Exit 8A

Courtyard Marriott, South Brunswick, NJ

ORACLE

The cars go by
just like they did
yesterday.

-Tom Clark

Friday, July 13, 2014, 7 A.M.

Does this poem speak to New York subway riders? Is there anyone, anywhere--at least in these United States--who does not immediately go to their own place where the cars go by..., however real, imaginary, or liminal that place may be? Here for the poet's blog post for the poem.

Slow Dreams of Pleasure

Longish for an entry in our alternate Poetry in Mutation series but a fine subway poem. The first in Paul Blackburn's early book Brooklyn-Manhattan Transit: A Bouquet for Flatbush from 1960. All five of the poems in this small book from 1960 are about riding on the subway. The other titles are: "Clarkson Avenue Ramble," "The Once-Over," Clickety Clack" (for Lawrence Ferlinghetti), and "Meditation on the BMT." Here is the cover of the first and only edition from Totem Press, whose address is listed as 402 W. 20th St. Gone, of course, as is Blackburn (he died in 1971). But the Franklin Avenue Line (now Shuttle) goes on. Intermittently.

THE FRANKLIN AVENUE LINE

at Park Place

or Dean Street

    across

decaying open platforms with their whitened wood

                        wash

waves of weathered greenness down the line

waves of somewhere unimaginable blossoms blowing

a late spring to tired faces                in this half-

    forgotten     slow    half-empty train

passing in the rain    in slow dreams of pleasure

                          toward the spur's end where

vaguely    in-

decisively        train and rain

come at the same

time

    to a measured 

                           stop

77 on 58th

A wine shop near Columbus Circle. The guy at the counter, Puerto Rican, maybe, had dropped a bottle. "I'm going to set you up," he kept telling the employee mopping it up. And then, "In 1977, the World Series, Reggie Jackson hit three home runs. All the Irish cops came into my dad's bar." He told it again to the woman behind the counter. And once more on his way out the door. "One of those crazy days," she said to me once he'd left the shop. 

(Photo: Larry Morris)

I put him at about my age, which means he would have been around 16 for that memorable series (described well in the book The Bronx is Burning). The Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games. Reggie did indeed hit 3 homes runs in the deciding game at the Stadium--after being dogged all season by his manager, Billie Martin, and the New York press for underperforming. If I was there when the cops came in to my father's bar, after the game and the raucous on- and off-field celebration that followed, I'd still be telling the story to anybody who'd listen.

Boston Red Sox at Cleveland Indians (May 2014)

(There's no way to quite recapture what baseball looked like on television in the 1970s, with its 2 or 3 camera angles, grainy color, and sparse graphics. But shooting an HD monitor with a cellphone camera does a passable job.)

May in June

Our summer subway series, Poetry in Animation, continues with "The Locust Tree in Flower," by William Carlos Williams. An obvious choice, perhaps, and a few weeks late, sure, but when was the MTA ever original or on time?

Bill Jensen, Locus, 2001-03 (39" x 33")

Among
of 
green

stiff
old
bright

broken
branch
come

white
sweet
May

again

Tripping over the MTA

Not all the poetry underground is on Poetry in Motion posters. Here's an inadvertent (?) verse from the MTA itself, spotted in the 34th St. IND station.* And again, with Calder poking out behind the pillar.

Please slow down
Avoid slips, trips, and falls...

The limb you save 
May be your own.

Okay, the second couplet is added on. Feel free to submit your own ending. Remember, the tail wags the doggerel.

(*Funny, I have only seen this particular poster at the 34th St. station. Is it particularly prone to trips and falls?)

Potomac on the Gowanus

Every June, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, throws a party--a very quiet party--at its incredible gallery space at the end of the Audubon Terrace on Broadway between 155th and 156th St.  The Academy celebrates newly elected members in visual art, literature, architecture, and music. The exhibit is a wildly mixed bag but always offers surprises. It's up for one more weekend. Here are a couple pieces that caught my interest.

The Sunset Park Material Recovery Facility designed by Sims Municipal Recycling (2013). This is the Tipping Building. Has there ever been a better name for a building on a canal? Or for a tugboat?

Photo: Nikolas Koenig

"This 140,000 sf recycling facility processes New York City's curbside metal, glass, and plastic recyclables and features a public education center. The eleven-acre master plan creates distinct circulation zones for visitors, truck deliveries, and pedestrians. Utilizing pre-engineered building components made from recycled steel the facility projects a dynamic face on the Brooklyn waterfront."

Massimo Scolari's Gas Station Inn. Does it remind you of a New York City highway?

Robert Adam's Firebreak above East Highlands, California (1982). Does it not say it all?

To Be Small and Stay Small

BTB is nothing if not opportunistic in its approach to the Poetry in Agitation summer series. Here is a poem by Emily Fragos, a poet I only encountered this afternoon at the American Academy of Arts and Letters exhibition at the Audubon Terrace (open for another week). The gif (first on BTB) is by Hilary Faye and was part of a candy-box exhibit (now closed), Hyper-Resemblances, at Columbia's Wallach Gallery.

Hilary Faye, Untitled, 2011

On Robert Walser (1878-1956)

You saw a dwarf and imagined yourself a dwarf
or the old homeless hag, pushing her cart of junk.

You closed your eyes for days at a time,
groping along the village walls, tumbling into bushes
with an embarrassed gasp.

You adored the gentlewoman--her pillowy bum--
and the chattering birds with faces like walnuts
and feet like twigs, so alive, alert, and active

in their birdie pursuits. Standing alone in your stale,
furnished room, you felt a shudder of feather
and the glowing air grew full, so close. To be alive

was wonderful, but to be small and stay small--
drop of water into the water.

This is about the outside limit on length for a subway poem. And let's hope no one is offended by uncovering a "pillowy bum" on the F train. What if the reader is not familiar with Robert Walser, the German minimalist (if that's the right word for his micro-prose)? Matters not at all. Here is a poem about the imagination and the places it lifts us to and trips us into.

For those interested in the evolution of a poem, I include the photo I took of the draft displayed at the exhibit (shot through the glass). The few changes in word choice and the ending are small but potent: