New York 3

September 30, 2017

Dedicated the day to the Metropolitan, which is deucedly hard to get to from this side of the island. Bought Michelangelo’s Notebooks, Spent a good time in the Classical sculpture, which looked so cool, clean, tranquil, and, tranquil, mused upon tranquility. A Chinese woman was abusing her child—she snapped at him, looked around, and when she felt herself unobserved, slapped him viciously across the face. I moved toward her, staring my most teacherly stare. She recoiled, then bent down to the child and pretended to explain patiently the reason she had hit him. I hoped she would attack me, so to learn what happens when one attacks someone your own size. Happy, full day. China’s revenge was to give me a Chinese cabbie on the ride home, who spoke not one word of English. It was excruciating.

          

Evening to the Beckett at Theater Row to see, The Suitcase Under the Bed, short plays by the Irishwoman Teresa Deevy. She is one of the “neglected voices” that the Mint company specializes in reviving. Had I read the pleading producer’s forward before, I might not have gone. Why had I never heard of her, when I am in the top 1%, probably, of those who know the Irish theater? The suitcase under the bed was where her manuscripts lay un-looked at for fifty years. The theater was intimate, the acting good. The plays were, sentimental, modest, well-made, almost exactly what one would have expected.  As for her assertion that they represented the truth of Irish life in her time, who knows? The Irish must have been very innocent.

        

Wrote two poems. My bottom line was that they be better than when we heard Thursday night, and they were.

Rather lovely day wandering around in the Village, both West and East. Sat in the Think Café in the north of the Village, among actors discussing acting, among writers tapping furiously at their lap tops, and where I myself began a new play based on the reminiscences of an old woman I met in the Paramount Bar the last time I was here. Bought a jacket at a military surplus store. Cruised Washington Square, visiting the scene of the Diamond Shirtwaist Fire. A red haired man played a grand piano in the light rain of the Square. Lunch at a sports bar off Astor Place, where cheers went up for one soccer team or the other.  Saw As You Like it at CTC on East 13^th. It was radically cut—by ¼, I would think—to accommodate doing it without intermission, I guess. It featured movie star Ellen Burstyn as Jacques, rather a mistake, for she was frail and tentative and it was hard to see exactly how she fit in. Duke Senior and his men were absent, to make way for the love story. It was, all in all, not the ideal rendition. What I remember most was how bad I had to piss when it was over, and the restrooms were packed, and I couldn’t find relief until Bryant Park.  

New York 2

September 29, 2017

Began yesterday with my visit to Bryant Park, mossy green under the brilliant sky. Walked to MOMA, where I was apparently early and people keep shouting at me that this gallery or that was not yet open, but some were, so it was confusing. Gorgeous Max Ernst, kind of sickening Louise Bourgeoise, the permanent galleries, as usual, profound, and the rest largely of the moment. Sat in the garden and contemplated the moving waters. Ate falafel at a deli near the Park. 

Late in the afternoon I began my trek to the New School (which is wonderful, and I wish I had known it when I could have used it). Deep tiredness was on me, and for the first time in my life I suspected I wouldn’t make it if I tried to walk, so took the subway and arrived early enough for a merlot at a sidewalk café on 6^th Avenue. Twenty seven poets of some renown gathered in the tiny green room before the reading, passing our books around to be signed by the others. There were famous names: Robert Pinsky, Sharon Olds, Joyce Carol Oates. Our editor started the evening by reading a long poem by John Ashbery, who is in the anthology though recently deceased. It was awful, the poem was, like all Ashbery poems I know, learned, self-satisfied, flat, assuming much and discovering nothing, the conversation of elegant Upper East Side fags over prosecco and hors d’oeuvres. Long boring poems were the rule of the evening, in fact, which began at 7 and ended just before 10. Joyce Carol Oates’ was among the longest and easily the worst, a desiccated and barely imagined diatribe against, of all things, Marlon Brando. I need to teach a class in The Long Poem, which should not be like an unruly lawn, just spreading out in all directions willy-nilly, but like a great tree, growing from a point toward a point with green and solidity between. In all that mass there were four poems worth listening to: mine was one. Mine was also quite the shortest. The audience was huge (about 300) and young and very kind. I prayed our tediousness didn’t set any of them off poetry. What happened afterwards I don’t know, as I was launching toward 14^th street and the subway.

         

Wandered Times Square, then back to the Paramount for drinks. Met A, VP of Sales at Casa Dragones, a liquor importer. I noticed him because, though I walk down the streets of New York noticing handsome men, he was the most handsome I had seen all night. Big, blond, a little thick with middle age, he looked like a model for a Join the Marines commercial. He was in fact a Vet, and very much the businessman, and about as right-wing as you’d expect. He buttoned a button that was undone on my shirt. He bought me a drink and showed me his son (in military uniform, at VMI, his own alma mater) and his three wives, all heart-stoppingly gorgeous. The current one is the least gorgeous but the most beautiful, which I said and which he seemed to understand. He said, “You are the one professor I have ever met who was not full of bullshit.” We actually were able to talk a little educational politics. He’s afraid his son is being “brainwashed” by liberal professors, and my response was that liberal professors often take that stand for fear their students are being brainwashed by right wing bigots; it’s all to balance the input, all in genuine concern for the young. This seemed to sound reasonable to him. The bar man cut him off, which angered him and puzzled me, as he wasn’t drunk or disorderly that I noticed. I need encounters like that in my life. I love hotel bars.

New York 1

September 28, 2017

          Seventeenth floor of the Paramount Hotel. View into the ventilation shaft, as usual. My seat companion for the flight was Brendan, an investor on his way to present his company, Singing Machines, the world’s largest maker of karaoke machines, to a group of investors. The company’s stock fluctuates between 2 and 20 cents, so he thought it might be an excellent buy for me. His knowledge of the markets was detailed and fascinating, but he seemed at the moment slightly diminished from former glory. He sold his two houses and now rotates among the houses of friends. He did not vote for Trump but was glad he won, because Hillary is a murderess. I asked him how he knew this and he said there is a book outlining how all the Clintons’ associates end up dead in mysterious housefires or commit suicide with TWO shots to the dead. This seemed implausible to me, but I realized I had no facts to support my doubt. He was an attractive man and I saw how he might make his way.

          Slightly unpacked, then made for the Iron Bar, which I do because it is, sort of, my local. Waitress Jennifer (from Staten Island, right beside the central fire house) talked to me about the Midwest, which In didn’t understand until I realized the credit card I’d given her is from a bank in Omaha. The city is not packed or frenetic just now, so the tour through Times

was nostalgic.

September 27, 2017

Christine here last night to discuss the production of Night Music over pale wine. Discussion of two different play productions, me correcting proofs on a book– two days of what I thought my whole life would be.

Kent State on the Vietnam War series last night. I was there. It is still a shock, and the shock is made deeper and more hateful by the discoveries of time. Also, Nixon, who I had thought was a smart man blundering into a series of unhappy mistakes, was actually evil and crooked from the first. People said so; I should have listened. He may have been even more evil than Trump. Trump is a stampeding elephant; Nixon was a viper in the grass.

Uncovered unrevised poems from Budapest, Venice, Ireland, with no time today to look at them very deeply.

The day of travel is always upheaval.

September 26, 2017

Read-through of Uranium 235 in the basement of the Grove Arcade last night. I’d arrived early and had time for a leisurely glass of wine at one of the sidewalk bistros, a lovely ritual which I could pursue almost daily if I set my mind to it. Limpid, sweet, European. The read-through was satisfactory in most every way, and in some cases truly exciting. Several parts written for men are being taken by women–a personnel necessity, I suppose, but one of my pet peeves. Genders are NOT interchangeable, and the play will be marred by this. AG seems less agitated by it than I, so I’ll look the other way and let it drop. I am always grateful and amazed when people take their time to say my lines and actualize my vision.
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Tumultuous creative writing class yesterday. Chaos or excitement? I’m not sure. Superb poetry class, in which I introduced Shelley to general approbation. Today I need to get 58 things done in order to fly off to New York tomorrow. I tick them off one by one.

September 25, 2017

Rose ghostly early, caught up on bills, changed out the litter box that we were using when we moved here. Of course the new is not so good as the old.

No day goes by that our President does not embarrass himself and his country. Anyone else would have been impeached before Inauguration Day.

People getting into a sweat about what other people do during the National Anthem. Always a disaster to worry about other people’s symbolism.

My handsome leopard frog leaps into the pond with a squeak when I so much as walk out onto the terrace. This is disheartening. Who does he think dug the pond for him?

September 24, 2017

Theater last night, Lucia’s new play, one of the local pieces which I can, at last, unreservedly praise. The perspectives in the two person play are not equal– one is clearly right, the other clearly wrong– but the writing does not judge between them. Good performances, too. I have a peer. The people in the seat behind me said they saw Washington Place several times, and thought it was the best thing the Magnetic has yet done. AG paid for my drinks. Nevertheless, I was uncomfortable all evening, fearing that to enjoy myself would somehow be a betrayal of SS, not even sure anything I would do or say or feel were applicable to the situation. Wanted to offer my help as the theater moves forward, but ought I? WILL it move forward? No one was talking about “it,” and neither did I, unsure whether I was meant to know or not. But AG has not cancelled tomorrow’s rehearsal, so onward.

Thought of Aunt Barbara. When my cousin Diane, her daughter, was not much more than a baby, Barbara and Diane and I were blackberry picking. Diane (being a baby) was smashing berries and upturning her bucket and not doing it “right.” I wanted to point this out, so our outing would not be futile. I realized that Diane was Barbara’s daughter, and so she would be predisposed to be on her side, but also that I was right, and trusted an adult to be on the side of the right disinterestedly.  So I made my complaint. My aunt’s response was, “You are hateful.” That was more than sixty years ago–perhaps I was six-- but it is as vivid as this moment. I stopped at the time and considered, Am I hateful? Have I been hateful all day, or was it just that one comment? I realized I had been foolish to think that she would take my side against her baby, but I had thought she might, given the reasonableness of my stand. I wonder today if “You are hateful” was her final and permanent evaluation of me. I can’t think of much I did to encourage her to change her mind. She is alive. She can be asked, but I do not have the courage. Perhaps she does not remember at all. Who ever means to be hateful?

A little more planting. Watching the orange fish in the pond circle slowly, glowing torpedoes, growing without aid from me.