Peace, Love and Understranding

Along with the unseasonably hot weather in New York City, there have been a few strange sitings: the coyote treading water like a dog in the East River... the dolphins, putting on a small show for the Upper East Side... and then the usual fires, suicides, shootings... a woman brutally attacked near the Central Park Reservoir. It's enough to make me nostalgic for the 1970's when a parallel April heat wave ushered in the unforgettable Summer of Sam.  

I can remember browsing the stacks of the un-airconditioned Strand bookstore while my guitar-player boyfriend was setting up at Broadway Charly's across the street. Sometimes I'd leave my shoes at the club and sit barefoot on the old wood basement floor reading proofs and review copies which sold for less than $1.  People hung out there--- the piles of books were intimidating... one by one the dedicated staff browsed and perused and classified and logged.  If you were looking for something, you could call in... if they didn't call you back within 48 hours you'd assume the search was unsuccessful. But they were dedicated.  The place was dusty and musty, as were the books... mice ran in and out of shelves; once or twice I witnessed some unsavory behavior but for the most part it was a haven for us book-people.  We met and talked... we exchanged.  Tom Verlaine was often there Friday nights, checking the review stacks.  Ben McFall came a bit later.

So I have a new book out-- my fifth.  The Strand has been a sort of platform for me; as a student I longed to be among their indie writers and seeing my first book on the New Poetry table was like winning a Pulitzer.  Granted, the pandemic affected everyone... but this time, instead of delivering happily and being greeted or congratulated by the incomparable Ben, he has left the world... the Strand no longer takes telephone calls and their online search is punishing for small presses like mine.  In fact, they managed to mis-read the title and post it incorrectly.  Who is this author?  I don't know, but it take some effort to even locate my name.  Not so the major labels, the merchandise, the best-sellers... it feels remarkably like a slightly more dense version of Barnes and Noble.  

No barefoot hippies, no intellectual clerks anxious to discuss and learn and find... it's a pressurized department store, the brands books instead of hoodies and sneakers.  Actually, you can get your hoodies there, too.  Surely they sell better than local urban poets who publish carefully and slowly without press or publicity machines. The cream no longer rises to the surface but paddles hopelessly like the coyote in the east river.  

In the Summer of Sam I found a stray dog.  When I moved further downriver, he leaped off the boardwalk at 59th Street and half-swam north while I yelled frantically, running uptown, until at the 96th Street pier a man with a boat helped me retrieve my wet animal from the swift current.  No news media, no photos... but today's news resonated.  

Tonight hoping for a dolphin-siting, I walked along the river... at the 111th St crossover, two boys were throwing rocks at the cars-- a dangerous pastime, but a sort of rite-of-passage for kids.  Something about these moving targets-- and it's not as though they are trying to cause injury-- it's just the act.  I remember doing the same as a girl, hitting someone in the eye and having to get scolded and shaken by the girl's father who warned me I was going to city court where they would put me in jail.  I was terrified.  I was nine.  But there was just something so timeless and 'boy-mischievous' about these two tonight- on the cusp of adolescence... here I am this old white lady brushing by, asking them to spare me-- I'm someone's Grandma, and they let me pass, unthreatened.  It was as though their life was sped up by the early summer-- their already-racing biological clocks were being pushed forward by the weather.  

Three shootings last night.  Jesus.  The heat is always an incendiary. Summer is on... all bets are off.  In my world the illnesses and deaths continue, like a relentless accelerating wheel.  I look at my Facebook page and it is filled with sad notifications and griefs. News. We look at the obituaries daily with trepidation.  In the rock and roll world so many people of my generation have disappeared-- it's as though each loss is somewhat diluted by the next... two on one day, three on the next... we have barely time to grieve.

Last night on the corner of 86th Street someone had left a few piles of books.  A youngish man and his girlfriend were looking through. Good stuff. Biographies.  Classics.  On the sidewalk.  I feel a certain simpatico with these piles of books; in some sense I am my own work-- the books which are increasingly disrespected by the corporate machine, the instagram world of branding which sends me poetry memes from people who have no sense of rhythm or lyricism... but unlike me have huge consumer audiences. 

Yesterday I browsed the kiosk on Fifth Avenue by the Park... the classics are still considered best-sellers-- but the new titles... who am I, I thought, like one of those children's books?  I felt like a misplaced coyote.  There was a time when I'd visit friends and there on the shelves would be familiar things-- great things, like old comfort.  If I had to wait for someone, I could take down a Faulkner or a Baldwin or an Anne Sexton... we all had these things-- Shakespeare, Proust. Now everyone sits everywhere consulting their phone like a God. People buy books like merchandise-- like souvenirs... many of them will end up on sidewalks, or on the Strand outdoor displays, unread, waiting to be rescued by the next owner like a stray dog, hoping, as I do, to be read.  

As though they read my mind, The Paris Review today published a piece about Larry Campbell, one of those guys who had a used-book table on Sixth Avenue for decades.  The interview had been conducted pre-pandemic across from the Strand which, over the years,  sorted through his wares and picked out the valuable things. Where did he get them?  Dead people, he used to say.  There was a quotation in the Review: "The best books I've found are from people who died.  Older people have the best shit." Larry is now 72.  Amen. 

Homeward Bound

On the way home last night, I hitched an uptown First Ave bus; it was after midnight-- my card was near-empty but the driver was kind and waved me on.  The ride uptown took nearly ninety minutes.  It seemed every stop was crowded with the down-and-out crowd.  By 34th Street the bus was jammed with passengers-- many of them homeless men and women with oversized carts filled with stuff.  The stench was strong, but the driver patiently rolled out the handicapped ramp and let them all board, mostly without paying.  it occurred to me that they wait for this man-- maybe the beginning of his shift, and they know they can rely on transport, these forgotten untouchables.  Maybe some of them ride all night to stay warm.  A few disputes erupted among cranky territorial passengers, but for the most part people were complacent; many came from the VA hospital, Bellevue… a drunk man kept yelling he needed a hospital… but then he passed out and slept like a baby.  It was a kind of pre-Thanksgiving reality check.

When I was young, I used to visit my friend's grandparents in the same building where I now live.  It was a little far uptown to be fashionable, in those days-- a great old turn-of-the-century prewar with a grand lobby but no doormen or luxury services.  Their space was massive-- lofty-- with skylights and high ceilings, and resembled my imagined version of a successful European artist's studio c. 1900. It stretched from one end of the building to another, with huge windows onto upper Madison Avenue.  Sparsely furnished, there were plenty of loungey sofas and reading chairs with quaint lamps-- tables and ashtrays-- window-seats and desks.  As they were part of an important publishing firm, they entertained writers and intellectuals; there were books everywhere… yards and yards of shelves, and piles and piles of treasured volumes, magazines, journals.  The radiators clanked in winter; in summer, in those pre-air-conditioned years, the top floor was sweltering.  The park was half a block away, and there was often a breeze on the roof, if you climbed up at evening.  It was a source of gossip and rumors-- secrets were exchanged here, a few inappropriate relationships, many drunken dinner debates-- a million cigarettes, deals inked and stories begun.

The sprawling apartment-- undecorated and decorous as it was, felt like the heart of adult New York.  This was what I would be when I grew up and got old--  a host-- a home-conversationalist in a book-lined room alive with  dialogue and energy-- ideas and excitement-- like a sort of club whose membership required no dress-code or mindset, but a passion for literature and art.  But more than anything-- it was a home.  You knew where you were when you were there; you could wander and browse, sit and lose yourself in a poem or look out the window… but you felt 'embraced'.

Thirty-five years later, I bought into their building-- a funky back-door apartment in need of renovation but with the pedigree and bone structure that had become part of my Manhattan dream.   It was cheap and a little dilapidated, but I was a young single Mom and felt so empowered to have bought what would really be my own true home.  My first Thanksgiving was blessed, for so many reasons… but I felt the tradition of that building, even though the publishing family had died long before, and that grand space had been divided into smaller units.  There were neighbors who had grown old in this place that seemed magical to me;  there were senior couples with piles of books and great art and they welcomed me into their homes with the often shabby old chintz curtains and the beautiful but worn Persian rugs; they spoke the cultured and human language of old New York; they had ideas-- they loved music-- they wrote, still read Latin and Greek, many of them… they treated their neighbors with kindness and generosity.

In those years the old building had a single employee: a superintendent who'd been born here… he was in his 60's, had raised his family in the ground floor rear unit.  He painted, polished brass, cleaned the old marble.  The rest of us chipped in and tended the garden, had lobby parties-- we were a true cooperative in the old sense-- a group of tenants who all cherished our home, who seemed to agree that our space and privacy were sacred.  Our individual priorities included maintaining a low public profile, modest monthly fees, a non-pretentious simplicity of style.  The architecture spoke for itself-- a quiet, old elegance, without luxury.  They welcomed me-- financially limited as I was, because they knew I was happy to be part of this lifestyle.

It took years to fill what seemed like a massive space to me-- to furnish it with my books, the art I've collected over the years, the finds and objects, the old furniture I've gathered at random auctions… It is quite full now-- my instruments, the things I love… I have quite everything I ever longed for as a young woman… and yet I am no longer content and secure the way I was twenty years ago.  In the early 90's, I helped a senior woman in my building-- Jane, was her name-- to pack up her spartan belongings.  Regretfully, she told me she had intended to die in this apartment, but her very modest pension from years of brilliant editorial work no longer covered rising maintenance costs.  I recognized so many of the wonderful books we carefully piled into these boxes like relics from a life well-lived and no longer valued.  The economy had changed,  New York had undergone a massive progressive facelift; the Wall Street culture had created a greed-bubble that has not just priced most of us out of the market, but has altered the rank-and-file New York City human profile.

While Jane was forced to move in with her son somewhere out of state, I find myself living on $3 a day most weeks--- having given up all luxuries including the subway, some days, in favor of walking, rice-based meals… my entire annual clothing allowance is less than some people spend on lunch.  Haircuts… movies… vacations… a day at the beach… have been so long left behind… but these days I dare not buy myself even a coffee.  Until last night's ride, I have been plagued with my annual Thanksgiving dinner anxiety-- putting on a brave face while calculating how I will pull together the meal on a skeletal budget, how it will set me back.  But turning the key into my place-- like a souvenir-shop of my life, a three-dimensional photo-album of memories-- I realized I was 'home' and the idea of these people on the bus having nowhere to 'let down' just seemed tragic and inhuman.

In recent years young bankers and hedge-fund managers have recognized my old building as the potential cash cow they envisioned. These families renovate, destroy, combine, disregard… and then sell. They have way more space than anyone requires; they are rarely home and they have no observable sentimental possessions or books. They have architects and designers, and mostly photoshoot-ready but soulless apartments.  The ghosts of former tenants and the spirits in old walls and floors sigh and creak at night.  The old radiators still bang, although they will manage to eradicate these eventually.  They have forced doormen and lobby improvements-- fancy elevators. They have usurped the great old roof with their equipment and air systems. Even as the smallest shareholder,  monthly costs nearly exceed my very humble income as a musician/poet.  My slender spending habits have become emaciated.  And tonight, as I listen to the soft roar that is New York City seep through my leaky windows, I wonder if these people feel 'home'.  As in home-less.

There is some George Segal movie on from the 70's and this is New York, the way I remember it… before clothing advertised things.. when even rich people's apartments were comfortable and slightly messy and filled with things... when hair was not perfect and women had wrinkles and the buildings looked habitable and a little dirty.  I realize I am of a dying or defeated generation here-- hanging in, holding on to what I know and love-- my building, my old guitars… sentiment...

Things change-- I know this, and not all change is bad. But this Wall Street generation changed the rules for many of us who thought we had secured some kind of tranquility for our older age.  Our trusted annuities and medical plans have been up-ended, our modest pensions have been diminished and decent healthcare is precarious and prohibitive.  I naively bought shares in a wonderful institution, only to find myself a tiny minimized partner in a corporation with an agenda of money and attitudes and little regard for human values and the great cultural mesh upon which this city was founded.

I will be home for Thanksgiving, and I will try to forge onward and resist what feels like a tidal insult to everything I am.  My neighbors will never share a bus ride like the First Ave. M15 at 2 AM; they don't want to see or smell this kind of thing, and they seem to enjoy the demolition of old walls as much as they enjoy their indulgent vacations.  They will grow old, too-- not as gracefully as this building has, and maybe one day they will discover nostalgia or homesickness-- that nothing is ever as precious as that which has been lost.   By then I'll be sharing a cigarette with the old ghosts on the stairs while, God willing, someone might be enjoying a home-cooked turkey in what will always be the old rooms with the book-lined walls.

Eyes on the Prize

During a week of prize-giving-- not the Olympics or Grammies, but the Pulitzers… I begin to think about what it is writers do, about what sort of literary cream rises to the top in this era of digital hocus-pocus.  Undoubtedly there is traditional wonderful work being done.  This is the first time I actually knew one of the winners; he seemed to be sort of a peer, and yet now he is crowned-- he has risen, perhaps never to return.

But which comes first: the poet or the poem?  Does everything that leaves the designated poet's pen become a poem?  Is mediocrity the inevitable by-product of awards?  So often the precious stereotype of the starving, desperate artist, awash in inspiration, drowning in passion-- it begins to peel away, to shrink beneath the satin robes of achievement.  

I've been playing blues for years.  For so long I had no deep respect for the tradition; I didn't 'get' it.  The first time I stood beside John Lee Hooker, some epiphany came through me like a sword… the music began to rise, it told its own story-- it wrapped around and inside and quietly shook me where I stood.  It was familiar, and new, and it took me with it like a train.  I've sat on the laps of Muddy Waters and Willie Dixon, I've stood beside them and felt something real and important-- some undeniable true cry of life listened to words that rhyme with heartbeats.   Does this merit a Pulitzer prize?

Last night I found myself in a neighborhood I don't often visit-- midtown east.  It was flush with tourists, bus-groups and wandering families buying Starbucks and souvenirs, looking up at office buildings and passing Duane Reades and bank lobbies on wide, lit streets.  Is this New York,  I asked myself?  Please, I wanted to urge the visitors-- this is nothing-- -these are convenience stores and real estate-- there is no city here.  There is no warp and weft and living tapestry; there is no music and no poetry-- no grit and color and shouting and history.

I grew up in the myth of my city.  I created my own legends, absorbed the atmosphere of the artists and writers and composers I sought out, breathed their breath and inhaled their message.  I grew up wanting to create my own language and a voice with which to speak.  I needed to have something to say, and I tried to dissect moments as I lived them so their content became my raw materials.

Recently I published a book of poetry.  It is a nostalgic collection of memories through which I'd hoped to honor the dream of my first serious love affair, and the first person through whom I began to see a version of life that was visionary and spiritual.  Of course, it could have been the psychedelics and other drugs, but there was music and original songs-- passion and a voice I will never forget.  He died so young, and I recently found a cache of letters he'd written and I'd never received. I felt compelled to write-- or maybe the poems wrote themselves.  I could have gone on, but I made a book… it has some truth for me, a fairly uncontrived recovery of the moments as they were revealed to me-- with some hindsight, but not too much.

I've had it on my mind to reach out to his family whom I knew very little, so long ago.  Today I managed to find a brother via Facebook, explained in a message who I was, asked if I could send a book.  He replied with coldness that he'd rather just 'leave it as it is'.  I was not just shocked but hurt, devastated-- cried for hours… knew I'd picked the wrong brother, that he'd never convey anything to the more sensitive sisters, or anyone else…  it was a dead end; I felt he'd sliced off my outstretched hand.

I often wander the city… listening to my own voice which feels sometimes like the crying woman in that Picasso mural who to me is the human 'star'.  I see so many broken people and these are the ones that enter me-- the ones I take home, the ones who tell their story at night through my fingers at the keyboard, or who sing to me as I pick up my guitar.

The man who won the prize-- he'd shared some poems before the book came.  They were large poems-- they had a purpose and a subject… but most of all, I realized, they were larger than the room in my apartment where he read them; they were podium poems-- a sort of speech or declaration… an 'address'.  Maybe that is the secret.  They were made to be heard.  To be spoken.  They were already famous.  He is a professional.

It's taken me 35 years to call myself a musician and even there I feel unworthy.  This is my work, my job.  Poetry is a calling--  a process-- a verb.  To call myself a poet seems premature and pretentious-- it presumes everything I write I consider some kind of 'art'.  My poems-- well, they are my poems; they are voices or songs or whispers.  They are as they arrive-- in their naked, broken awkward intimacy.. part of a process that weaves listening and coaxing voices from inside things.   They are not sure of themselves… they are being born, they are quiet and not famous-- not podium fare or poster-ready.   'Keep your eyes on the prize' is a famous American gospel lyric.  My poet friend certainly knows these words and they certainly guided him to some winning.  As for me, I guess I am too busy looking down-- listening.  I'm afraid I wouldn't know a prize if it hit me in the head, and I'm in some fine company here.  Amen.

Dead Poet's Society

I have this secret habit. I write poems. Yeah, I know…everybody writes poems. The goddamn bank teller at Chase has self-published. She gave me a copy last summer—it was called “poems in the key of life” (now where have we seen that before?)…no capitals, no punctuation….lines like ‘i wonder if u feel this too’. I told her I was jealous. When the word came out, I was trying desperately to be truthful. So I am jealous. I’m jealous of her perfect little manicured nails when she counts out the bills. I’m maybe jealous of the fact that she is published and I am not.
I’m leaving the bank with this image in my head of a pile of cubed jello on a plate because that is the way I processed ‘jealousy’ when I was like 4 years old and it somewhere sticks to that whacked-up part of my brainmess that compels me to form word-images that I produce as poetry.

Do I read the status-quo stuff? I do. And let me say, Writerless is a little disappointed in a lot of the crap they publish these days under the category. I get the Knopf poem-a-day email in April, National Poetry Month and sure, there are one or two in there that I can admire, but for the most part you figure someone is doing something to someone and pulled off this deal. The poetry editor (in the old days they used to tell us ‘those who can, write; those who can’t…edit’) herself puts out volumes that are of the caliber you might expect from your childrens’ middle-school literary online magazine. The one that doesn’t discriminate, the one with the millennial policy which dictates ‘a page for every child’. At least.

Have I ever submitted the stuff? I admit. Yes. Paris Review. Agni. Atlantic Monthly. Like buying a lottery ticket. They receive 100,000 per year…which averages out to about 500 poems a day for the poor overwrought poetry editor who has her own mediocre poetry to write in her head while she peruses yours and does desk-yoga and texts her boyfriend, edits her grocery list and fantasizes about lunch.

I’ve got a friend, a fairly successful (i.e. ‘employed-as-writing-teacher') poet, who claims that you’ve got to subscribe to the ‘system’…you have to enroll in a university MFA program, network, pay academic dues in the form of tuition and your reward is maybe one piece published in the university literary journal---a poetic ‘foot’ in the door. An iambic or dactylic pass onto the next level… another publication…

I suppose I could lie, use the name of my friend… say I’ve been published years ago, that I’m recovering from an aneurism and have renewed my career which predates online verification, but I refuse. I am resigned to posthumous success at best. At least I won’t be there to receive the rejection letter.

Anyway, I confess I recently applied for a short-term Advanced Poetry Workshop. Although the title confuses, a local fairly decent poet was running this, requiring manuscript submission, a certain level of seriousness, etc. So I printed out, Xeroxed, submitted-in-triplicate. Paid the $10 fee against all personal principles. Actually got accepted, was told that for the privilege of paying $800 I could attend 4 afternoon sessions with this woman and 4 other aspiring poets. So I replied that I was so grateful for the opportunity of having my work read, which was worth $10, but was not in a financial position to come up with $800.

They replied, offered me the chance of a scholarship. 50% off. This converts to $25 an hour, to read probably mediocre poetry written by people who were willing to shell out $800 for an audience. What if I am unable to repress a sneer? What if there is someone in a wheelchair with ALS who is writing their fears and I am coldly ticking off dollars-per-minute regret? So I declined, again.

What am I willing to pay, they now asked me. Could they be desperate? Could it be they lack their quota? But they also assure me there is a huge waiting list. Move on to the waiters, I reply. I am just so sick of begging. I can’t fill out any more forms. The humiliation of being a musician had made this no longer possible. I’d rather play the subway than apply for a grant. I’d rather die with my one brilliant comment from the New York Times and my dysfunctional wasted career.

Besides, I smugly know better than anyone when my poetry sucks and it generally does. One or two can pass the six-month or one-year test, but most of them are pretty mediocre. At least I have the perspective to acknowledge my own mediocrity which is comforting, in a way, because there is always the chance I will break through this designation.

So tonight once again I will sit and struggle with lines and lyrics, I will consult my daily scribbles which I occasionally mistake for literary epiphany, and continue to envy the bank teller not only her nails but the fact that she is proud of her work and generously self-promotes to someone like me who has at most a 3 OR 4-digit account balance. Also I maybe envy the fact that she has something to send her relatives for Christmas because despite my constant gigs and efforts, it has been years since I’ve had any kind of ‘product’.

And if there’s anyone out there reading, I am not going to offer the satisfaction here of a link or an appended poem. You’ll have to wait for the posthumous volume. Unless, of course, I win the poet’s lottery (laureattery?). Incidentally, do any of you know which fine contemporary poet is credited for ‘Gotta be in it to win it’?