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. 

Losing my Religion

When I was small and sick with one of those textbook childhood illnesses, the prospect of days in bed was a true delight.  There would be toast and jam and meal trays in bed... an opportunity to study my Robert Louis Stevenson and copy out my A. A. Milne into a book where I could draw my own pictures.  I could lift the quilts into a sort of tent and pretend I was an Inuit princess trapped for the winter in my house of ice while the arctic winds raged outside.

The novelty of this quarantine is wearing off.  My reading is piled up-- yes, and my projects sit before me... but I am less productive and a little more restless.  My body is telling me it's spring and just outside my window the dogwoods and cherry blossoms are doing their teasing best to tempt us before that magic moment when the soft pink carpet of petals covers the sidewalks and gutters for the briefest anti-urban blessing, and then turns to paleberry slush.  The crocuses and daffodils are blooming and the Park Avenue malls will be decked out... and we are stuck here in our cubicles, noses in our technology, binging on television, taking occasional breaks for a walk in the park or a trip to the supermarket.

Over the last few days I've had plenty of those mass-messaged Facebook posts suggesting 'tips' on defeating the Coronavirus.  Bad jokes, cartoons, sillinesses and distractions... personally, I am losing my urban religion.  I've had enough of film-watching and listening to the silence in my building hallways.  I have had a welcome few voicemails from old friends-- relatives-- people who worry about solitary people like me, checking in... making sure I am still here.

One of these was the beautifully resonant message from an older poet who lives in my neighborhood--  one of those old-fashioned voices made for reading aloud on vinyl recordings... for recitation and declamation...   wondering if I'm alright, this man, who once introduced Pablo Neruda to New York and appeared alongside John Ashbery on panels.  He has supported and read my work in the past.   We met on the crosstown bus, late-- he keeps his old Columbia University studio apartment on the west side where he writes overnight for the last 60 years, simply because he doesn't want to disturb his sleeping wife.  He and I would often meet on my way home from work; occasionally he would share with me... he wrote in longhand.

His wife passed away from cancer several years ago, but he continues his crosstown habit as though she were alive... so it touched me especially that he thought of checking in on me because I have not recently been bussing back and forth.  I watched him the other day; he rarely wears a coat, like an old Englishman... but is always impeccably dressed with a jacket and trousers, a button-down shirt and his hair combed gracefully in an old-style pompadour. He walks with hands clasped behind him like a distracted professor, looking down at the sidewalk.  He is always alone.  His fierce allegiance to this habit-- inspiration or none, rain or snow-- somehow touched me in this crisis... the loneliness and the solitary duality of two empty spaces suddenly seemed so poignant.

When I began this post I was sad and distracted-- less-than-inspired... but now in the past day I have suffered the terrific loss of my best friend and bandmate of years.  I am beyond devastated-- violated..
as though the cruelest wind came through and removed my favorite things from the city.  How do we go on from deaths, from loss?  My poet friend is teaching me something, I know.  Where is God, I want to ask him?  I am looking.

My friend was the kindest, most generous, most fun-loving, stage-gracing human.  He performed with exquisite musicality and dignity even in the worst venues, with the worst equipment.  His very presence was a poem for me... our stage and personal intimacy was like an award.  One whole day has finished without his gracious persona on this earth and I am waiting for some kind of choral requiem from the heavens-- a bucket of seawater on every street, a falling star exploding rooftops... Tonight I don't how to honor his memory nor celebrate his accomplishments.  I just want him to come back, to pick me up for the next gig and stand beside me while he sings like the godamn soul angel he always was until the old pre-Coronavirus sun rises over the east river.

I have cried a thousand tears and have nothing to show, nothing to trade, nothing to bargain.  Death is the tie that binds us all; it waves its hideous flag of warning over my lovely city and has banished so many of us to our lonely quarters like prisoners.  I feel like a solitary wooden ship left behind with no sail, an old poet traveling back and forth between lonely rooms with his blank notepad, reciting old verses memorized in another century.   Where is God, each one finishes, like a refrain:  we are looking.