Blue Moon Binder Poems 1987-2021

The Blue Moon Tavern, opened a few months after Prohibition was lifted in 1934, is the first and oldest tavern in the U-District. It also provided a haven for UW professors who were caught up in the McCarthyist purges, such as Joe Butterworth, who used the bar as his writing desk. Specializing in Old English, he never found work again. He eventually went on public assistance. Accounts describe a "broken man" who haunted the Blue Moon Tavern in the '50s. Butterworth died in 1970. The Blue Moon's heyday continued into the 1950s and 1960s. Regulars included authors Tom Robbins and Darrell Bob Houston, poets Theodore Roethke, Richard Hugo, Carolyn Kizer, Stanley Kunitz, and David Wagoner, and painters Richard Gilkey and Leo Kenney. Other visitors included Dylan Thomas, Ken Kesey, Allen Ginsberg and Mik Moore.

Today, the Blue Moon Tavern struggles to remain part of the Seattle scene. This book of poetry is dedicated to its legacy and to all those who found inspiration and respite there.