First reading of the new season, and a damn good one (although not many folks were there to see it). What they missed: Stephen Berry reading some beautiful Osip Mendelstam translations, which he painstakingly undertook himself, having majored in Russian at SF State. Ezra would've been proud. Then some shavings from his two or three slim chapbooks, To and Simple Talk among them; finally, he mesmerized us with a by-heart rendition of a new, rhymed "epic" piece that he's currently working on. Stephen is to be admired for taking his work to the streets and publishing it the old-fashioned way, i.e., by doing lots of readings. Please look for him at other readings around town.