Beat jazz poet and music patriarch John Sinclair [ tickets ] lost much of his New Orleans house and a portion of his cherished audio archives in a fire on Jan. 25.

''It broke my f***ing heart, I'll tell you,'' he said.

Sinclair, who howls intense jazz verse with his group the Jazz Scholars and has been a WWOZ dee-jay for 25 years, was out of town when the fire struck. The fire department determined that after the temperature dropped due to a hail storm the night before, the furnace turned on. A box of clothing in front of the furnace could have been ignited, but the fire department does not know for certain, Sinclair said.

Sinclair's books survived the blaze with water and smoke damage, but he lost all his computer and recording equipment. He also lost many master tapes, cassettes and DATs of his readings, performances, radio shows and production projects.

Since the fire, he has shipped the remains of his archives to the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor for permanent storage.

''I don't want to take any more chances,'' he said.

On Feb. 27, ex-MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer [ tickets ], who was featured on Sinclair's album ''Full Circle,'' will perform a benefit for Sinclair at Spaceland in Los Angeles. The Streetwalkin' Cheetahs will play an all-MC5 set for the show.

On March 4, a group of musicians and artists, including Ted Mason [ tickets ] of Modern English, Muzz Skillings [ tickets ] of Living Colour and the Scoldees will play a benefit at Arlene's Grocery in New York.

Although Sinclair is currently homeless, he is still pressing on with plans to raise money to print his book of blues poems, ''Fattening Frogs for Snakes: A Delta Sound Suite,'' forthcoming from Surregional Press.