A Poet's Guide to the Bars

by Kenneth Sonny Donato, Jack Baxter

Sonny was fifteen when he met Jack Kerouac at Murphy's Bar in his hometown of Northport, Long Island in 1964. Later, he hitchhiked and jumped boxcars across thousands of miles of America. At the end of the rainbow in California, Doug Weston hired him to tend bar at the Troubadour, where he hosted musician barflies such as Tom Waits, Rickie Lee Jones, David Lee Roth, Gene Clark, and Glenn Frey. Nights off he drank and traded poetry with Charles Bukowski at the No Name Bar on Yucca and Vine. Kenneth Sonny Donato lives in Hollywood. Dedicated Harry Dean Stanton and Mario Maglieri "The Pope Of Sunset Strip" “ 'A Poet’s Guide To The Bars' has a strut and clarity of image and language which is a welcome vacation...A double shot of imagery with a water back in the face.” – Michael Ironside

Genres: Poetry

104 pages, Paperback

First published April 29, 2011

Reviews

[Everett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Some beautiful reflections straight out of LAs lurid bar life.

My favorite lines among many;

Paradise Bar (Murphy’s)
„You can’t trust old guys sitting at life’s quiet corner“

and

The Forty South Cochran Avenue
„Amazed
At not knowing nothing“