Neeli Cherkovski : Broadway for Paul, by Vincent Katz

Broadway for Paul, Vincent Katz
Alfred A. Knopf, 2020

 

 

 

 

Vincent Katz will not leave New York for himself alone. Like so many other poets, most notably Walt Whitman and Federico Garcia Lorca, he gives us Manhattan. So much is incorporated here — that is the way he wants it. In Broadway for Paul, the poet shows his hometown from many different vantage points — always with a sense of love and subtle astonishment. He may have been born there, but that doesn’t stop Katz from seeing it anew.  He writes in the opening of the first poem of how “totally enamored” he is of the people who crowd the streets.  We’re told it’s a “warm mid-March evening near 39th and Park,” and then begins a cascade of observations following this information. “The light is such that I can see everyone…” There it is, that habit poets have of seeing so much — of seeing everything and everyone and then making something of it. The poet will dig deep into his city. It is his world and he will share it as such. In the second poem, he’s talking about the subway where you can “look at all the people, and each one is different”.  They are all inside of a bubble, the poet tells us: the City itself is a bubble. We are led into it slowly, the sound of Manhattan enters our pores.  The tempo of this raucous metropolis is caught quite effectively, “They carry their lunches in paper or plastic bags/They are rushing but composed”. Yes, it had to be the same city where Lorca felt overwhelmed by the monolithic architecture.  Katz has the New Yorkers’ vision to see “People in high boardrooms creating situations affecting those with nothing”.

One of the more ambitious poems in this collection is “Autumn Days & Hours.”  This poem is a rich panoply of images.  “A forceful grey covers the sky”.  Not difficult to conjure up such a coloring.  We see “punctuations of light pressing through here and there.”  Because this is a longer poem it is easy for the reader to be comfortably lost within the language. Katz pushes one mood against another and turns abruptly from shadow to light. 

His words are unified and hold onto ordinary facts that help orient his reader, “It was in the high 80s today. The view is endlessly entertaining, like a slow-moving film.”  This conversational tone pervades the collection.  The poet sticks by his reader, putting the city forward matter of factly.  Soliloquizing will not be found here, though there are our elegiac moments that underscore Katz’s relationship to his town. “River” is an artful work of concision:  “This is where I am a poet:/Right here, at the edge of the river, in the cold/Those colors at the end of day…”  And then will write, “I’m able to have my own views out here/And I can hear the water lapping”.

Yes, certainly a sense of romanticism is in this collection, yet that is not the main thing here.  Broadway for Paul is a hybrid.  There is none of the plaintive cry of Lorca or boisterousness of Walt Whitman.  This is a man coming to terms with a cityscape/landscape he has known all his life. He not only digs into the present, but walks the town historically as well. The longer poem “A City Marriage” takes care of all that. Amid the iconic features of modern New York/Manhattan, we are shown The African Burial Ground. Katz tells us how to get there: A short walk here. A short walk there. On the way to that historical place he shows many mysteries and wonders that abide. Reading the poem is like having a carousel spin you around and cast you on a path to the past.

This is a friendly book — not like, I’m an old acquaintance taking you for a trip in an environment with which I am well acquainted. There is nothing in the way of confrontation, it is more like a good conversation, in which you listen with care to the possibilities language affords.  Jump in.  Tackle the avenues.  Make the streets.  Let the poet show you the Way.

 

 

 

 

Neeli Cherkovski’s recent books of poetry include Hang on to the Yangtze River and Elegy for my Beat Generation from Lithic Press. Currently completing new edition of his biography of Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He is the recipient of an American book award.