Happy Birthday, Mark Strand

As an extra credit project during my junior year in high school, a classmate and I created a bulletin board display entitled “Three Savannah Poets—Conrad Aiken, Billy Bray, and Michael Goodman.” I would like to think that we consciously gave Aiken top billing; after all, he was the only one of us whose poetry had been published. But I suspect that we were just arranging the names in alphabetical order. Billy and I each spent a lot of time writing poems. And what did our efforts get us? Extra credit in English 11.

I am thinking of those days because I read this morning that today is the birthday of Mark Strand, a former U.S. Poet Laureate and, for one semester in my college career, the man who directed a poetry writing seminar that had a major impact on me. During our housecleaning efforts as part of our Pandemic isolation, I came across some of my poems from that class. I wrote some of the best poems of my life during that semester. I also wrote very few poems. It wasn’t so much that I was intimidated by the other writers’ work. I became more critical of my own writing, and less willing to share what I considered to be inferior work. The novelist and essayist Allegra Goodman (no relation) calls this “the inner critic” and suggests that it can screw up even good writers. She explains this in an essay entitled “O.K., You're Not Shakespeare. Now Get Back to Work.” I wish she had been around when I was taking Strand’s seminar.

Mark Strand, as I remember him, big head and all

I remember a lot of details about Strand, who passed away in 2014 at age 80. He was tall and handsome. He had an impressively large head. He had a lot of poet friends whose work he often shared with us—Charles Simic, Galway Kinnell, James Wright, and, most impressive of all, Elizabeth Bishop, whom he even invited to read at Yale. He also had some innovative techniques that I appropriated when I taught writing a few years later.

For example, he would give us six random words to include in a poem of 8-12 lines. The words could violate certain grammar rules. A word normally a noun could be used as a verb if that worked for you. Here is one I wrote using the words fit, ice, hazard, flour, flower, and oxygen.

A Warmer World

Born into another age

Fit not for ice, but with the warmth

Of wool unsheared,

I would not care to hazard all I own

To flee to the harshness of a winter’s hate.

Born into another world

Where sunlight falls upon my eyes

Like sifted flour,

I then would dream of sharing oxygen

With flowers now left lonely by my flight.

Does this poem make any sense? Not really. But it fit the rules of the class. It also taught me that every word in a poem (article or story) counts. That is probably the most important lesson that I learned from Strand. It may help explain why I took up editing as a profession. And the poem above vividly shows why I did not continue as a poet.

For some of us, writing poetry blends pleasure with pain.
Our readers may have other ideas.

But I did write a few of what I considered to be good poems during the semester. Here is my favorite:

Love at 5:15

Wedged between the world’s problems

And an artist-beard in the smell of rush hour

I proposed breath then marriage

To a blonde-haired escapist

On the run to the Grand Concourse;

Then marrying her reflection in the artist’s glasses

I begot a subway map

Of every exotic location in central Queens.

Tell me, dearest,

Why I have never seen you before on the five-fifteen?

Your hair is beautiful near the green Dyre Avenue sign;

Your eyes more intriguing than the Daily News.

While I thought this poem “intriguing” with its suggestion that someone could fall madly in love with someone else on a crowded subway car and expect to encounter the same person again during another rush-hour trip, I noticed a critical comment that I must have received when I read the poem out in the class. “Its archness shows a lack of seriousness, which is attractive but may spell ultimate failure.” I think that’s a little harsh, don’t you?

Happy Birthday, Mark Strand. I am remembering you fondly today. Thank you for your gift of words. I use a little of that gift every day.

A Night Quite Different

Audrey and I have been conducting the family Seder on the first night of Passover for many years. We took it over from my mother-in-law a few years after we were married and have just continued as our children arrived and have grown. Many years, we have extended our “family” with invited guests and expanded our enjoyment. We did that again last night at our 2020 Seder, but this one was especially special.

Audrey and I have different roles in the Seder. She coordinates the food part, and I run the service part. She usually gives me free rein, up to a point. If I am too long-winded, the food is ready to serve, and the guests are getting impatient to eat, Audrey lets me know that it is time to move on to what our Haggadah calls “the festive meal.”

Frankly, I like being the host and conductor. I am a little intolerant of “loosely run” Seders. We start at the beginning with a little introduction (during which I may pedantically introduce a theme), say the blessings over the wine and green vegetable, tell the story beginning by putting the youngest person (usually Amanda) on the spot to say the “Four Questions,” call out the plagues with finger drops of wine, sing Dayenu (“It would have been enough”), and make the famous Hillel Sandwich with both horseradish and the sweet apple stuff (Haroset). For me to be comfortable, there need to be a certain percentage of Hebrew prayers mixed with the English storytelling. And the full Grace after Meals complete with chants familiar from my youth and the kids’ camp experiences. And 4-5 songs performed in different tunes, depending on what we remember well. There are sometimes debates over which tune is the “right” one.

If this sounds like a lot, that point was made clear to me last night.  Amanda’s good friends Nicole and Phil said they could join us from Atlanta for only a few minutes because of their own family obligations and they weren’t sure they were ready for a “serious” Seder. Our New York cousins Mike and Gloria said they would be sorry to miss out on Michael’s “erudite” Seder. I’m not sure that was a compliment.

Which brings me to last night’s Seder and why it was truly “different from all other nights.”

Hosts and guests join in at our Zeder.
Miles couldn't keep us apart.

Like thousands of homes around the country and the world, we held our Seder over Zoom—a “Zeder” Brett called it, with me as Zeyde (Grandpa). There were a few glitches or scheduling issues. Brett’s computer microphone wasn’t functioning, so Amanda brought his voice in via cell phone while his lips moved on the computer screen. Nicole and Phil had an at-home Seder conflict at her parents’ house, so they cut out early. Brett’s friends (and our “adopted children”) Nicole and David—beaming in from way up near the Canadian border— made do with homemade matzoh crackers and missed out on brisket and gefilte fish. And throughout there was a slight timing lag, as voices had to cross miles of great divide to reach each other. The lag was particularly apparent as our friends Harvey and Phyllis joined us in readings and song.

All of that being said, this was probably the best Seder we have ever run or joined in. We shared memories of Seders past. Harvey remembered how his father would keep reciting the Haggadah story in Hebrew even while others around the table talked amongst themselves. Phyllis recalled sleeping under the table during what seemed to be endless Seders when she was a child. Audrey remembered how her mother and she would get tipsy over the cups of wine and would drive her very religious uncle crazy with their giggling. Audrey reminded Nicole of the Seder when Nicole told my mother, who was visiting from Savannah, about the special promotional presents she received during her time as editor-in-chief of Playgirl. “What kinds of presents?” my mother asked. “You don’t want to know,” Nicole replied. Amanda described the confusion involved with our conflicting song tunes. And I got to repeat the stories about the goat that may or may not have entered my Aunt Dot’s house during a Seder many years ago and about the platter of gravy-laden brisket that I may or may not have dropped as a teen one year but still get blamed for even today.

Anyone need a Playgirl t-shirt?

We happily exceeded the 40-minute Zoom time limit, which was gratefully extended by the powers that be at Zoom. And we laughed as we said the blessings and recited some of the story of Passover. Then we broke to eat our festive meal separately but also together. Harvey later joined us to sing the special Passover songs. Phyllis missed that imperfectly coordinated singing because she was already asleep and expressed annoyance that Harvey did not awaken her to join in.

I am hopeful that next year we will not need to conduct a Zeder but can instead gather at our home to share Passover memories and make new ones. But this Seder was special in its bridging both time and distance—bringing us together when we were forced apart.

Surviving the Pandemic Gracefully

In the Goodman household, the Great Pandemic of 2020 (GP20) has been about both family togetherness and separation, communal meal planning and enjoyment (from concept to shopping to clean up), too many hours of news updates and analysis, and a whole lot of clean up— personally and domestically.

So far, we have been blessed with good health, more accord than discord, and lots of time to use both wisely and wastefully.  (Though to challenge the last adverb, I turn to a sign that Audrey gave me a few years ago and which is posted in a prominent place in our home office: “The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.”)

Even before the word went out governmentally to “shelter in place,” Amanda decided to leave her solitude in NYC to join with her parents in New Jersey. It was a wise decision, I think we all agree. Brett was slower to make a decision to flee to his old home, and, indeed, more resolute in deciding  to remain independent in Astoria, where he and his newly adopted dog, Mike the Beagle, have set up a cozy household. What he has lost in joining in face-to-face communications and in having meals planned and prepared by others, he has gained in enjoying the special “one-ness” that is uniquely Brett. We stay connected by texting often, and will be crossing the divide with him electronically tonight with a planned Face-Time chat. So our face-to-face will actually be screen-to-screen. Togetherness and separation, it seems, are equal parts of GP20.

Amanda and her friend Melissa in a pas de deux

But the most visible positive outcome of our time sheltering has been the efforts we have all made to empty boxes, clean out file cabinets, and recycle dozens of years' worth and many reams of paper. The cleanup could be going faster, of course, if we didn’t stop continually to inspect and then share aloud some of the masterpieces each of put into writing or typing over the years.

A story collection hidden away for too long.

Of particular note was a collection of anecdotes and observations that Amanda incorporated in fourth grade into a notebook entitled “Amanda’s Writing Stories.”  (The notebook has been buried in a plastic container in our basement since before the millennium.) 

It includes two priceless pieces. One is “Fourth Grade Memories” written jointly with Julia Bullaro—a single-page work that is nevertheless divided into three (brief) chapters.  The second is a vivid description of the evening when she and her Mom attended a performance by noted modern-dance choreographer Twyla Tharp and her dance company. 

What made that evening so memorable? I will let Amanda describe it:

My mom and I take modern dance, so my mom wanted to show me some different kinds of dance. So we went to see Twyla Tharp playing in NY.

When we got there, we went to our seats and talked. I looked on the stage. This was very peculiar because the dancers were on stage warming up so we could see them. .

Then the lights faded and the dancers went offstage. The one and only Twyla Tharp then came out. She started to dance. The music was real jazzy. When she was done, she was out of breath. Then the other dancers came onstage. They were beautiful. They went on and offstage. They kept repeating, and other dancers did different steps.

Then Twyla Tharp went back out and said anyone in the audience could go on stage. Oh, no, my mom was going on stage! My mom hid in the back, but I could still see her. The steps looked hard to me. My mom also had a little trouble. Finally, they could go back to their seats. But Twyla picked two people to do the steps by themselves. Luckily, my mom wasn’t one…

.

Another group of dancers (from the company) went on stage. They were so graceful that I wanted to get up and dance with them. I was picturing myself being lifted in the air like the other women dancers. I would be the first 9-year-old to dance with Twyla Tharp. I would be famous. But I wasn’t. When I stopped the dreaming, the show was over. I thought it was outstanding!!!!

As Amanda read the story aloud to us, she was beaming. She was reliving something special that had been hidden away far too long.

The Great Pandemic of 2020 is a frightening, terrible event that is only beginning to impact our lives.  But for a few minutes, it had indirectly led to something beautiful and memorable in a positive way – much like the family togetherness that has been our salvation so far.