My main man for poetry in Ithaca, New York — last residence prior to Oakland — was Joel Kuszai, a graduate of Buffalo’s poetics program and publisher of chapbooks (Meow Press) and print-on-demand perfect-bounds (Factory School).
Early on in my East Bay ramblings, I found my way into Serendipity Books, on University just up from San Pablo. Sometimes you’re in Ali Baba’s cave and you don’t even realize it. Used to be that every bookman in the area had an anecdote concerning Peter Howard, the legendarily perverse and curmudgeonly proprietor of that cavernous establishment.
