Memoirous

I watched the Hulu original documentary Brats—and I’m not even sure if I’ve ever watched a John Hughes film. I’m maybe ten years older than that genre of youth films from the 80s. I’d graduated from Ohio University and had moved to Chicago to work at an inner-city mission. While TV had been invented (hahaha)—we didn’t have one. Maybe one—a console that was carried around from floor to floor, though it wasn’t meant to be portable—mainly used for parties and special occasions. Not sure why I watched the doc, but it sounded interesting to hear how people at a certain age handled fame (this was before social media could destroy you with one post) and the effect of a New Yorker article titled Hollywood's Brat Pack,” by David Blum (first appeared in the June 10, 1985, issue of New York Magazine). The Brats actually reminded me of the New York School—a loosely organized group of poets, painters, and writers/thinkers that congregated together in the lower East Side of New York in the 50...

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...

Also a Poet Ada Calhoun Grove Press, 2022 I’d recently been doing internet research into a quote I love: I’m out on a limb, and it is the arm of God. Frank O’Hara. This quote perfectly expresses how I feel when I begin a bike tour. It’s crazy to think frumpy me on my little bike crossing the country will actually make it. Soooo many things can end such a trip, like getting struck and killed by a car—or killed period by psychopaths, alligators, bears—you see where this road leads, down a hole of NO. It’s why most people don’t go or seek adventure; there are too many things to be afraid of. Out on a limb—check. The hand of God—yes. We are putting ourselves into the hands of destiny, seeing where it leads. Into the hands of a God who loves, who cares, where even I matter. It is an attitude of vulnerability, but also openness. Which describes Frank O’Hara and his attitude toward life. Thus, in my research of the quote, I discovered an article by Ada Calhoun (https://www.nytimes...

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...

Many of my blog readers know that I am a fan of the New York School of poets—which is not really a school at all but a collection of friends who inspired and collaborated with each other. It even spawned a second-generation of poets—who really weren’t a generation removed but only a few years younger. Trust me—these writers aren’t anything like you would expect! Frank O’Hara said that many of his poems worked as unmade phone calls. This was back before social media. Anyway his poetry could be interpreted as missives to friends, ideas, thoughts he wanted to convey. They were often short, full of innuendo, and shorthand that only those within his circle might truly understand. Sometimes Kenneth Koch might start a poem and then mail it to O’Hara who might in turn after adding some lines send it off to John Ashbery. And so on. Our idea is to do something with language That has never been done before Obviously—otherwise it wouldn’t be creation We stick to it and now I am ...

I’ve often dreamed of having a patron, someone to champion me and my work. There have been many famous mentorships between established artists or those prominent in the field and those struggling for recognition. Even within social networks (I’m not referring to Twitter here or Facebook) such as the New York School, the circle of poets and visual artists who met socially at taverns and each other’s apartments or summered on Fire Island together, there was mutual encouragement and camaraderie. But to be honest, I sort of fail big-time at networking. It’s like I just can’t step over a perceived hump. What might help is becoming inebriated or high, but that also isn’t in my personality make-up. So I stand there like a lug, the proverbial observer. Not a bad thing for a writer—just not helpful in promoting one’s work. So yes, I sit around fantasizing that one day my prince will come. To be discovered. Of course, and this goes back again to networking, you have to put yours...