakfast on 32nd street and camelback a couple of weeks up the road. “we should do this more often,” one of us said, so we will.