In 1984 film director Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy and Good Will Hunting) began his career with a small, black-and-white independent movie called Mala Noche. Van Sant's film, a gritty look at a gay man's relationship to Latino teenagers in Portland, Oregon's Little Mexico, was based on a novella by Walt Curtis, a street poet with a cult following among experimental writers and audiences. Curtis's small chapbook has never been widely available but is reprinted here with more material by him and an introduction by Van Sant. Curtis's authentic voice sounds like a cross between Allen Ginsberg and the over-narration on a travelogue about inner-city life. He is unstinting in his self-revelation, and the energy and love he has for his characters is palpable (the city of Portland is as much of a person here as his fellow humans). Mala Noche will be a revelation for anyone who loves Van Sant's film, and a fine introduction for those who have yet to watch it.

Mala Noche: And Other "Illegal" Adventures

LGBTQ+ Books

Curtis, Walt

Biographies & Memoirs

Bridgecity Books

Good poetry lives on like good semen. Words the way Kwang uses them are inspiring...As with a tubercular John Keats or a drowning Shelley, Kwang projects neoRomanticism in a bleak militarist wasteland... 
Walt Curtis, from the introduction to Copia

Copia

Literature & Fiction

Kwang, Casey L.

Poetry

Pinball Pub

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Books by Curtis, Walt