Auteur: David A. Smith

THE DAY BEFORE PEARL HARBOR Martin Abramson’s family of Jewish immigrants arrives in the City of Angels from the Bronx. At fourteen, set on being a cowboy, he leaves home for Arizona & hires out as a wrangler, becoming the penultimate “Pachuco hipster Yiddish cowboy.” Four years later he’s a GI in a 7th Cavalry Recon unit patrolling the East German Border. Honorably Discharged & back in Venice, Abramson works a string of odd jobs: he boxes in the ring—setting a Lightweight Division record for the fastest KO, plays a noted lead role in Tennessee Williams’ Summer & Smoke at the Hollywood Playhouse & runs games as a carney on the Santa Monica Pier midway. He drives a taxi & becomes the chauffeur-body guard to one of his fares, an eccentric Palm Springs oil heiress. While in her employ Abramson uncovers & foils a plot hatched by local gangsters to steal the widow’s fortune; Mid-sixties finds him active in the poetry scenes in San Francisco & Berkeley. Friend and neighbor, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, films & tapes Abramson reciting & sells his chapbooks at his legendary City Lights Bookstore. Back in LA, he teaches himself to play the guitar, and begins singing & songwriting; he transforms his growing body of work into the Inkblot Hurricane Poetry Revue, adopts Hurricane as his nickname & takes the show on the road. Just as his work begins to see considerable publication, Abramson drops out & disappears from the scene to work in the world’s deepest silver mine. He then hits the road again, this time with his young son, David, busking on the street, performing in nightclubs, theaters & art galleries throughout North America & Europe. In the mid-eighties Hurricane Abramson returns for good to Jerusalem where, until the last months of his life, he continued to devote himself to his poetry, teaching guitar & performing on stage.