It was a time of mythic intrigues amongst poets, painters and musicians who were punk. I’ve rarely considered the mileau, the Venice Canals of the 70’s. I was Queen of the L.A. Poetry Scene. I had been there at the beginning. A barn packed with straw and I had the torch. Prince charming was a Chounard painter. They retained a permanent stature, the way Berkeley does. I was 27 when I wrote it. My unnamed protagonist and her lover, Jason, the painter, inject cocaine, have extreme sex and intriguing dialogue. I knew this was the first time a female had crossed that exclusively masculine border. It was 1979. The descriptions of the cocaine rush are poems disguised as prose. The only way Lithium For Medea can be understood is not as Didionesque, but rather as Plathian.

It was noted by the LA Times in their review of the 1997 short story collection, Small Craft Warnings, that, of course I wasn’t Didion. But, after some meandering, lurched to a view he didn’t examine or pursue, namely, that I was approaching as a poet, Didion as a journalist. What he said we shared was “authority.” What he doesn’t say is even more defining. The literary action was, as it often is, cyclic and unpredictable, in California.

Wherever reviewers were required to call upon a name in conjunction with mine, it was the name Didion.

This might be because that there are virtually no women writing today who are known by just a name, one that is considered a legacy, a privilege and duty to intone it. Perhaps mine was the only other female voice that resonated in Los Angeles, a conceptual city

that the Chandler’s, in missionary function, somehow upheld their duty.

No one seems to notice that for a clever turn on a reviews tongue, the Jewish Joan Didion. I was a generation younger, my entire frame of reference different. We both went to Berkeley. We both lived in versions of Los Angeles so surreal in their differences, it might be comparing Malibu to Mombassa.

My influences. Bellow, Roth, Mailer. Salinger. The Glass family stories, call them three books, that’s fine. The entire concept of being an intellectual on the page, that singular self-interogation that is tamed, orchestrated, taught technique. Then the exhileration of serving the word. I was first stirred by the Beat’s. I ran away to be a beatnik when I was 15. I ended up in Berkeley, living first at the Lawrence Radiation. Then I studied comparitive literature and anthropology for four years. I read with abanbdon. When it was over, my undergraduate degree, I was rotating out of that campus and I was was going to write. After Berkeley, I returned to Los Angeles. I found the Venice Poetry Workshop and the dear hearts found me. That’s when I read Sexton and Plath. Leland Hickman was my mentor. I met him at the Venice Poetry Workship. I invited him, by reputation, to grace us pathetic ignorant tedious things with his presence, and he did and it seemed like we met for years. There were six or seven of us who met separately, at my house. Leland told me I was the only one getting better and that’s why they broke it up.

I was on a poem run, blazing. I started reviewing in 1972. I was reading a lot of what was being published by what were still real publishers. Dog Soldiers. 92 in the Shade. Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail. Reviewing is a great learning experience for a writer. I picked great books as they came, CA, macho time. We were bohemians, but getting edgier. Lee was tutoring me. Blaise Cendrars had a profound impact on me. Then I got the Spanish. First Neruda, Lorca, then Garcia Marquez, later Paz. At some point, I was on the run in Northern California and earned my masters in English. I read the romantic poets, primarily their prose. I began teaching in 1974. When I was a professor and taught literature, it kicked up my writing again.

But from the chorus, I heard most sincerely and astonishingly Sylvia Plath. -- Kate Braverman, 2006.