15,955. JUST LIKE OLDEN TIMES

JUST LIKE OLDEN TIMES

I think the two most startling poets

who came to  me were Frank O'Hara

and John Ashbery. I knew neither of

them from Adam, but they became like

friends. Ashbery lived a very long life

and  -  only dying recently  -  left a very

long trail. Good words abound, but some

of it  -  oh so odd and convoluted.

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Poor Frank, dying as he did, and young

to not deserve it. Lunch Poems, as idea,

still knocks me out. So very 1950's New

York. He was run down by a beach taxi,

or beach ambulance, something like that,

on the beach at Fire Island, in the middle 

of the darkness of night. So sad. That was

1966, the year of the Six Days War.

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Israel was then a rising tide; unlike now, a

leech and a drag. Things were so different, 

and I was, what, 17? What did I know about

anything (but if you asked me, I knew it all).

Such a funny time for little feet. Jeff Gutman,

high school rabble, leading on the Jewish

charge; every morning the New York Times

in Mr. Brown's history class. A real cheerleader

for the Israelis, from his little seat in Woodbridge

High. Stuff like that made me think, 'Who am I?'

-

What else does a 17-year old think about, well,

except maybe for sex, of course. That's a new

and untrammeled land by then  -  or at least it

should have been. But, city talk had it that most

girls gave it out by age 13  -   great project if

you lived in the projects?

-

Anyway, those two guys took over my life; 

their writings anyway. I never much cared about 

personalities, for they came and went like wartime

skirmishes of Egyptians and Jews. It was all in

the words. I was fixated. And there was Berryman.

John Berryman. He later jumped off a bridge in

Minneapolis, I think it was. Alcoholic, and out

of control; an incensed by ideal personality who

lost his grip on reality. Poor fellow too.

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All of this must have went for something, inside

me; welling up. And then, John Gardner, a writer

of fiction, a few really good books, out of Binghamton,

NY, teaching. He got killed when his motorcycle

crashed somewhere up there. More sadness and

more to grieve. Man, I miss those guys and days.

That must have been the 70's.

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Kind of the Stephen King set out of non-Hollywood

sextet. New York Poets, everywhere, but not a room

to let. That field was crowded, from Kenneth Koch 

to Barbara Guest and James Schuyler too. Where do

I hide, where do I run? How do I do it, what do I get?