The scene is the expensively furnished office of the Poetry Center at San Francisco State, lined with books and photos of famous poets. Enter FRIEDA HUGHES and KEVIN KILLIAN.

FRIEDA: Hi, Kevin. Oh God, another day of work.
KEVIN: Aren’t we bright and cheerful?
FRIEDA: I stayed out too late last night.
KEVIN: I know how you feel. I’ve worked here at the Poetry Center for 20 years—and it’s never been so busy. It’s our 50th anniversary and I’m feeling like I’m 50 years old.
FRIEDA: [confessing] I went to see Eve Ensler—at the Commonwealth Club.
KEVIN: You didn’t!
FRIEDA: I know—I should have taken you. But she is brilliant. What a mind!
KEVIN: It’s nine a.m.—I’m going to unlock the doors. Ready?
FRIEDA: Ready as I’ll ever be, I guess. [KEVIN unlocks door and JORIE GRAHAM rushes in.]
JORIE GRAHAM: How long did you plan to keep me waiting?
KEVIN: Couldn’t say.
JORIE GRAHAM: You do realize I am Jorie Graham?
KEVIN: That name rings a bell.
JORIE GRAHAM: “Rings a bell”? You people drive me crazy. [She plays with her hair.]
FRIEDA: [stepping forward] Oh, Miss Graham, hi. So sorry. Steve Dickison, our director, has been terribly busy. He’s all apologies.
KEVIN: Frieda, do you feel a draft? [To JORIE] Oh no, that’s you, swatting your hair around. People told me, “Kevin, wait till you meet Jorie Graham, she’s the white Diana Ross,” but until now I didn’t realize what they meant.
JORIE GRAHAM: I’ve been here almost two hours.
KEVIN: Just like me, except I’ve been here 20 years. And freaks clog this office from 9 to 5. Ever since the Poetry Center got that $100 million donation from Ethel Chase, all of a sudden we’re popular. [Enter students ALISON, MIKE and JIM.]
ALISON: Excuse me, can somebody help? I need to get the Sylvia Plath tapes.
KEVIN: You must be a student.
MIKE: I’ve been here since Tuesday waiting for Ezra Pound on tape.
KEVIN: We’re on a number system here—like a bakery.
JORIE GRAHAM: Did my importance escape you? Official TV spokesmodel for the Poetry Center, the Naropa Archives, and the Poetry Project at St. Mark’s Church, I, Jorie Graham, have a direct dial-up connection to St. John of the Cross.
FRIEDA: What number are we up to?
KEVIN: 29.
JIM: I’m 29!
KEVIN: Hmm, 29, just perfect. Not too old, and not too young. You’ve been around the block a few times, just like a car right out of the dealer’s.
JIM: I want to show Steve my presentation.
KEVIN: Come a little bit closer—I love that new car smell.
JIM: For the new poetry money.
VOICE: Jorie Graham...
ALISON: Somebody’s calling you, Ms. Graham.
JORIE: [to ceiling] Is that you, St. John of the Cross?
VOICE: It is indeed. I give you visions for your poetry. The New Yorker then buys it. Everyone’s happy.
FRIEDA: [waving at ceiling] Hi, St. John of the Cross. It’s me, Frieda.
VOICE: Hello, Frieda.
JORIE: [to St. JOHN of the CROSS] What’s happening here, all of a sudden I have to sit in these chairs with all these loser students?
KEVIN: [to JIM] Just go through that door there, and sit down, and wait in another chair. [Exit JIM]
VOICE: To be filled with God, your soul must empty itself of self.
JORIE: [impatiently] Yes, but I’m meeting Mei-Mei Berssenbrugge at Kate Spade at 3.
VOICE: The spiritual capital sins, the passive purgation, Jorie.
JORIE: [hardly listening] Kate herself will be showing us around.
VOICE: And you are being fired here at the Poetry Center.
JORIE: [this catches her attention] What?
VOICE: Oh, not because of your human failings, it’s because Steve Dickison, the director of the Poetry Center, has—
JORIE: Fired!
VOICE: —has replaced you with someone even more statuesque and legendary. A woman who really knows how to shop. Someone photogenic, with a growl in her voice that makes the Carmelites snap to attention.
KEVIN: Are you talking to someone?
JORIE: Yes, to—oh, why bother explaining it to you, Kevin Killian: Where is Dickison anyway?
KEVIN: Don’t ask me.
JORIE: Then—where is Ethel Chase? I hate to go over his head, but—[laughs]—actually what else are heads for?
ALISON: Excuse me, Frieda, someone told me you were Frieda Hughes.
FRIEDA: [waving] Hello, students, yes, the daughter of Sylvia Plath and what’s-his-name. I’m an intern here. I used to live in London, where I worked as an intern to Stella McCartney, but I realized here, in San Francisco, the Poetry Center’s where the action is.
ALISON: What was your mother like?
FRIEDA: I don’t remember, I was just a baby when what’s-his-name killed her.
KEVIN: Frieda’s a poet herself.
FRIEDA: And so is Kevin, I believe.
KEVIN: We’re all one big happy family. [Aside] With an ugly secret.
FRIEDA: Families are like that.
JORIE GRAHAM: Not my family.
FRIEDA: You know, Alison, you remind me of my favorite writer.
ALISON: I do? How flattering.
FRIEDA: Many must have commented on your amazing resemblance to Eve Ensler. The author of The Vagina Monologues?
KEVIN: As for you, Jorie Graham, you will have to cool your [he looks at JORIE’s shoes] heels right here in my office. Admire the art work. Now that we have $100 million dollars from Ethel Chase, Mr. Dickison has been able to furnish up. That’s a de Kooning over there and that’s a picture of his favorite star, Lauren Bacall.
VOICE: I love her, too.
MIKE: How come we can’t get any tapes? What’s going on?
KEVIN: Incidentally, we’ve also hired St. John of the Cross, so [swivels to JORIE] he will not be your exclusive link to the divine any more.
JORIE GRAHAM: What do you mean?
VOICE: What do you think he means? I’m doing the broadcasts now, Jorie.
KEVIN: [turns up radio and the VOICE talks on the radio)]
VOICE: “Among these tapes, you’ll find original recordings by William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes, Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell, Muriel Rukeyser, Louis Zukofsky, the Black Mountain poets, the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, and the Beats.”
JORIE: I used to say that!
VOICE: Well, Jorie, now I say it. And I get paid, too! Think I’ll go down to Kate Spade with Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge, give her a thrill. Bye.
FRIEDA: Bye!
VOICE: Bye, Frieda. [Enter STEVE DICKISON]
STEVE: What’s this unholy ruckus?
ALISON: Please, Mr. Dickison! The Sylvia Plath!
MIKE: How about Ezra Pound? I’ve been waiting since Monday.
KEVIN: Tuesday.
MIKE: Whatever.
STEVE: Now, now, everyone, you can’t all speak at once. [Aside] Or at all. [To STUDENTS] One at a time—like The Maximus Poems.
ALISON: I demand those tapes of Sylvia!
JORIE: What about my appointment?
MIKE: Do you have the Cantos or do you have the “Can-not-tos?”
JORIE, MIKE, ALISON, FRIEDA: [in unison, in scary mechanical voice] How will this anarchy end?
KEVIN: What?
JORIE, MIKE, ALISON, FRIEDA: How will this anarchy end?

LAUREN: Now that it’s just the three of us, you can fess up.
KEVIN: What do you mean?
LAUREN: There’s some funny business with Ethel Chase’s money, isn’t there. Admit it. Tell Mama.
FRIEDA: Well—
LAUREN: In fact, you don’t have a penny left of Ethel Chase’s millions.
FRIEDA: Not a blooming shilling.
LAUREN: You’re so British, I admire that in a person. Harold Pinter whispers those sweet nothings in my ear, my knees kind of buckle.
KEVIN: So, you’re our last chance, Miss Bacall!
LAUREN. You spent $100,000,000? On what?
FRIEDA: Expenses.
LAUREN: Expenses?
KEVIN: Oh, Frieda, just tell her the truth.
FRIEDA: All right. I saw The Vagina Monologues and had a few questions for Eve Ensler. So I asked her.
KEVIN: I wanted to ask Larry Harvey if success is killing his original idea for Burning Man. So I did.
LAUREN: You mean—?
KEVIN: Yes. We spent all our money at the Commonwealth Club.
FRIEDA: [defiantly] And it was worth it. I wondered why Johnnie Cochran said he was “90 per cent sure OJ was innocent.” So I asked him.
KEVIN: You see, Ms. Bacall, in the modern world, access is everything. We here at the Poetry Center know that better than anybody.
LAUREN: I see.
FRIEDA: But access costs money! And so when Ethel Chase gave us a $100 million for poetry, we just took a little.
KEVIN: Oh, that Eve Ensler! Her Vagina Monologues are priceless.
FRIEDA: I was going to tape it.
KEVIN: Did you?
FRIEDA: I guess I was too starstruck.
KEVIN: Oh well.
LAUREN: But there must have still been tons of money left. Listen to me, carrying on about money, you’ll think I’m awful.
FRIEDA: We’ve been afraid you’ll think we’re awful.
LAUREN: Oh, Frieda, far from it. Nobody knows better than I that when you want something, you have to go get it, by hell or high water.
FRIEDA: Eve Ensler’s like the Ruth Draper of a new generation.
LAUREN: Oh, absolutely.
FRIEDA: So, we asked Larry Harvey what we should do with our money and he advised us to construct a 40-foot sculpture of twigs and bark, of our favorite poet—and then to burn it in the desert. That took some doing.
KEVIN: Larry is wonderful. As it turned out, success did kill his original idea for Burning Man, and he’s O.K. with that.
LAUREN: But there still must’ve been a bit more money left over? And, my God, what will your boss say when he finds out you two have been embezzling? [Enter STEVE DICKISON]
STEVE: If Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers today, would he be tried for treason? I asked him.
LAUREN: No, no, not you too!
STEVE: Daniel Ellsberg has the sexiest eyes.
LAUREN: Oh, my God.
FRIEDA: It was the first thing I noticed about him, at the Commonwealth Club. Next to Eve Ensler, Daniel Ellsberg is the sexiest tomboy beanpole on the planet.
KEVIN: He said he used to know you, Ms. Bacall.
LAUREN: Did he? I can’t remember. Oh, yes, we were engaged. That’s right. I met him at Truman Capote’s “Black and White Ball” at the Plaza. There was Kay Graham to my left and Daniel Ellsberg to my right, so I introduced them. You know it was really I who leaked the Pentagon Papers. [Fiercely] And I’d do it again all over again—if I knew what they were!
STEVE: Did you? We should get you a gig at the Commonwealth Club.
LAUREN: You, dear man, are in hot water up to your—[she surveys him] Oh, never mind. How can I help? And, by the way, will I be paid?
STEVE: Your check is good. It’s the others I’m worried about. And also, the tapes.
LAUREN: Why—what’s wrong with the tapes?
KEVIN: Well, when funds were running a little low, and the Commonwealth Club called and said they were bringing—oh, who was it, Frieda?
FRIEDA: It was Monica Lewinsky.
KEVIN: And none of us had a penny in our pockets, I looked around and saw all these tapes on the shelves just gathering dust, and four letters appeared across my field of vision: E-B-A-Y.
FRIEDA: And we sold them.
LAUREN: You have none left?
STEVE: What could we do? If it wasn’t Eve Ensler, it was Matthew Barney.
KEVIN: I saw the Cremaster Cycle, and I wanted to ask Matthew Barney what it feels like to cover your whole body with Vaseline and slither like Spiderman across the ceiling of the Vatican.
FRIEDA: So we asked him!
STEVE: We had a small account on Ebay and one day we offered a copy of the W. H. Auden tape and were we ever shocked, someone bought it!
KEVIN: Two people bid on it. That’s two more people than ever came in here and listened to it for free.
STEVE: So we knew we were onto something big.
LAUREN: Did I ever tell you that Ursula Andress asked me to have her baby for her? I said, “No, thanks, sweetheart, I’ve been through childbirth, and I’d rather do a picture with Sinatra than go through that meshugineh again.”
FRIEDA: What went for the most?
KEVIN: I think the Dylan Thomas tapes. Things got bad when we started to notice we had competition. Other sellers were undercutting us viciously. We’d have our Adrienne Rich tapes up for, say, $20, and all of a sudden someone else was offering Adrienne Rich for ten cents.
FRIEDA: With free postage.
STEVE: We soon figured out it was the staff at St. Mark’s and at Naropa.
LAUREN: So—they’re in the red, too?
KEVIN: Guess so. It’s tough to live in New York.
FRIEDA: As for the people at Naropa, it turned out they were sending all their money to the Dalai Lama to make Boulder more sacred. He’d send them back little cuttings of mountain plants, and little vials filled with his urine, and for that it would be ten thousand bucks a pop.
STEVE: Sacred! As though an hour with Johnnie Cochran doesn’t have its own spiritual ineffability.
LAUREN: I understand.
STEVE: And with Anne Waldman always in Prague, her razor-sharp financial mind hasn’t been at the controls.
LAUREN: Her I don’t care for. Vulgar little thing. Those scarves, that clanking jewelry, those silver bracelets, all stolen from me. That hair across her eyes à la Lauren Bacall?
KEVIN: Well, sure, but—
LAUREN: But I must shake myself out of Waldman negativity. [She shakes.] How can I help?
STEVE: It’s easy. We sold our last John Cage tapes—
FRIEDA: Nothing but dead silence anyhow—
STEVE: To bring you here, the world’s greatest actress, and you can impersonate all the different poets and thus pull the chestnuts out of the fire.
LAUREN: Well, I’m flattered, naturally, but—
FRIEDA: Oh do say you’ll help us, Miss Bacall!