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.

Eileen R. Tabios : BROADWAY FOR PAUL, by Vincent Katz

BROADWAY FOR PAUL, Vincent Katz

Knopf, 2020

I can’t think of a more fitting first poem than “Between the Griffon and Met Life” for Vincent Katz’s new book, BROADWAY FOR PAUL (Knopf, New York, 2020). It is an extremely welcoming poem, not just in its narrative that begins

I am totally enamored of every person passing in this

          unseasonably warm mid-March evening near

          39^th and Park

but in the lightness of its tone. I cite “light” here as a pun as Katz also articulates what will  burnish our view of the persona: “The light is such that I can see everyone and can imagine what they are imagining for the night ahead, what dreams, what fulfilled fantasies of togetherness”. The all of this poem is just a great set-up for what comes next.

What comes next, as noted by the title, is New York’s Broadway—life on its streets, subways, offices and those who populate such scenes. But what the reader ends up seeing is not just New York but City writ large. References may be to Manhattan but the observation and wisdom cuts across geography, e.g. this ending to “7 A.M. Poem”—

The people arriving on trains are not New Yorkers, but

They too are filled with desires, plans, wrapped in winter coats

As the people crashed out on stairs or in abandoned buildings

People in high boardrooms creating situations affecting those with nothing

or, from”Morning, Or Evening?”

“Important to be in one’s own head, not subject to advertising or even others’ art”.

I was heartened to read the poem “Flows” because that’s part of this collection’s achievement: an organic turn from one city scene to another, whether on a concrete sidewalk or in the mind. Such an ease—this flow—widens the persona’s position in New York to include the rest of the world, as in

RIVER

This is where I’m a poet:

Right here, at the edge of the river, in the cold

Those colors at the end of day, in winter

I’m able to have my own views out here

And I can. Hear the water lapping

I love this curved building lit up at night

Like somewhere in Germany

“RIVER” certainly works well as an ars poetica poem, that is, that perhaps the poet needs to be at the “edge” of something that is moving elsewhere—that such a positioning is required for ensuring one’s ability to become exposed, to before taking in, much of what composes the very large universe. Here, the poet doesn’t simply views but takes in—an effect manifested in how Katz’s poems are generously populated with details—from “Café With Bryan Ferry”:

The breeze is causing the canopy edge to flutter,

In turn causing a shadow to enter and retreat

On the edge of the café table

Its pulsing is mesmerizing and also calming

It helps put him in a general trance of midday

In addition, the collection’s flow—tone—is not interrupted but only deepened by the allowance of what can be jarring, e.g. “Ivanka Skirting” that begins

These are poems of mind control I’m going to get inside

          Their minds and change their policies

I am starting with Ivanka before I can move on to Jared

Ivanka is wearing a wrap skirt as she smiles to the children in

          The classroom, Jared smirks walking away

Nothing is easy, no blemishes in this park, green grass

          Beginning to come, March trees in bud, lofty edifices

          Preside

Castle rocks reflect in pond, organic base of massive pain

This city where the rich feast on others’ innards

Expertly-crafted imagery, the specifics of details without getting bogged down in them, the light, the palpable consciousness of a persona which nonetheless does not deter the reader from a personal inhabitation of the poems—Katz’s poetic skills make this collection not only one to read but one that activates the mind’s eyes; I agree with the jacket description of Katz’s poetry as “a way of seeing that can change hearts and minds.” He achieves such with so much grace that to read many of the poems is to feel the world more alit with a ceaseless desire for connections.

Eileen R. Tabios has released over 60 collections of poetry, fiction, essays, and experimental biographies from publishers in ten countries and cyberspace. Her 2020 books include a short story collection, PAGPAG: The Dictator’s Aftermath in the Diaspora; a poetry collection, The In(ter)vention of the Hay(na)ku: Selected Tercets 1996-2019; and her third bilingual edition (English/Thai), INCULPATORY EVIDENCE: Covid-19 Poems. She invented the hay(na)ku, a 21st century diasporic poetic form, and the MDR Poetry Generator, which can create poems totaling theoretical infinity. Translated into 11 languages, she also has edited, co-edited or conceptualized 15 anthologies of poetry, fiction and essays. More information is available at http://eileenrtabios.com