Memoirous

Fringe Festival, Tranås An enclave of aficionados of the NY School (poetry) Before leaving for the Kungsleden, before leaving home, I’d prepared my Tranås   at the Fringe workshop on Micro-Memoir. Once in Tranås   at my friend’s house, she even printed off my workshop notes: It went out the window. It was the participants that directed the discussion. And, very early on, it became apparent that 1) I’d, indeed, prepared well and 2) the focus of my talk on the New York School of Poets was EXACTLY spot on. I know, it sounds ridiculous and even I questioned what I was doing. Why talk about poetry when the title of the talk was Micro-Memoir? Then, if not confusing enough, why bring in obscure American poets? Over a smorgasbord breakfast my friend in Tranås   had said, I’m not familiar with the literary term—flash. It seems it isn’t a thing over here. Hmmm. The bedrock of my seminar was shredded. I’d have to scrap everything. But once at the library and in the m...

The Vulnerables Sigrid Nunez Riverhead Books, New York 2023 I realized I was a title or two behind some of my favorite authors and have been putting down holds at the local library at a furious pace. I was first introduced, literally, to Sigrid Nunez at Breadloaf and have since really enjoyed her work. She is not your stereotypical memoirist or novelist—but has cunningly combined the two. She blurs the line between fiction and nonfiction by writing what some has termed the autobiographical novel or autofiction—a kind of hybrid. In a hybrid there are liberal doses of the “real” and invented parts. Poetic license. Where we as readers assume she is writing about herself, while she is aware of constructing a story that makes sense, which means playing with the facts. Often “real life” is too strange and convoluted to appear real. Subtext gives it a little more credibility. Often in her “novels” the narrator is herself a writer. She often writes about writing, and in The Vulnerables, which ...

I just watched Maestro on Netflix—maybe I’m getting old, but I kept checking to see how many minutes were left half-way through. It’s a little over 2 hours. I remembered that Leonard Bernstein was a contemporary of the poet Frank O’Hara and that their orbits had at times crossed. The Brad Gooch biography of O’Hara had two index listings for Bernstein. There’s a lot of reasons for the connection—both were in New York City and social gadflys in their own right. One of the mentions in City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara has Bernstein as team captain in a game of charades that O’Hara sat out. It is likely in the New York social scene for gay men that they shared many of the same friends. When Frank O’Hara entered Harvard after World War II his intention was to study music and composition. He was a trained classic pianist. While reading the Gooch biography I couldn’t help but think, like a lot of young people with artistic passions, that studying the arts after a while fee...

All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge Edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson University of New Mexico Press, 2022 I’m loosely connected to the Network for New York School Studies. I was part of a panel discussion last April where my focus was the intersection of flash in several New York School Poet’s work. I would have loved for the panel to have had more interaction—it was Zoom and we basically delivered remarks—but was happy for the chance to sit and hear others talk about a subject I love delving into: the New York School poetry scene. Recently, through an email update, I learned about All This Thinking: The Correspondence of Bernadette Mayer and Clark Coolidge , edited by Stephanie Anderson and Kristen Tapson. At the Network’s YouTube channel I listened in on a conversation between the two editors led by Rona Cran and Yasmine Shamma. Reading books of letters or published journals/diaries can be an incredible revelation into someone...

This time every year I am reminded of James Schuyler's December--where even the most jaded or the atheist is summoned into the sublime, where we stand in awe of the season--and what it means. “December” by James Schuyler Il va neiger dans quelques jours FRANCIS JAMMES The giant Norway spruce from Podunk, its lower branches bound, this morning was reared into place at Rockefeller Center. I thought I saw a cold blue dusty light sough in its boughs the way other years the wind thrashing at the giant ornaments recalled other years and Christmas trees more homey. Each December! I always think I hate “the over-commercialized event” and then bells ring, or tiny light bulbs wink above the entrance to Bonwit Teller or Katherine going on five wants to look at all the empty sample gift-wrapped boxes up Fifth Avenue in swank shops and how can I help falling in love? A calm secret exultation of the spirit that tastes like Sealtest eggnog, made from milk solids, Vanillin, artificial rum flavorin...

The latter part of September (the days and months blurred together before finally moving!) I participated in an online panel titled: What We Talk About When We Talk About the New York School: Online Symposium (September 2022): For pandemic-related and other reasons, lots of our members were unable to travel to Paris for our spring symposium. We held an online symposium in late September, in order to hear from some of the poets and scholars in question. The symposium featured poetry readings from Greg Masters and Matt Proctor, and talks from Wojciech Drag, Jane Hertenstein, Susannah Hollister and Emily Setina, Marcella Durand, and Molly Murray, as well as some free-flowing discussion and questions at the end. The programme of talks and readings is attached, and you can watch the event on our website or our Youtube channel. Though I’m proud of my contribution, I feel as though I could look a less washed out. I did try—I wore make up—I thought about lighting and previewed myself on-ca...

Hey all you readers (both of you) I’ve been tapped to sit on a Zoom panel for this, the inaugural debut meeting of the Network for New York School Studies (NNYSS). Why? You might ask. Yeah, I know, me too  Well, it began in 2019 (actually much earlier, but for now let’s stick with 2019). There was a call for papers for the symposium in Paris and because, of course, I’d already written some stuff about my 2017 trip to Great Spruce Head Island and because I’d continued to do some research into topics aroused by that visit, I submitted a paper. It was accepted in Dec of 2019. My recollection—because, understandably a lifetime has passed since then—is that I confirmed at least I’d Skype in or something to deliver the paper via online, with, perhaps, the idea, I might also go to the symposium, which was definitely PUT ON HOLD when Corona virus was declared a major worldwide pandemic. Then lockdown, etc. So as I was browsing in my browser in February, I saw that the conference is back on...

 Sort of a wonky piece that I adapted for New Critique from an artist residency on Great Spruce Head Island in 2017. Link here: https://newcritique.co.uk/2020/11/06/essay-in-early-august-among-the-spruce-reading-schuylers-memoirs-on-great-spruce-head-island-jane-hertenstein/ [Essay] ‘In early August among the spruce’: Reading Schuyler’s Memoirs on Great Spruce Head Island — Jane Hertenstein A Personal Introduction Following the US presidential election in 2016, I was jolted off-kilter, steamrolled. There was a Before, then an After. That winter, I sat and stared out my dreary window upon a busy Chicago street corner, where a sign in huge lettering read: ‘Christ Died for Our Sins’. I recalled James Schuyler’s poem, ‘February’: ‘A chimney, breathing a little smoke. / The sun, I can’t see / making a bit of pink / I can’t quite see in the blue’ . [1]

June 30, 1974 for Jane and Joe Hazan Let me tell you that this weekend Sunday morning in the country fills my soul with tranquil joy: the dunes beyond the pond beyond the humps of bayberry – my favorite shrub (today, at least) – are silent as a mountain range: such a subtle profile against a sky that goes from dawn to blue. The roses stir, the grapevine at one end of the deck shakes and turns its youngest leaves so they show pale and flower-like. A redwing blackbird pecks at the grass; another perches on a bush. Another way, a millionaire’s white chateau turns its flank to catch the risen sun. No other houses, except this charming one, alive with paintings, plants and quiet. I haven’t said a word. I like to be alone with friends. To get up to this morning view and eat poached eggs and extra toast with Tiptree Goosberry Preserve (green) -and coffee, milk, no sugar. Jane said she heard the freeze-dried kind is healthier when we went shopping yesterday and she and John bought crude blu...

Bright Invisible: Word Sketches from Great Spruce Head Island a PDF chapbook, This chapbook will appeal to readers of the New York School—particularly fans of James Schuyler and John Ashbery. Great Spruce Head Island has been a source of inspiration for generations of artists and writers. I was invited to GSHI to spend a week walking where Frank O’Hara, Ashbery, and Schuyler walked. Through essays, journal entries, persona letters where I channel James Schuyler, I attempt to experience the island through their eyes. CLICK on image to the right of the page to request *FREE PDF

Bright Invisible: Word Sketches from Great Spruce Head Island a PDF chapbook, This chapbook will appeal to readers of the New York School—particularly fans of James Schuyler and John Ashbery. Great Spruce Head Island has been a source of inspiration for generations of artists and writers. I was invited to GSHI to spend a week walking where Frank O’Hara, Ashbery, and Schuyler walked. Through essays, journal entries, persona letters where I channel James Schuyler, I attempt to experience the island through their eyes. CLICK on image to the right of the page to request *FREE PDF

The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters , edited by Francis Darwin, New York: Dover Publications, 1958. (First published in 1892.) Schuyler had a New Year’s Day tradition of going to the Hazan’s (Jane Freilicher)—in fact one of his last Diary entries talks about getting dressed to go over to their soiree. On January 1, 1968 he wrote about starting Darwin’s autobiography. This notation eventually turned into the poem, “Empathy and New Year”. Here is a snippet: Got coffee and started reading Darwin: so modest, so innocent, so pleased at the surprise that he should grow up to be him. How grand to begin a new year with a new writer you really love. It is the intimate simplicity that I love about Schuyler’s poems. I am given a glimpse into the interior of someone living generations past and dwelling in a landscape foreign to me. It is the mundane details that give me a landing place, a space to inhabit. I feel solidly anchored in New York City la...

An example of how to craft a simple, mundane flash, make a list Little-Known Facts about People BY  JOE BRAINARD           Did you know that Kenneth Koch's wife Janice used to be an airplane pilot? Once she had to make an emergency landing on a highway.           When Kenward Elmslie was a kid he wanted to be a tap dancer. Did you know that Kenward's grandfather was Joseph Pulitzer?          Kenward once told me that Jane Russell is a dyke.          Andy Warhol wanted to be a tap dancer when he was a kid too.          D. D. Ryan wanted to be a ballerina.                     Did you know that Pat Padgett was Ted Berrigan's girlfriend for years before she married Ron?          Ron Padgett and I were in the same 1st grade class together...

I’m still working on a hybrid manuscript I started this summer on Great Spruce Head Island on James Schuyler and his connection to the island and the Porter family. In re-reading Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler 1951-1991 , I came upon a random footnote. First some context. James Schuyler was crazy. He didn’t start out that way. He was a curious, witty, conversational gay young man. He was a self-taught poet, once serving as a secretary to W. H. Auden at his vacation home on Ischia in Italy. Moving amongst heady circles he associated with renowned poets and artists. Until his breakdown, or series of breakdowns. This was in the days when psychological drugs were still in their infancy. If you were diagnosed as schizophrenic you were sentenced to a life of lithium and being zoned out. No wonder most creatives risked psychosis rather than being medicated. Mostly Schuyler kept his episodes in check. The stability of living with the Porters helped as well as t...

at Great Spruce Head Island Just last Friday I was thinking: We won’t have John Ashbery with us too much longer. Then came the news . . . https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/arts/john-ashbery-dead-prize-winning-poet.html I cannot describe how this feels. I can count now on one hand the number of poets that might be described as belonging to the New York School or even the Second Generation that are still with us. John Ashbery’s passing closes a circle. All this as I’m reading and re-reading James Schuyler’s diary, letters—many citations and addressed to John Ashbery. This summer I spent a week at Great Spruce Head Island and visited the tennis courts where he played, walked the path from the boat house to the big house that he must have trod, swam the coves he most likely swam in—during a vital and sunny part of his life. As I Googled him last Friday and stared into images of a very old Ashbery I was reminded of that young man who drove with Jane Freilicher to Mexico, w...