An Interview with August Bernadicou, Editor of Devour Me, Again: Collected Poems

Forest Smotrich-Barr: “Either you OD and die or you become an elder and tell stories,” Bambi says in one of her interviews with you in Devour Me, Again. What has Bambi’s role been as an elder in your life?

August Bernadicou: Bambi Lake changed my life. She was a visionary on a David Bowie-in-a-sequin-gown level. She could sing, write, and act. I call her “The Mother of Us All.” She has done something everyone alternative can relate to. She is universal. She looked like a model. One time I asked her how everything came together, and she said, “It was the perfect combination of glamour and magic.” The underdogs gravitated toward her. Even when she wasn’t performing, it was always showtime. 

I learned just by being around her. Even though she lived with hope, she suffered from mental illness and was often defeated. I learned that everyone deserves happiness. I learned that you should never give up on your dreams. Bambi would tell me, “I should be touring Europe. I should be in New York performing. It should be me. It isn’t fair.” She really believed that, in her elder years,  her big break was around the corner. You learn a lot about life when you are young and around a talented, beautiful, and powerful person who talks like that. We started hanging out when she was 65 years old, and I was 21. She did not claim to have the answers, but she lived a life that told you everything you needed to know.

Forest Smotrich-Barr: Bambi writes, “my lovers have always preferred / to love Me in private. / So the outside world / has always seemed / a bit unreal to Me.” How did you navigate thinking about the “private” versus “public” Bambi in assembling this collection? 

What do you think Bambi’s vision for her legacy was, and how did you honor that in your editorial process?

August Bernadicou: I think she would want to be known for having more comebacks and eras than Cher. She wanted to be famous.

The world needs to know about the Queen of Polk Street. When I asked Bambi to describe herself in three words, she said, “Tall, thin, and wistful.” I think her legacy is releasing an album called “My Glamourous Life As A Broadway Hostess” and spelling it the way she did. She consistently reinvented herself, and I like that everyone knows her for a different reason. What was important to me during the editing process was that we put everything we could in the book. We do not believe there is any more Bambi Lake material. If anyone out there has a Bambi Lake poem written on a napkin from 1988, please reach out. 

Forest Smotrich-Barr: Bambi says in one of her interviews with you that a turning point in her creative process was asking herself, “What does Joni Mitchell do? She writes about her ex-boyfriends.” What stands out to you in Bambi’s many odes to her ex-lovers?

August Bernadicou: Bambi’s songs are love stories, breakups, and character studies. It’s not nostalgia; it’s how she moved through the world.

My favorite line is “Freddie got shady and cunning and vain / we did pearlescent Peruvian flake cocaine.” My second favorite line is from “BaBa:” “The drummer for the Zeros, the Mexican Ramones / I was a stripper on German hormones.”

During my 2015–2016 time with Bambi, I kept a journal, and in my last entry before moving to New York, I recalled Bambi talking about BaBa and how, after all those years, her heart was still broken. When I recently reread my journal, I was reminded of how much pain she was carrying. I couldn’t help her beyond buying her breakfast, coffee, and cigarettes. I couldn’t take away her pain. I listened and told her how important she was to the world and to me. Nearly every dialogue entry centered on her feeling “incomplete” and missing the loves of her life: BaBa, San Jose Johnny the Libra, Viking Dan, and many, many more. This is one side of Bambi. Offstage. Onstage, she turned her heartbreak into art. That was her gift. She had to keep going. 

In 2021, exactly one year after her death, The LGBTQ History Project released a record featuring two Bambi Lake punk-rock, gossip-garage tracks: Freddie and BaBa. It’s on translucent vinyl with a Dan Nicoletta cover. It is lost in the warehouse, but maybe the additional copies will be found…

But, now—BaBa continues, and so does Bambi! What do you think Bambi would think?

In case you were wondering, yes: I have a recording of Bambi impersonating Joni Mitchell. She was known for that. 

Forest Smotrich-Barr: Brontez Purnell writes in his foreword that Bambi was “a prophet” who witnessed “innumerable cultural shifts” in San Francisco in her lifetime, and that “she had to witness them from the margins.” What do you see as Bambi’s perceptions of and prophecies for San Francisco?

August Bernadicou: Of course, Bambi Lake predicted the future. When I think of her, I think of the past. You don’t need me to tell you San Francisco has changed. Everything is so expensive. The Angels of Light were all about free theater. The life Bambi lived will never be possible again. 

Bambi Lake was a street-prophetic poet who not only paved the way but also critiqued the good, bad, and ugly of San Francisco and beyond. She got around. Some of the poems in Devour Me, Again come from a book Bambi published in 2004 titled Smash and Grab. “Smash and grab” is now one of the phrases associated with San Francisco. In her poem “I,” she says “The last rainbow I saw / was when I was in a van / driving to L.A. in 1996.” That’s so Bambi. It suggests she went nearly a decade without seeing a rainbow.

Nothing got past Bambi. Bambi was from an era where you either had to check a box and tell the government you were gay or fight in a war. Bambi wrote: “I AM GAY” on her draft card. And she was. Very much so. 

Bambi Lake is the ultimate San Francisco underground legend. 

Here are some links to Bambi’s performances.