Fabulous and furious, we come to New York ready to hit the town and storm the
scene. But the city, if we're lucky, sands our hubris into humility. Real
New Yorkers are less Bobby
Flay on the tabletop, more deli
guy behind the counter.
The real godsend, as Robert
Creeley said of Gregory Corso's nurse and daughter Sherry, is in "steadying
the ambiance, just minding the store with great love and clarity." Here's
a Corso poem:
The Whole Mess . . . Almost
I ran up six flights of stairs
to my small furnished room
opened the window
and began throwing out
those things most important in life
First to go, Truth, squealing like a fink:
"Don't! I'll tell awful things about you!"
"Oh yeah? Well, I've nothing to hide . . . OUT!"
Then went God, glowering & whimpering in amazement:
"It's not my fault! I'm not the cause of it all!" "OUT!"
Then Love, cooing bribes: "You'll never know impotency!
All the girls on Vogue covers, all yours!"
I pushed her fat ass out and screamed:
"You always end up a bummer!"
I picked up Faith Hope Charity
all three clinging together:
"Without us you'll surely die!"
"With you I'm going nuts! Goodbye!"
Then Beauty . . . ah, Beauty --
As I led her to the window
I told her: "You I loved best in life
. . . but you're a killer; Beauty kills!"
Not really meaning to drop her
I immediately ran downstairs
getting there just in time to catch her
"You saved me!" she cried
I put her down and told her: "Move on."
Went back up those six flights
went to the money
there was no money to throw out.
The only thing left in the room was Death
hiding beneath the kitchen sink:
"I'm not real!" It cried
"I'm just a rumor spread by life . . . "
Laughing I threw it out, kitchen sink and all
and suddenly realized Humor
was all that was left --
All I could do with Humor was to say:
"Out the window with the window!"
--Gregory Corso
photo credit: ginatolentino
via flickr
about being a couple living in a studio apt . . .
today's NYT City section has a well-observed first person account
click my name for the link
or
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/05/nyregion/thecity/05stud.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Very nice! I read it aloud to SKGR and we both laughed. We also read that article Guido (or at least SK read it and I listened), and were disappointed that they moved out when they had a child. What wimps!
Ah, but it's a beautiful day and poetry is perfect for it. Thanks, Shannon
Why I Am Not a Painter
I am not a painter, I am a poet.
Why? I think I would rather be
a painter, but I am not. Well,
for instance, Mike Goldberg
is starting a painting. I drop in.
"Sit down and have a drink" he
says. I drink; we drink. I look
up. "You have SARDINES in it."
"Yes, it needed something there."
"Oh." I go and the days go by
and I drop in again. The painting
is going on, and I go, and the days
go by. I drop in. The painting is
finished. "Where's SARDINES?"
All that's left is just
letters, "It was too much," Mike says.
But me? One day I am thinking of
a color: orange. I write a line
about orange. Pretty soon it is a
whole page of words, not lines.
Then another page. There should be
so much more, not of orange, of
words, of how terrible orange is
and life. Days go by. It is even in
prose, I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven't mentioned
orange yet. It's twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike's painting, called SARDINES.
__Frank O'Hara
and also
from Personism
"But how then can you really care if anybody gets it, or gets what it means, or if it improves them. Improves them for what? For death? Why hurry them along? Too many poets act like a middle-aged mother trying to get her kids to eat too much cooked meat, and potatoes with drippings (tears). I don't give a damn whether they eat or not. Forced feeding leads to excessive thinness (effete). Nobody should experience anything they don't need to, if they don't need poetry bully for them. I like the movies too. And after all, only Whitman and Crane and Williams, of the American poets, are better than the movies. As for measure and other technical apparatus, that's just common sense: if you're going to buy a pair of pants you want them to be tight enough so everyone will want to go to bed with you. There's nothing metaphysical about it. Unless, of course, you flatter yourself into thinking that what you're experiencing is "yearning."
--Frank O'Hara
How lucky you are to live in New York. Every street, every corner is either going or coming. And history and art are upstairs or "in a minute." And Gregory Corso and Frank O'Hara and, just across the river, William Carlos Williams. I don't much care for slams but they're there and something is happening.