very engaging. it's hard to make people want to read about your life.

KS

On 01/12/2007, Kenneth Wolman <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> (Scrawl. Scribble. Say something.--message to myself)
>
> LANDIS AND DARRYL AND ME
>
> "Everson was familiar with the sense of failed expectations—his
> professor, the poet Josephine Miles, called him the "white hope of the
> English department"—but he was never as consumed by poetry as were his
> friends."
>
> In my high school yearbook there was--still is, but I long ago
> burned the book--a listing of names.
> I cannot remember the context.
>
> Hawthorne
> Melville
> Fitzgerald
> Crane
> Hemingway
> Faulkner
>
> My Honors English teacher wrote next to those names
> "And some day Wolman."
> Today I could kill her.
> She laid the wamma-jamma on me,
> Jewish voodoo.
>
> Depressives, psychos, and drunks: that
> is what was supposed to be my legacy
> along with humungous talent and a work ethic.
> Three out of five ain't bad.
> After all, you're still batting .600.
>
> In 1983 the pallid New York Mets promoted
> a gorgeous young man (even straight guys envied
> that kid's body) named Darryl Strawberry.
> The Straw had a Mel Ott swing but could drive even a bad pitch
> off the scoreboard just by flicking his wrists
> Some sportswriter hung a soubriquet
> on the kid: The Black Ted Williams.
> So Darryl became The Great Black Hope
> and he could not live up to it no matter
> what he did. And he did far too much.
>
> I was supposed to be the Great Jewish Hope.
> But Philip Roth over in Jersey beat me to it.
> I got to be a real shit too, but my Body of Work
> was stillborn, and I didn't even get
> to ball Claire Bloom.
>
> Everson? He and I competed without knowing it
> for an unpublished first book prize for old farts
> that promised immortality in a binding
> and a bag of money.
> Landis whupped my ass. That's okay,
> because I actually finished something for once in my writing life,
> so I won too.
> I suppose writing contests are like running a marathon.
> Thirty thousand people start and one person comes in first.
> The deal is to do it at all.
>
> But I won more.
> What caused him to do it is beyond my ken or Ken
> but Everson ate a gun about two weeks ago
> and if he left a note I hope to Christ nobody prints it
> because I read my last Goodnight when Chidiock Tichborne
> back in 1586 contemplated having his guts cut out,
> and I don't want to read anymore.
>
> KTW/12-1-07
>
> --
> ------------------
> Kenneth Wolman
> www.kenwolman.net               kenwolman.wordpress.com
>
>                 To My Children
>
>                 One last thing I will do for you:
>                 I will grow up.--Mairead Byrne
>