Category: literary

Poem I heard in DC (Rita Dove).

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Describe Yourself in Three Words or Less

I’m not the kind of person who praises
openly, or for profit; I’m not the kind
who will steal a scene unless
I’ve designed it. I’m not a kind at all,
in fact: I’m itchy and pug-willed,
gnarled and wrong-headed,
never amorous but possessing
a wild, thatched soul.

Each night I set my boats to sea
and leave them to their bawdy business.
Whether they drift off
maddened, moon-rinsed,
or dock in the morning
scuffed and chastened—
is simply how it is, and I gather them in.

You are mine, I say to the twice-dunked cruller
before I eat it. Then I sing
to the bright-beaked bird outside,
then to the manicured spider
between window and screen;
then I will stop, and forget the singing.
(See? I have already forgotten you.)

I want to go SO BADLY (exhibit).

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“Painters and Poets” at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery.

From the website:

The Tibor de Nagy Gallery marks its 60th anniversary with “Tibor de Nagy Gallery Painters and Poets,” an exhibition celebrating the gallery’s pivotal role in launching the New York School of Poets and fostering a new collaborative ethos among poets and painters in post-War New York. The exhibit focuses on the gallery’s first two decades, the 1950s and ‘60s, when its vibrant, salon-like atmosphere and director John Bernard Myers’ passion for both art and poetry gave birth to these unique partnerships.

All I can do is go to the gallery’s website and click through the tiny pictures and hope that suffices (it must suffice). A few I love, even in their tiny, virtual forms:

That’s Frank O’Hara, at the Museum of Modern Art. And here’s Larry Rivers’ portrait of John Ashberry:

“The Wild Party” (Joseph Moncure March).

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“The Wild Party” by Joseph Moncure March

Misha, in all of his wisdom, gave me a classily bound and rare (#434 out of 2,000) edition of this book for the holidays. Its pages are thick, and uneven at the edges. The author uses colons shamelessly, and well. Art Spiegelman (illustrator, author of “Maus”) rediscovered this book years ago and illustrated a new version of it (that’s where the picture above comes from). Here’s a tiny taste of the roaring twenties romp that lies between the covers (a party based on this book will undoubtedly occur at my house in the near future):

9

Some love is fire: some love is rust:
But the fiercest, cleanest love is lust.
And their lust was tremendous. It had the feel
Of hammers clanging; and stone; and steel:
And torches of the savage, roaring kind
That rip through iron, and strike men blind:
Of long trains crashing through caverns under
Grey tumbling streets, like angry thunder:
Of engines throbbing; and hoarse steam spouting;
And feet tramping; and great crows shouting.
A lust so savage, they could have wrenched
The flesh from bone, and not have blenched.

Alternative cover (Salinger).

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I just happened upon this on the interweb. Salinger surely would’ve hated it, but I sure don’t.

“Few writers since Joyce would risk such a wealth of words upon events that are purely internal and deeds that are purely talk.”

-John Updike, in a 1961 review of “Franny and Zooey” in the NY Times.

Get it while it’s relevant (my chapbook)!

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Seventeen poems. One epigraph. Acknowledgements. Photograph & cover design by Misha Marston Johnson. Sewn binding by Heather Garner. Limited edition (50 run). Only 5 small dollars. Click it, people; make it big.

(If you want one of these, write an electronic letter to taylormkatz@gmail.com.)

chapbook (noun): a small paperback pamphlet, typically containing poems or fiction.