PAUL KANTER R.I.P.

I knew Paul Kantner, of Jefferson Airplane and Jefferson Starship fame, but I knew him as a writer and activist. When I was running with my partner Eve Brandstein the weekly poetry reading series I started in L.A. called Poetry in Motion in the 1980s and early '90s, Paul came and read some of his poetry with us and loved it.

My copy of his NICARAGUA DIARY—subtitled How I Spent My Summer Vacation or I Was a Commie Dupe for the Sandinistas—has a place of honor on my bookshelves. The man cared deeply, about music and poetry and art and political activism and his fellow beings. The inscription in my copy says "thanks for the place to go & the delicate pagan balance of celebration & poetry...Keep on..." which is what I intend to do.

But it'll be less fun without his presence in the physical realm, though his spirit and music still obviously live on...