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Aug. 26th, 2003 12:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantryslut"Be obstinate." -- Joseph Brodsky's advice to young poets.
Historical note: I met Brodsky once, nearly a decade ago now. He was a very kind, warm man, and that's all I can remember, for I was way too shy to actually speak to him. I was not too shy to hang out drinking with slightly lesser lights of contemporary poetry, though. Somewhere in the boxes I am packing, I have a book by Dave Smith, inscribed with something like "thanks for all the late-night conversations." I can't remember what we talked about then, either, but I do remember a lot of high spirits and a lot of empty beer bottles. I was 19, and I wasn't drinking myself, though everyone thought the root beer bottles I walked into town for every day were beer without the root. Who else were we drinking with? Three or four others who have faded from my memory as well. The woman who wrote the MTA song, maybe. The burly, bearded guy who hit on me one night, almost too drunk to stand, and then left town the next day. Who was I, all those years ago? Someone else. Someone I feel like I'm excavating, recently. It's the poetry thing, I know, nothing else, but it's unsettling. Not in a bad way. Sometimes it's good to shake things up a bit.
Historical note: I met Brodsky once, nearly a decade ago now. He was a very kind, warm man, and that's all I can remember, for I was way too shy to actually speak to him. I was not too shy to hang out drinking with slightly lesser lights of contemporary poetry, though. Somewhere in the boxes I am packing, I have a book by Dave Smith, inscribed with something like "thanks for all the late-night conversations." I can't remember what we talked about then, either, but I do remember a lot of high spirits and a lot of empty beer bottles. I was 19, and I wasn't drinking myself, though everyone thought the root beer bottles I walked into town for every day were beer without the root. Who else were we drinking with? Three or four others who have faded from my memory as well. The woman who wrote the MTA song, maybe. The burly, bearded guy who hit on me one night, almost too drunk to stand, and then left town the next day. Who was I, all those years ago? Someone else. Someone I feel like I'm excavating, recently. It's the poetry thing, I know, nothing else, but it's unsettling. Not in a bad way. Sometimes it's good to shake things up a bit.
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Date: 2003-08-26 04:31 pm (UTC)And that burly, bearded man returned one day to become...
(pause)
Steven Schwartz.
And now you know: THE REST OF THE STORY (TM).
;)
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Date: 2003-08-26 06:08 pm (UTC)