Old Poets Society

Last week I binged on four novels by Per Petterson. Four. His clean, simple sentences are humbling and a little comforting in a world that feels so precariously skewed, so far from any sense of clarity. But one of the narrators observed that the past is a kind of foreign country; things are done differently there, he said. This resonated.  

I remember thinking and writing, in 2020, that the pandemic removed the future temporarily, and muddled the present.  For many of my generation, the past became a sort of refuge; it felt solid and safe.  Some of these people forgot completely about the future, and will never again trust in this.  They've become steeped in nostalgia and recollection to the extent that their present is nearly eclipsed by what came before. The issue is, our versions of the past are not as reliable as we think.  And yes, things were done differently there. Many old bets are 'off'. Still, this is not an excuse not to go on; we must do more than criticize and indulge one another with memories.

Facebook as a platform encourages this kind of behavior.  One can't open a page without being reminded of past celebrations and events-- griefs and losses. There we are -- happy and laughing-- in places that no longer exist, with friends who have sadly passed away.  

April being poetry month brings a slew of daily lines I'd posted in past years which at the time seemed more compelling, as though one needed a witness to just 'be'. And as much as one hates to admit, it is audience that affects our sense of self-worth.  I grew up copying poems into a notebook from the age of four, alternating with many of my own I never showed anyone until this 'me' era gave me a little encouragement. I was writing and performing my songs for years before I thought of sharing poems. It surprised me in the 1980's that much of the praise for my first recording was for lyrics.

When I used to take the night bus crosstown to the 3 train, on the way to work, I often met an older man named Bob.  He was a writer; he'd kept his student apartment on the west side for over fifty years so he could spend nights typing without disturbing his wife. Mostly he wrote poetry... he'd recite for me on the bus, old style, and as we got to know one another, he'd tell me amazing stories... he'd translated Neruda, and got to take him around the city on one of his very few visits here. It seemed almost incredulous.  He had incredibly chivalrous manners and always held my hand as I got off the bus.  

One day he dropped off a manila envelope of work... written in fastidious and beautiful longhand... lovely professional poems about nature, about love... about grief.  His wife had died, but he still kept his habit of crossing town to his little writing studio. I got the courage to give him a manuscript of Scars-- my first collection-- and he treated it as though it was established literature.  His praise was quiet but solid and he showed me a good deal of respect.  When the book came, he insisted on buying ten copies which he said he gave out to friends and fellow-poets. They need to know you, he would say.

I often ran into him-- walking, looking down, without a coat like an old Englishman-- no umbrella in the rain...  we exchanged work over the years and he gave me a good deal of confidence.  During the Covid quarantine one day he called me-- to see how I was, but really it was just to connect.  I felt terrible. He passed away two years ago-- his aging undoubtedly accelerated by the shock of the pandemic.  I still rode the bus often-- it was free-- and wrote verse in my head. 

A young woman in his building had somehow befriended him... put his work together in a book which was not of the quality he deserved.  In exchange I think she received much of his estate... his apartment, I'd heard... I don't know why I mistrusted her, but I do. Shame on me.

My other mentor/fellow poet was a woman named Siri... she was eighty when we met and had just published her first book, sponsored by a former laureate who taught at Columbia where she took an evening class.  Somehow we exchanged books and then work.  Her poems were interesting and serious; she had a degree in Botany from Harvard... her text was wonderfully suffused with flowers and tree names... she had also, I learned, been married to a very high-profile financier and lived well. 

For a few years Siri and I met for coffee and critiqued one another. Her respect for me was enormously helpful.  One day I heard she'd ironically tripped over one of those sidewalk tree-garden fences and hit her head.  From then on she was confused.  Soon afterward I dropped off an envelope of work and the doorman told me she'd passed away.  I still have a small pile of her 'new' work-- a poem about twin girls that haunts me still.  Her daughters are sort of celebrities and impossible to track down... but I often wonder if they ever cherished her work.

When I first moved to my neighborhood, in the 1990's, The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y was active and provided not just a platform for readings but an incomparable library of mostly donated works from important poets who had read and spoken there over seventy-five years. The library was sadly dismantled to make room for a spa, and while the organization exists as an online resource, politics and contemporary financial priorities have altered its meaning. It is no longer a 'home' for old poets.

So now in 2025 I continue to receive the Knopf Poem of the Day emailed April mornings... occasionally a gem in there, but usually, like today-- a tough Anne Sexton-- someone from the more rigorous past.  The new poets-- well, for the most part they disappoint.  Still anxious to discover something... I begin to doubt myself. I have not been taught... I have just transcribed the voice which recites inside. But I am aware that my two under-celebrated mentors have given me the courage to envision some creative future where I will try to approach the standards they shared quietly in private poetic confidence. 

Stockholm Syndrome

I was in Sweden last week.  There were those late-nights when nothing much was happening, including sleep, and I turned the television on in my hotel room.  Not inclined to pay for premium or anything else, I am always surprised to see what if any of American pathetic reality-fare makes its way into Scandinavian standard broadcasting.  The only thing I could find was Naked and Afraid, and a constant home-renovation network.  So it was CNN for me, to get a little home-news.  Unfortunately the big story my first day was the Harry-Meghan drama.  Right away this did not seem viable.  I can't imagine any kind of car-chase in Manhattan; it's just not feasible. But the endless hours of commentating, the speculations and comparisons and the drama... well, ad nauseam.  There was virtually no other news.  While I've given the demoted couple a certain benefit of doubt, it was a Trumpian moment for them.  I placed a theoretical bet that it would take twenty-four hours for the correction, and there it was-- the humble cab driver, with a reality check.  It made the King and his Queen-consort look immediately better.  Even Oprah might regret all that money she doled out.

Then there was the Columbian plane-crash survivor-story.  Yes, we all want to pray and believe in these miracles... but to replace reality with a fairy-tale is not only news-unworthy but fraudulent.  Still, their fate is unclear.  What is clear is the unreliability of these news platforms which in their desperation to achieve viewer popularity seem to have blurred the lines of journalism and reporting to succumb to the public hunger for drama. 

Two young men came by to visit yesterday and we fell into the inevitable recurrent theme of 'the good old days' when not only originality was prized, but we took for granted the solidity of information.  Fact checking, accuracy.  The actual version-- the truth.  It takes me way too much time and a semi-analytical brain to sort through daily accounts of events, medical claims and recommendations.  Every news platform has a slightly different version of things. Like an old person's eyes, it takes a bit of time to gain clarity.  Maybe it's the quick-firing in this internet age that encourages premature ejaculation of information before it is verified or chronologized.

One thing I'm here for, back in the US, is the basketball playoffs.  And as I've said before, the beauty of sport is there is a clear winner. There are playbacks, disputed calls, a few disparities and bad behaviour, but for the most part, they even out in the end.  Grudges and prejudices get diluted by the number of games... we watch over and over the replays and footage from all kinds of angles, and a decision is made.  Hardly anyone blames the faulty hoop or the greased ball or the score-keeper.  It's not an election, but isn't it a little pathetic that a large part of the population can't seem to process the official decision of a national political process? The electoral officiators do not seem to have the authority of a sports referee. 

My son and I had a great discussion today about the athletes who refused the vaccine.  My position was always a little controversial, but as a covid survivor who donated blood and plasma pre and post-vaccine, I still respect a decision by someone whose entire life depends on their physical health.  Part of the problem here was the lack of transparency and clarity on the science.  Once policy was determined, in a culture of personal freedom, we are not used to being compelled to do certain things.  People were still getting sick; the data was not solid.  And it shifted-- it evolved.  The virus remained one step ahead of us, and that was worrying.  

In Stockholm, aside from collecting dust on apothecary shelves,  I saw not a single mask.  Nor on the SAS crammed airplanes I took back and forth, despite perpetual coughing and sneezing and obviously ill passengers.  As long as it was not Covid, no one took notice?  The airline boarding forms, if one read the fine print, asked one to agree to wear a mask on the flight.  This was obviously ignored.  And back in New York City it's pretty much business as usual.  The East Village bars, and Times Square are packed... clubs, restaurants seem more active than ever.  People are joyful and unafraid.  Yes, I still have a few acquaintances who cling to outdated virus-prevention like a dysfunctional marriage.  But they are the unhealthy ones.  What is undeniable is the skepticism toward information-- the mistrust.  It is just misplaced.

Who is to tell us in whom we are to trust-- in God, as our money states? The value of the dollar fluctuates daily-- a few of our 'solid' banking institutions have crumbled recently; do we blame God for this?  Greed? The compulsion to amass sums of money beyond the use of any human being?  The competitive and swift transfer of multi-dollars for ideas?  The very backbone of our government is tested by the debt ceiling.  What happened to dollar-for-dollar economics?  I worked my entire life to receive a meagre social security check every month.  I put this money aside.  As a self-employed struggling musician, I paid twice what a payrolled worked deducts.  I was honest and reported and paid in.  Am I to be punished for being a 'solid' citizen?  

So I will still watch my man Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum competing for an NBA title-- men who are earning more in one game than I have earned in a lifetime.  More than Babe Ruth maybe earned in a lifetime.  I will watch the scores rise, and witness the baskets that make these up.  Unlike the news which comes afterward-- the debt ceiling talks, the CDC pronouncements and the stock market numbers, all of which are questionable to the likes of me.  I admire the basketball skill-- the performance-- the clarity of outcome.  Let the talking heads discuss the upcoming election endlessly... for now, at least, in Basketball I trust. 

UNCOMMON SCENTS

The cusp of April/May in New York City is seasoned by foliage... in the parks, on the most unexpected streets where gutters are stalked by rats and vermin, garbage spillage is a constant... the breathtaking arcades of pink and white could be staging a coronation.  Central Park is at its gala-finest... And then, the pink and white rain of petals. But summer is coming... 

My country friends send me photos of their blooming lilac bushes. This seems sort of a Mother's Day reminder; while mine loved the color yellow, lilacs surrounded our house, grew in profusion without coaxing to touch the second-story and enter through open windows. Their sweetness was almost overpowering... they brought wasps and bees... the cuttings downstairs were overkill.  

I've always thought children, like dogs, have incredibly sensitive noses.  Young teenagers are beginning to discover scents-- their own, their peers', the kind that comes in a bottle.  Home memories are so often olfactory... people's houses had a characteristic scent-- our kitchen, the faintest buttery ghost of piecrust and cinnamon... it permeated the house, like perfume.  

My mother rarely wore perfume, although she had a collection of seductive bottles on her vanity-- for some reason they had to be French: Chanel, Arpège, Givenchy, Guerlain.  I've written before about playing with these... the exotic bottles in their boxes and velvet casings... the prisms from the lamp-crystals making rainbows on the ceiling.  I experimented by pouring them together, mixing them.  I was banished to my room for weeks.

My older sister who had precocious boy-experience wore Shalimar. We'd lie on the bed on spring nights like tonight, when we shared a room, and the scent of lilacs mixed with her perfume is as vivid a memory as her fascinating stories about boys-- their hair, their bodies and their faces.  Boys in middle school smelled like Old Spice and Canoe-- English Leather.  It was awful to me.  Some of them put stuff in their hair... 

In 1970 I thought I fell in love with an older boy.  I was 16; he was 23 and had been to Vietnam.  His body was ripped and tan, his hair was long and streaked with what looked like gold.  His eyes were blue and his teeth were crooked.  He was bad; he flirted with my mother and she warned me.  I was a toy, she said;  he'll chew you up and spit out the bones... but that only made it worse.  I lost sleep, I fantasized... I played Van Morrison over and over... Astral Weeks... Free... we went to concerts... he drove a Karmann Ghia that smelled of patchouli and hash. 

Patchouli.  All through the 1970's; I can almost smell it on old photographs.  My great young loves all used it like an aphrodisiac. Patchouli and leather, carseats, grassy lawns, bedsheets and sleeping bags... 

The first sign of Covid for me was the anosmia.  I had a bottle of bleach, was trying to disinfect my guitar and equipment I'd had on a crowded, infected pre-quarantine subway and realized I could stick my nose in the bottle... and smell nothing.  Even my doctor, mid-March 2020, was baffled.  It went on.. and on... for weeks and weeks.  Nothing.  Food was strange, coffee was terrible.  I thought I could taste grapes, or I imagined I could... but everything else was dull and wooden.  After several months bad smells-- rotting garbage, burned food-- began to process as this strange ginger-cookie scent.  It was weird.  I was grieving, losing friend after friend-- isolated.  I walked in the park... no lilacs, no roses, no spring rain moist-earth grassy fragrance.  Nothing.  Mother's Day was without joy.

My 12-string guitar, as if in pandemic sympathy, imploded.  In early summer I borrowed Alan's Taylor... I carried it home with the broken handle I knew so well... it was heavy, that case... it took a few days for me to have the courage to open it... and when I did, there it was... the scent of Alan-- absolute and vivid, in the room.. like a genie from a bottle.  I cried.  I took it out and played Walk Away Renée, the way he used to... in D.  After I played for a while, I put it back in the case... but the scent was on me... the sense of Alan.  

For many months I had this souvenir.  I took it out at 3 AM nearly every night; I wrote songs, I remembered, I cried sometimes... I talked to him.  At a certain time, it lost its magic.  My 12-string was repaired and I returned the Taylor which traveled to Virginia in a car. I began to recover my olfactory sense, but like my life, things were not the same.  My coffee still doesn't resonate, try as I do to sample different beans and roasts.  But I can smell my neighbor's brew at 6 AM when I am still awake playing my restored 12-string.  I'm not sure which neighbor it is but I am sure they are awake and brewing.  

As for me, I can now smell the lilacs both in the park and in my mind. Today I was in a shop and I heard 'Me and Mrs. Jones', my mother's favorite song from the 1970's, when men still flirted with her and her dreams went beyond kitchen narratives. Today I am so much older than she was at that moment in time... when I bought her the record so she could play it over and over.  I could not stop the tears.  While I have been a mother for thirty-three years, it will always be her holiday and it will always smell of lilacs.

March Sadness

I've binged on basketball this weekend to the point of exhaustion.  My alma mater has slipped into Cinderella-hood with an unexpected victory and I cried out and fist-pumped in front of the screen my son forced me to install way back when he was still competing.  It's fantastic, I must admit.  I am fully committed to the madness, the passion-- the heartbreaking disappointments and the wins-- deserved or not. And it's free.

It was March when I began this blog-- exactly sixteen years ago, with the faint hope that leaving a trail of written crumbs might entice someone to discover a persona I was not quite sure I was. At that moment my son's hoop dreams were real and like a full moon on his teenage horizon.  I was a NYC basketball mother-- no car, but I faithfully subway'ed it to every gym in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan-- to church basements and city parks-- for tournaments, games, competitions.  I yelled my head off and jumped around and embarrassed the hell out of him while he mostly ignored me or referred to me as his grandmother at Riverside Church. Uptown many of the parents were 15/16 years older than their kids... some still had hoop dreams of their own.  

These days he's more of a bettor and an analyst.  He's aged out of playing competitively and he's mature enough to realize his contribution is maybe managerial.  The business of sports has changed, too, since he was in high school.  The stakes are higher, the field is not quite so level. It's complicated, as they say.

March always had a sense of mystery for me-- our Mom read to us at night, and one of her favorites was Little Women.  It didn't occur to me that the March sisters simply had a common last name; it was more of a designation, like the March hare I knew well from repeated Alice in Wonderland narrations.  Beware the Ides of March, I recalled from some rhyme my Irish nanny recited.  We had the piano sheet music for The Funeral March of a Marionette which gave me creeps-- how can you know when a puppet is dead, I asked my sister many times?  

It seemed fitting that I was feeling under the weather this past week. Like a commemoration of the 2020 covid scourge which took my Alan but left me here forever changed.  It was exactly three years since that Ides of March when he'd had symptoms, and mine arrived on St. Patrick's day, like a virus snake.  

Tuesday is the randomly designated beginning of spring.  Today's chill reminded us not to take things for granted.  It occurred to me that my son's father was born in March-- maybe this very day.  Surely there was a time when I baked a cake and celebrated.  The first time I fell in love was March.  But I can't seem to draw it out of the funereal doldrums that ring from its very name.  There will always be an Alan-shaped hole, and terrible pandemic remembrances that sparked a chain of events I could not intercept.  

Like most of these posts, I begin with an idea and stray far enough that I cannot recall my original intent.  Basketball.  Madness.  It's a young sport.  The basket.  It's simple.  Last week in the cold rain there were boys playing in relative darkness on one of the uptown courts.  They were inspired by the tournament, maybe.  They were soaked and the wet ball on puddled pavement was hard to manage.  I stood in the streetlamp shadow and watched them like an old crow. The documentary Hoop Dreams was on some cable channel at 3 AM... I stayed awake until dawn watching.  It was depressing, yes... but also the time-- before cellphones, before the internet-- felt innocent and more real.  The uniforms were funny. The mothers-- the relentless routine of raising children-- the vicarious, deep disappointments... where are they now?

The banks are ailing, the world is in turmoil, but the games go on... Sport, before television, was the true narcotic entertainment of the people.  We go from season to season, from World Series to World Cup to Super Bowl to March Madness.  Admittedly I dread the coming of spring.  I dislike daylight savings time-- I hoard long dark mornings and early sunset... reading by candlelight and the pointy scent of winter starlight.  It occurred to me today, had I stayed in England, today would be Mother's Day.  For the Brits, it maybe sweetens a dark month.  

In the park this evening, a fat red robin stared me down.  He was bold and a little early, I thought.  His breast was the color of blood. If April is the cruelest month, I asked him silently, what can we name March?  If the year was a deck of cards, we'd surely be a black suit. Tonight I watched Gonzaga beat out a heroic TCU.  It was heartbreaking-- they played so hard, the underdogs.  We're all underdogs... there's a rare victory out there if we can find it... and there's tragedy; there's April, with its cruelty, and for another ten days, the richly unpredictable madness of March. 

Omicronic

The pandemic, in all its variations and behaviors, has again become the enigmatic chart-topper of the year.  It commands a massive global audience-- we participate, we read, we listen-- suffer, weep and throw up our hands.  It has confused performance with spectators, victim with aggressor, mourner with mourned.  Like a biological fugue, it plays on... movement upon movement-- scherzo upon adagio; just when we think we've reached the finale, there is another coda.  

One thing of which it reminds me is the proverbial sound of one hand clapping.  We have experienced the solitude of isolation-- of grief and loss, of quarantine.  Those of us who are comfortable with ourselves have indulged-- even enjoyed and 'caught up' with scrap books, nostalgia, creative projects we'd procrastinated.  We read from our bedside stack of books... we watch old films and try out recipes.  

The couples among us have either flourished or suffered.  Some compete for space or crave silence... some embrace the home-honeymoon scenario. But the performers-- the singers and players and actors-- have taken a major hit.  Yes, they go on their Facebook pages and zoom-entertain... but I notice the audience is dropping off.  Some of the die-hards look anxiously at their live stats as they sit at a piano, counting the drop-ins and regretting the passers-by.  I feel sheepish sneaking away.  But to broadcast myself? I shudder (shutter). 

I've already admitted to indulging in scads of old films-- way too much television, a healthy amount of YouTube concerts and comedy. Reading-- yes, but proportionately more screen time and channel changing.  The old films are always comforting... and seeing New York City as it was seems more compelling than ever.  Pandemic-era shows are immediately recognizable and besides the incessant news, I grow distant.  

Another thing I've noticed is how quickly the brief cultural timestamps seem... as though the expiration dates are closer and closer.  While old films have a timelessness... the newer ones (aside from Titanic and a few ubiquitously recycled classics) seem irrelevant and cheap. Contemporary celebrity is a vast field of edited heads and faces. Modern options have altered them-- morphed some of them into a kind of generic air-brushed idolatry.  Flash back to Ingrid Bergman or Veronica Lake-- Gary Cooper and Gregory Peck.  They are iconic... unmistakable.    

I am the recipient of hundreds of art blogs and online publications.  I browse auctions and museums-- virtual galleries and whatever I can... but see these sadly as imagery with short shelf-lives.  Yes, I'm old and cranky... but I wonder where Jean Michel would be if he'd survived.  A fat, cigar-smoking billionaire with trademarked colors, photographed in LVMH with Beyonce and Jay Z?  I suppose the riddle answers itself because he did not get that far, nor did he relish the pre-millennial changes as they affected his work.  

The irony of covid robbing us of smell and taste is poignant.  Once the Black Lives Matter violence subsided, I feel as though we all fell into a kind of bland stupor.  We fooled ourselves into reverting to old habits-- crowds and concerts, shopping and sports... and now we are again forced to reconsider.  What did we accomplish?  Our country is a divided mess, we are reeling from isolated natural disasters which raise the bar of anxiety.  But mostly we look into our little social media mirrors with unprecedented narcissism, the way the Queen in Snow White was told over and over she was beautiful.  We sing Christmas songs to one another online, we buy gifts and pretend.  

Who is watching?  There used to be movie magazines and celebrity papers for the kings and queens of Hollywood.. but did a local underwear model have millions of 'followers'?  Girls coloring their hair in front of phone cameras and cats parading in costumes... If we added up all the numbers on instagram, what kind of infinity would this be?  I can't help feeling this is all some catastrophic distraction, and covid aside, there is something wrong with everyone. 

Is it me, one of my friends asked on Facebook, after seeing a few of our old rebel heroes posing with political superstars who veto abortion and refuse vaccines and masks?  Where are priorities? And more important, where is science and data?  How is it possible that the Uber-protector America has let us all slip through its medical fingers, despite our obedience to accept not one but three unproven vaccines?  Are we just narcissistic little guinea pigs who post on our social media our immunity-badge which seems to fail us at just the wrong moment?  Is there something they are not telling us, or have we just lost the ability to listen, to read between lines?  

I've been playing, over and over, on my double bass, a few Christmas melodies.  I could fool an amateur into thinking I am proficient on this instrument.  Over and over in my head and my heart, I wish my friends and even my enemies and fellow countrymen a Merry and peaceful Christmas... with tidings of comfort and joy (emphasis on comfort-- repeat 2x)...