SHOCK

TREATMENT

KAREN FINLEY
with illustrations by the author

City Lights | San Francisco

Copyright 1990, 2015 by Karen Finley

All rights reserved
Book design by Rex Ray
Cover design by Herb Thornby
Cover drawing by Karen Finley
Parts of this book have appeared in The Drama Review, Blatant
Artifice, ArtForwn, The Whole Earth Review, Paper, and City Lights
Review.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Finley, Karen.
[Prose works. Selections]
Shock treatment / Karen Finley. Expanded 25th anniversary
edition.
pages ; cm
ISBN 978-0-87286-691-1 (softcover)
I. Title.
PS3556.I488A6 2015
818'.54dc23
2015023038

City Lights books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133
www.citylights.com

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

When Karen Finley and I were putting together a manuscript in the late 1980s, we had no idea that these texts
would become a lightning rod in the Culture Wars soon to
be waged by right-wing conservatives. But as Shock Treatment came off press in 1990, Karen was suddenly catapulted into the center of a controversy about public arts
funding and what constitutes valid artistic expression. She
went from being an avant-garde performance artist with a
niche following to being written about in People magazine
in less than a week. In a pre-Internet era, that was pretty
shocking. It could fuck you up in personal and professional
ways. But Karen faced down the haters with grace and clarity. This wasnt an opportunity, as some people claimed, for
Karen to capitalize on celebrity. It was a struggle against
being defined by how the wing nuts depicted her.
Karens work addressed audiences under siegethe
AIDS crisis was a calamity of unspeakable dimensions. In
these texts she was able to put into language what it felt
like to live and die in those plague years, when the brutality of deadly disease was surpassed only by the fearsome culture of cruelty surrounding the most vulnerable
communities.
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I was a young editor working by day at City Lights

Publishers, a venerable institution known for championing
renegade literature ever since the Beat era, and I wanted to
contribute to that mission. I was working in the evenings
as a clerk in the bookstore downstairs from the publishing
offices, and thats where I met Rex Ray, an artist who was
attending the San Francisco Art Institute, and who was just
beginning to develop a Mac-based practice in graphic design. He was working in the bookstore too, we became fast
friends, and he introduced me to Karen.
When I saw her perform the first time I thought, this is
how people must have felt when they heard Allen Ginsberg
read Howl some thirty years before. Karens performances
were transformative for audiences lucky enough to see her
in person, and I wanted to bring her work to people who
might not make it to the Mudd Club or the Pyramid Club or
the DNA Lounge. Her courageous excoriation of misogyny
and homophobia translated brilliantly to the page. With the
prospect of publishing a book with City Lights, she developed a range of writing gestures, which continue to influence and inspire multiple generations of artists and writers.
Rex created the distinctive design for Shock Treatment,
using Karens texts and drawings. It was a formative project
for all of uswe trusted each other. I learned that publishing books is motivated by many desires, but for me, above
all, it is about relationships.
Over the years I have had the privilege to work on
other books and projects with Karen. I collaborated with
Rex for two decades. He created an aesthetic for many of
my publishing projects, which perfectly suited the works.
(It turns out that sometimes, you can judge a book by its
cover.) When he passed away in February of this year, I
called Karen and we talked about our connection to one
another and to Rex, which began with publishing this book
twenty-five years ago. Hearing her voice on the phone, I
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remembered the time when, in finalizing the manuscript for

Shock Treatment, she called from New York to tell me that
she had just finished a new poem for the end of the book.
She read The Black Sheep to me and I sat stunned by the
beauty and raw power of this empathetic poem. This project
with Karen would help me to dream a life that is about art
and work and friendship.
I dont remember the last time that Karen, Rex, and I
were all in the same room together. Its been years. But I do
know that we each emerged from this project feeling like we
were creating a world together, inviting people in, and hoping this book would resonate over time, and it has.
Amy Scholder
July 2015

vii

INTRODUCTION TO THE
25TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

am honored to write an introduction to the 25th anniversary edition of Shock Treatment, and to share my
thoughts on the meaning of this milestone. City Lights has
had an instrumental role in my life as an artist, a writer, an
activist, and a citizen.
Thinking back to the summer of 1970, the summer
before beginning high school, I remember browsing through
the poetry section of my local library in Evanston, Illinois
in search of meaningful expression. I had been looking at
a book on Happenings by Michael Kirby, and since some of
the artists mentioned in that book used poetic language I
decided to look for books of verse.
I was struck by the title Golden Sardine. It seemed to
jump off the shelf into my hands. I can still see the ochre
cover with Kaufmans portrait. Golden Sardine by Bob
Kaufman was part of the City Lights Pocket Poets series. I
was mesmerized by Kaufmans style of writing, his daring
use of language revealing emotion, taking on social issues,
using language as resistance. It felt like a magical moment,
standing and reading in the stacks. I didnt want to check
the book out and read it elsewhere, for fear something would
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disrupt the enchantment I was experiencing. In these

private moments of reading, poetics guided me to create an
interior space for resistance to the outside world. Poetry is
not just about sound and nature. Poetry is about speaking
up and out. In this act of reading, I had found illumination.
I moved to San Francisco to attend the San Francisco Art Institute in 1977. I lived in North Beach and
found work across the street from City Lights as a cocktail
waitress at the infamous Condor Club, featuring topless
performers starring Carol Doda. Later I moved down the
street to El Cid. The owner was taking a writing class and
brought me his work to read. In those days North Beach
was a crazy combination of burlesque, punk, comedy,
poetry, film, and Beat, set within Italian and Chinese neighborhoods. Even though San Francisco was not a 4 am-lastcall kind of town, the cafes were open late and it seemed
like most people did not work 9-5. It was a city of artists,
not of accountants.
City Lights was open well into the evening. Reading
was encouraged; loitering was allowed. After work I would
venture from the burlesque house to the bookstore and sit
with acclaimed writers like Richard Brautigan and Gregory
Corso.
As a young feminist writer I found it difficult to find
freedom and artistic opportunity within male-defined spaces. While men were finding artistic triumph on the road,
those spaces were impossible for most women, whose fears
of violence and attacks of all kinds were real.
Kathy Acker was my teacher at the San Francisco
Art Institute. She offered a way out of traditionally paternal pedagogical structures, providing me a profound and
inspired female mentor. Her approach to language chaos,
text appropriation, and collage released nontraditional
methods of art-making and narratives of splittingan intensity that became part of my working vocabulary.
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My early performances were written and performed in

San Francisco with full awareness of the infamous poetic
generation before us. My goal was to participate in a female
voicing of this legacy. In The Constant State of Desire and
We Keep Our Victims Ready, I displayed my body while
voicing hysteria and rage. I showed what it looks like to lose
control while being in control.
Breaking taboos came at a cost to me. I was feared,
attacked, sexualizeda Medea with venomous spittle. My
work was brought to the floors of congress, on the front
pages of daily newspapers. I was criticized as a heathen. My
performances were often not permitted. In England, where
it was illegal for women to speak and show their nude body
at the same time, I was forced to leave the country.
At the time of publication of Shock Treatment in 1990,
the nation was in the midst of the culture wars. Three artists (John Fleck, Holly Hughes, Tim Miller) and I had been
selected by the National Endowment of the Arts to receive
grants for solo performances but they were then removed
because of indecency. The sexual panic and hysteria that
erupted from this government decision sparked further
anxieties about otherness, sexual identity, and the performance of gender fluidity. Eventually we brought that
case to the Supreme Court of the United States, Finley vs.
National Endowment of the Arts.
The AIDS epidemic was raging and the US government was in denial. By 1990 almost 200,000 were diagnosed with HIV/AIDS and over 120,000 had died in the US
alone. George Bush was in power. Act Up disrupted Wall
Street, successfully protesting the high price of AZT, the
first government-approved treatment of HIV. By August the
first Gulf War began. And another kind of war was underway against artists and nonprofits. Jesse Helms, a senator
from North Carolina, who had opposed civil rights in the
1960s, set out an agenda against homosexuality, feminism,
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disability rights, access to abortion, and affirmative action.

Artists and writers were routinely disparaged. The writings
in Shock Treatment comprised of some of the performance
texts that were under attack at that time.
Certain traditions of poetry and the legacy of the Beats
inspired me. I thought of City Lights own relationship to
censorshipthe 1955 publication of Allen Ginsbergs Howl,
which resulted in a historic obscenity trial. I was determined to keep my focus on preserving free speech.
Of course, culture wars continue to this day. The
threat of censorship still exists. The complex and terrorizing events around the worldand Im thinking right now
about the recent attacks in Parisare devastating to all
citizens. Where do we go from here?
I reflect on the dedication of Lawrence Ferlinghetti, one
of Americas foremost poets and also founder of City Lights
Books. It was his generosity of spirit and imagination,
which made possible the City Lights enterprise. City Lights
provides a place for community, and publishing as social
activism. This contribution impacts on the most intimate
level of the reader and neighborhoods and well beyond the
Golden Gate Bridge. Here is a poem Ive written in tribute to
being part of the City Lights legacy.

Let me tell you about Shock Treatment

And take you into her hearth
A grandmother gives too much
By robbing dirts grave
And spreads that shit in my mouth
Let me tell you about how I wrote it
But rather how you wrote it
How we wrote it together
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With full malicious intentional disruption

Disappear imperial purgatory politics
But it was always about more
Leaving shame for healing
I wish my book could have done more
Like save a bullied child before jumping off the bridge
For it is only words not action
A tender tempo uprising before a millennial
The nostalgia for espresso respected
Loneliness equated with Beat
Let me take you to the party as my guest
I need snow to be happy
Once I was hit by a car, a bug, a beetle
Just on the road from City Lights
On old Columbus zig zag
I wasnt hit too bad
Wasnt hit too bad
Wasnt hit too bad
Wasnt hit
Too bad
Listen to my poetry
The words sink in like bad habits
A sweet ooze of discomfort
I can never get enough
Waiting to overdose an octave
Lets look at all that happened
And all we have been through
As if the last generation gives us a lens
Like a crystal ball
To predict an uneven hand and deck
xiii

Wars, AIDS, social injustice,

Inequality, marginalized mobility
Racism, policism
Black Lives Matter
Shall we name names?
Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Michael Brown
Take to the streets!
Sometimes so afraid of what will happen
What has happened
Please dont hide and whither
Hear the words of thunder
The pitter-patter of tongue
Lips smack
Biting words sting the air
Freedom words language image
Contested
The battlefield of expression
Help us listen
Help us voice
Help us respect
Help us reflect
Help us respect
Help us with the freedom of speech
And to leave room
To be offended
Haunted at the evils of taboo
My darkest hour
Is when you
See no way out except
For violence
Take up the pen
Take up the pencil
xiv

And marvel in all

Her lines
Executed

I dedicate this anniversary edition to my daughter, Violet.

xv