JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC Archives

POETRYETC Archives


POETRYETC@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC Home

POETRYETC  January 2008

POETRYETC January 2008

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

Re: "Wonderful Town"

From:

sharon brogan <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Poetryetc: poetry and poetics

Date:

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 18:46:30 -0700

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (202 lines)

oh, this took me back, to a terrible, wonderful time.

thank you.

On 1/24/08, Frederick Pollack <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Wonderful Town
>
> 1
>
> It's 6:30, which means things
> are getting serious.  Not necessarily
> a crisis – only a report, prospectus,
> due diligence.  And that sense,
> however familiar and subdued,
> of rededication: quick wash, second shave,
> swipe of hand sanitizer.  The slacks that appear,
> turning into the aisle
> between the cubicles the next room over,
> are a woman's.  Is she loyal, will she stay?
> … no, she's gone,
> down to a block of freezing rain
> before her cab or subway.  Four
> in the window office
> remain.  A neocon
> I knew once became almost tearful,
> praising the connotations of the word
> *company.  The eldest
> (I think) has slung his jacket
> over a chair.  The possible
> young hope, young blood, or someone's
> idiot nephew gestures –
> a repeated downward pump or jab.
> Striped shirt never moves.  Green tie
> shifts once, is still.
> No laptops, stenograph, speakerphone, realtime
> output, which means this
> is serious? or that drinks
> and dinner are delayed somewhere
> for ideas?  Their wall is bare
> and white.  In these blocks, no
> "green" enterprises, NGOs, pro bono; so
> one knows, more or less, who they are … Now the Old Man
> looks out and down
> at the rain puddling the twentieth-floor setback,
> then at my hotel, at me,
> whom at this distance (mystery is distance)
> he can't see.
>
> 2
>
> The espresso machine like a Victorian monument
> bronzed, the tables like Braque's *guéridons,
> the display case for cannoli,
> the notional chairs and between-table spaces,
> the walls brown from the smoking ages,
> the waiters' trance, and this stretch of MacDougal
> don't change with the decades.  But today
> the place seems given to a private party,
> quiet and unannounced.  The kid
> with his absurd beret and the one-volume
> Schopenhauer he doesn't so much read
> as carry, the more or less fat
> guys with their Marx and journals,
> and a few older men
> seem at least in one sense together –
> they have eyes only for each other
> (and for the long-haired girl in a pleated skirt
> who doesn't appear).  Though no two glances meet.
> One probes a pocket for the number
> at which he must call his father
> from a payphone; another for his cellphone, to call
> his wife.  The kid perhaps ponders;
> the thirty-something and forty-something read;
> another stops because the light's too dim.
> They take out notebooks and write,
> or try to.  Is that how they communicate?
> They'd deny it …
> (Outside, some sort of demonstration passes
> without a break, and fades;
> no one comes in.  There's no one to talk to, ever.)
> If they did write each other,
> what would they say?  "You can't write anything here.
> If you do, you'll reject it later
> as sentimental."  Seeing which, the boy rises,
> surreptitiously tucks in his too-tight
> turtleneck, fills his bookbag,
> and leaves, expression resolute and dreamy
> because that's expected of him.
>
> 3
>
> Actually, we don't discuss
> the obvious: arthritis drawing
> cries from him whenever he canes
> himself up, and slightly hobbling
> my own step when I cross the room
> to fetch some book he has pointed to.
> Or loneliness, or politics – the bullies
> that roam the body and the world will have
> their way, and meanwhile jabber;
> we ignore them, though they strain and shape
> all speech.  He has grown very white
> since our last meeting, fifteen years
> and hundreds of emails ago, I very gray.
> The relics of his lover, who had disliked me
> on sight, lie small and quaint
> amid the clutter, and a ghost informs
> the collages – ties, real ties imposed on penciled –
> he's doing.  He gives me one.
> Reads new poems, *vers-de-société*
> of hell and the low slopes of purgatory.
> Paws what I bought
> at the Strand: Stead's work since his stroke, Matthias
> sounding old, old.  "Always the tourist," he smiles.
> "You're scoping out the terminal wards."
> – "I want to see how much they transcend
> the personal, and if not, why they can't." –
> "Perhaps because there's nothing else," he says,
> provoking. – And one or two
> young free-associaters, who have no story
> but the stupid one the world imposes,
> "but at least aren't chuckleheads":
> thus I defend them, and bore him.
> He rarely leaves the apartment;
> is interested when I describe
> the cardboard, low-grade porn and verathaned
> ads at the New Museum
> on the rapidly gentrifying Bowery. "'*Unmonumental' –
> that's what they call the show.  The wall-text
> talks about art 'responsive to an age
> of broken icons.'  It struck me
> there's a contradiction in that."
> – "The longer I live, or last," he says,
> "the more I address one question
> to whatever I see and read:
> would anything be lost if this didn't exist?
> If the answer is no, burn it."
> We have been drinking all this time:
> one glass each, slowly.  Now he offers
> another, but I have to go.
> Once more I praise his recent work.
> "I was glad to meet you again," he says.
> "You seem to be more yourself than I remember."
> I tell him teaching helped.  And poetry.
> "Not an afterthought," he smiles.  Stands, painfully;
> we embrace as if we'll meet again.
> Afternoon sun
> pours down the airshaft to his window.
>
> 4
>
> They queue, for rock clubs, movies,
> all-you-can-eat restaurants, even
> the tchotchke shops, to buy Liberty
> in snow-globes, foam, or pre-aged bronze.
> The lines intersect the crowds,
> so dense and slowed they feel
> as in dreams that the illusion of movement
> will fail any moment.
> Their coats absorb the smudged and trodden
> colors, poor relations of those above.
> To the east, the shows are letting out –
> the fishnet dancers in Cook County jail,
> a lion cub becoming king,
> a sexless lover with a mask – their music,
> in the minds of the new crowds exiting,
> merging at the corner with the noise.
> The new Stoppard may or may not
> have taught that rock-and-roll is freedom;
> that one can relax into freedom
> if one abandons murderous ideals.
> A couple next to us, with strict ideas
> of entertainment, squirmed at allusions
> to unfamiliar dates and names,
> to history, and left at intermission.
> There are cabs, but they rage,
> like other cars, for movement;
> we'll take the E or 6 or walk
> crosstown to our hotel –
> the cold rejuvenating us,
> sustaining another hour
> the feeling that friends, drinks, dinner,
> window-shopping, the theater can go on.
> Call it joy, whose center is above
> this corner, all its plasma screens
> broadcasting fragments of it: cars, breasts,
> the sea, disembodied dancing
> handbags, market shares, wise commentators,
> an ecstatic Riemannian geometry
> of colors, colors, colors one yearns
> to rise and merge and splinter into,
> all motion effortless and theirs, reflected
> in the faces now surrounding us, blasé
> or brooding, avid for the possible.
>


-- 


~ SB  | http://www.sbpoet.com |  =^..^=

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager