Joffre Stewart
is a pure free speech presence on the poetry scene. He's a poet, anarchist, antiwar protester, atheist and anti-Zionist. He is also the person "standing on a street corner" Allen Ginsberg mentioned in his poem "Howl". A one-time member of the poetry performance group Brothers in Verse, Joffre has been barred from some local venues for his strong political poems.
We sat down in Weeds on a slow Thursday with the jukebox playing greatest hits...
CTR: Many people call you a controversial figure because of your supposed "Anti-Semitic" views. Can you explain the difference between Anti-Semitism and Anti-Zionism?
JS: Yes. Anti-Semitism is a word used to refer to Jews. It's abused when it is because most Semitics are Arabs who are abused by Jews in Israel....but anyway, that's the common acceptation for Anti-Semitism, as being against Jews. Now I cannot be against Jews because I'm a pacifist. Pacifists are harmless to everyone. A pacifist cannot...as a pacifist, I'm more harmless for Jews than Jews are to each other! So what does it mean to be anti-Semitic in the sense of being anti-Jew, or let's call it anti-Jewish?
Anti-Zionism opposes the so-called national liberation movement Zionism, which took Palestine from the Palestinians. A piece of outright imperialistic robbery. And to oppose, to be an anti-Zionist does not exclude Jews. Jews can be anti-Zionists. Some of the best anti-Zionists, some of the strongest speaking Anti-Zionists are Jews like Israel Shahak. Some Jews have been put out of Israel for their Anti-Zionist, or Pro-Palestinian behavior and positions. Uri Davis is a name of such a person. Riley, here in Chicago, went to Israel and participated in some Palestinian affairs, and he's Jewish and he got kicked out of Israel, barred, never to return. So anyone can be anti-Zionist - you don't expect Jews to be anti-Jewish!
CTR: It's been said that you are unofficially responsible for the closing of half of the poetry venues that shut down between 1990 and 2000. Do you accept that mantle put on you?
JS: Half? I don't think I'm responsible for any shutting down. One, maybe. An art gallery, I don't exactly remember where it is, it was on Damen between North and Armitage, uh, that princess named Khan, I think she was in charge of doing something there, and I came one Sunday whenever it was and read something, and they heard me and then the owner said "No!". And that was the end of that one. That's the only one I can think of shutting down on my account. Maybe if you can think of something, bring it up.
CTR: Well, let me ask you this: how many poetry venues are you officially or unofficially banned from or no longer welcome to go into?
JS: Two that I can say definitely: the Green Mill - that's Marc Smith, and the Hungry Brain...
CTR:...Leonard (de Montbrun)...
JS:...yeah, the French Tickler. Those two. There was a third, but it shut down, it was the one run by that Unitarian...Roby's, that's the third. Towards the end I was barred. On the last day that the host who running it was running it, he wouldn't let me read, and then Leonard deMontbrun took it over, and he took it over doing the same thing. You know the name of this host, he says he's a Unitarian, he does construction work...
CTR: ...You mean JJ (Jameson)...
JS: JJ, yeah.
CTR: Tell me about Slim Brundage. Were you ever associated with him?
JS: Yes, I actually had a kind of a job in his cabaret bar, around 1959, 1960. I was definitely associated with Slim Brundage. In fact Slim Brundage had the venue where I first started reading publicly, when it at 1651 N. Wells.
CTR: The College of Complexes?
JS: Yeah. I got more involved when it moved to 862 N. State St. It was there that I got a job emceeing, and it became a kind of a headquarters for some Beat Generation type activities, and I was in those, or watched those, and so my first time I suppose I ever hosted a poetry venue was at the College of Complexes. The guy who had been hosting had something else to do - he's the editor and publisher of the Near North News. He let me take over and I did.
CTR: How long did you do that?
JS: That was just for that one day; I may have hosted poetry there at other times, I don't remember. I was more there emceeing the discussions on Fridays and Saturdays.
CTR: Philosophical debates and wide-ranging discussions?
JS: Well, Saturdays were for Sex. It was more philosophical on Fridays. But it was political; Slim Brundage considered himself an anarchist. Spenglerian and an anarchist. So, I hosted for Abner Mikva when he spoke there, for example. There was also a spokesman for Paul Douglas who I got to know, who I also knew from Roosevelt University. So I had that kind of contact. I almost had the chance to meet George Lincoln Rockwell there when he was scheduled to speak...
CTR: That would've been interesting...
JS: That place filled up before 9:00, showtime, but he came in before I got there, and the police captain said he could not assure Rockwell's safety. So Rockwell didn't speak and I didn't get to meet him that time. I met him later on in 1963. It was around this time of year when he spoke at a Nation of Islam Saviors Day program at the Amphitheatre.
CTR:Really?
JS: Yeah, I shook hands with him.
A Nazi guy I knew from around State St., around the neighborhood of the College of Complexes - not in the college - knew me from hanging around the bookstore where Bill Smith worked. I got used to him being around, then for a while he was not around, and I asked Vernon Morry - who was really the silent partner with Bill - 'where is this guy' (I don't know his name anymore), and they said they told him to stop coming around and they chased him away because he thinks he's superior. At the time I didn't know what he meant, the guy was like anybody else there to me, and it wasn't until I met Rockwell I knew what he meant by superior!
CTR: For those who don't know, Rockwell was a notorious Nazi sympathizer. Was he a member of the German-American Bund?
JS: No, he came later, after World War Two. He was a Navy veteran.
CTR: This is a tacky question: what apprehension did you have about doing this interview?
JS: The only apprehension I have is the one I already stated to you - I was afraid I would be misquoted, my words would be turned around, syntax altered and my meaning would come out wrong. It's the kind of fear I have with the media all the time.
CTR: Where do you read at normally on the south side? A lot of people only see you up here...
JS: Well, I haven't been reading much lately. The one venue I've been going to has been Jazz & Java, maybe half of the Wednesdays of the month I'm there. I think they're going up on their minimums, so I may not be there that much. That's the main one. I've gone out to the one on 95th St. What's the name...
CTR: African American Images
JS: I've been there. I've read at the Woodson Library - that's not a regular venue, but there was a program. And in past years, not currently by any means, at Jimmy's at 1172 E. 55th St., and the Blue Gargoyle back in the 60s and 70s when they had venues there.
CTR: What's the one poetry venue you miss reading in that's not here anymore?
JS: Oh, what can I say? The Get Me High. I suppose anyone who has read there might miss it because in a way it started the...the poetry renaissance Chicago has started from the Get Me High. That was a fun one. Oh, and Estelle's, and also down in the basement around the corner from Estelles...
CTR: Lit Ex...
JS:...yeah, Lit Ex. That was a terrific venue.
CTR: Any upcoming poetry-type projects?
JS: No, I wouldn't say that I have. I have in mind to do a poem about Jewish anarchists rallying for Jewish bankers. They tried to stop me from being heard at a speakout at May Day last year at Waldheim Cemetary...
CTR: You were too radical for May Day?
JS: My free speech disappeared from those Jewish anarchists, they wouldn't allow it. I intend to do a poem that comes out of things that were said at the 'Free Speech in Newberry park', Washington Sq. north, where Newberry Library sponsors free speech in midsummer, one that relates to that. These are poems aimed at particular situations, like the poem I read here last Monday about [Edith] Giles going to the Navy. So in terms of poetry projects, that's about what a project amounts to me. Puddin'head Books wants to redo my chapbook...
CTR: What chapbook?
JS: "Poems and Poetry", 1982. Done by the Every Now and Then Printing Cooperative.
CTR: Is that the only chapbook of poetry you have out?
JS: That's the only chapbook I've done. Puddin'head is interested in doing it, but I don't know how it would work because the way it was originally done, you paid for it whatever you wanted, and I haven't asked him about this, but if it's a definite price, well I don't know how he wants to do it...
CTR: You may end up having to sell them or give them away yourself.
Oh, what is the one thing people most often get wrong about you?
JS: That I'm anti-Jewish. Also the word 'Anarchism' is the most misunderstood word in the English language, so I get misunderstood as an Anarchist. It doesn't mean violence, for me it means non-violence. And it doesn't mean isolated individualism; I'm a social, cooperative anarchist. We call ourselves communist anarchists.
Anarchism of course is anti-state, and so people who have traditional political baggage are going to stumble and get confused and misunderstand me over the use of these words, whether they're used by anarchists or the left, so it's an old problem of definition/redefinition that you have to keep up with, and you never do. You can tell people straight what you are and they come right back with something wrong. I was the Vice-Presidential anti-candidate in the 1960 elections on a Beat anti-party ticket with Bill Smith as the Presidential anti-candidate. I coined the concept of an 'anti-candidate', but as soon as I say I was an anti-candidate people turned around and said I was a candidate. I try to reverse the whole thing and they try to reverse it, put me in the system.
CTR: Does it irritate you when people mock your anarchism by pointing out that you receive government aid and a government pension?
JS: No, it doesn't bother me that much. I know I have my inconsistencies, but anyone trying to live the ideal of a stateless, ruling-classless society under these circumstances is going to have some kind of inconsistency or difficulty living with the way we should live in a perfectly non-violent society. In a way I'm glad that they can point up the inconsistency because it shows that they have some understanding of what I'm about! In a way, I think it's unfair that I'm criticized as much because Henry David Thoreau had similar inconsistencies which he mentions right out in his essay on resistance to civil government, but no one ever attacked him for it like they attack me for it. I'm really being attacked for other reasons, not because I'm like Thoreau!
CTR: Is there anything you want to mention that I haven't asked yet?
JS: Well, I can mention what I've been doing today, the last few days. I've been writing a letter to Thomas Johansson. He wants to start a south side anarchists chapter, and I'm answering 'yes' to him that I would be a part of the group. I've made it a long letter giving my experience with Jewish chauvinism. Jewish chauvinism is the main problem affecting the anarchist movement, it's marginalized me in the anarchist movement in Chicago. The Autonomous Zone wouldn't let me in their anti-Democratic Convention activities in 1996, because I'm non-violent and anti-Israel, anti-Zionist. Also, the group that calls themselves Some Chicago Anarchists, they're filled with the Jewish chauvinism that keeps me off their mailing list the way Autonomous Zone keeps me off their list. Max Works was never really anarchist because they voted in the last election.
CTR: I don't know them...
JS: They're environmentalists, basically. They consider themselves anarchists, they certainly sympathize, but when you vote how close are you to anarchism?
CTR: Another smartass question: if next month Israel agreed to give back all the land they took from the Palestinians and there was no more Israel, would you run out of material to write?
JS: As long as there's the atomic bomb I don't see how I'd run out of material to write. As long as there's police brutality I don't see how I'd run out of material to write. The basic problem is the question of the state itself and the Anglo American Wasp Jewish Ruling Class which dominates the international system. Things like interest and the banking system, those things came before Israel and they underlie the fact that Israel is with us.
CTR: I know you've been following what happened in Seattle during the WTO; do you see that as a signal of more agitation and social upheaval concerning these global capitalist matters?
JS: Yes, it appears so, with people organized on a more sophisticated non-violence basis. What they did in Seattle was very well organized in terms of non-violence tactics, and they surprised themselves with how well they did!
CTR: Does this being an election year add to the upheaval?
JS: Things like the WTO are above and beyond the electoral process...I don't know what's going to happen with the political conventions, the one in Philadelphia might be remarkable because that's where Mumia Abu-Jamal is from, and he's still on Death Row, they still want to kill him...
CTR: Is that where the GOP...
JS: Yes, the Republicans are hosting it, so it might be something else.
[Note: Roby's did stop doing poetry when it was hosted by JJ Jameson, but reopened as a poetry venue with John Biederman - Ed.]
City Table Review, © 2000
