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Café Review goes global
BY SAM PFEIFLE
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Portland’s resident (if sometimes unheralded) lit mag for the past 15 years, the Café Review, celebrated the release of their latest quarterly publication with a big to-do at Paris’s famous Shakespeare & Co. Bookshop, the ultimate hangout for American literary types in Paris. Newly installed foreign editor Lee Bellavance has been in Paris since the summer, working with the American writing community there towards an issue devoted to American poets in Paris. Bellavance made nice with Shakespeare owner George Whitman and the Café Review found itself hosting a "jam-packed poetry reading hosted by the world-famous Parisian bookstore on October 24th. The next evening, the issue’s featured poet, Alice Notley, read along with half a dozen other contributors at a champagne party for over 65 people at Paris’ chic Ismery’s Gallery located on the city’s trendy left bank," according to a press release from Review honcho and poet Steve Luttrell. On the phone, Luttrell was excited about the event, and about the fact that his publication will be in the window of three major poetry sites this month: Shakespeare, City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, and the Grollier in Cambridge. In an understatement, he said, "To have all three windows is pretty cool." Why Americans in Paris? Isn’t that so last century? "We’re following in the footsteps of the last generation," Luttrell said. "They were all writing in Paris and there was a scene, and we thought maybe that was all over with now. But when we looked into it, I found that there was quite a strong scene. I mean, Alice Notley, arguably one of the great American poets of our age . . . moved to Paris 25 years ago, and has been living and working there, and this particular issue features an interview with her. And then there are maybe a lot of less well known American poets who are living in Paris. There’s a publication called Van Gogh’s Ear, published in English in Paris, a group of poets writing excellent poetry — and they’re not known to their American counterparts. So, we got the idea that we would bring it to their American counterparts." For more on the publication, see www.thecafereview.com
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