Subway Poems

Two unexpected poems about subways! (I love google and the patterns into which it can sort information.)

Subway Wind
Claude McKay

Far down, down through the city's great, gaunt gut,
The gray train rushing bears the weary wind;
In the packed cars the fans the crowd's breath cut,
Leaving the sick and heavy air behind.
And pale-cheeked children seek the upper door
To give their summer jackets to the breeze;
Their laugh is swallowed in the deafening roar
Of captive wind that moans for fields and seas;
Seas cooling warm where native schooners drift
Through sleepy waters, while gulls wheel and sweep,
Waiting for windy waves the keels to lift
Lightly among the islands of the deep;
Islands of lofty palm trees blooming white
That lend their perfume to the tropic sea,
Where fields lie idle in the dew drenched night,
And the Trades float above them fresh and free.



Subway
Carl Sandburg

DOWN between the walls of shadow
Where the iron laws insist,
The hunger voices mock.

The worn wayfaring men
With the hunched and humble shoulders,
Throw their laughter into toil.




I especially love how McKay's poem--sonnet!--is so much about elements of the subway experience that don't exist anymore: those "upper door" windows (I assume he means the little ones that open at the top and hinge at the bottom?) stay closed, and I think that only the oldest trains even have them. The subway must have sounded so different, too. Before air conditioning.

Observed by Keight.

Guest entry, a text message from Keight sent Wednesday, May 21, 5:56 pm:

Just passed three people walking really, really slow just south of washington square. Made me happy.

One of Many Reasons Why I Don't Play Dodgeball

Mike's Dodgeball Injury
Originally uploaded by elissanelson

The best part is that Mike ended up at the ER getting stitches NOT because someone threw the dodgeball at him, but because he was running forward with the dodgeball trying to tag someone, and he slipped and fell literally head over heels, head first.

Fortune Teller on Grand

The fortune telling/Avon products enterprise at the corner of Grand and Leonard has closed.

On the Grand Street side, there was a fortune teller painted on the door, garish and skirted and gypsy-ish. One would enter down a short flight of steps and through the painted door, except no one ever did, that I saw. However, the Leonard side of the business was always active. A walk-up Avon window, with the Avon sales lady inside, her gray hair set and curled, and always a customer gossiping, standing outside.

Now For Rent, Call Broker:

outdoors in the wilderness

dangerous evil pest
Originally uploaded by elissanelson

Today I walked over the Brooklyn Bridge on a fieldwork trial run, then read my book next to the East River, under the Manhattan Bridge (Brooklyn side--Lauren looked horrified when I mentioned this, then I clarified and she was relieved). A dad and daughter were near me for a while, first sitting,then rock-hopping. The girl, maybe eight, asked "What's DEP stand for? It's on that rock."

Dad said, "It could be the Department of Environmental Protection."

She said, "It could be Dangerous Evil Pest."

"It could be that," he agreed.

Where I've Lived.

Megan was giving me the rundown of how many places she's lived and how many people she's lived with, and I was inspired. Here is my tally. This is such a zine-y thing.

Chicago
Hyde Park
mom and dad
the townhouse next door to Greer
mom and dad and baby sister

Minneapolis
4849 S. Vincent (the first address I had to memorize, and a crappy duplex where, as I learned years later, the upstairs neighbors stole our electricty using an extension cord and I do remember when the upstairs toilet overflowed through our bedroom ceiling and Mrs. Core the babysitter panicked)
mom dad sister
201 Valley View Place
mom dad sister
do we count dad's apartments? Bloomington, Deephaven...
then he bought the house on 54th St.

Bard
four different dorm rooms (with crazy girl, then Brenda, then by myself)

Minneapolis
the apartment with Chris and Pauline

Seattle
that apartment in Maple Leaf with three people whose names I don't remember
the apartment in Fremont with Susan

back to Bard
Tivoli with Liz and Patricia, then with Liz, Lauren and Kate in the closet
Red Hook with LJ

Portland
the shack with insane cat (who may or may not count as a roommate--but pets are not otherwise included in the above lists [Apple Annabel the second, Casey, Tikki Tikki Tembo No Sa Rembo Charri Barri Buchi Pip Perri Pembo, etc.] so disregard in full count please)
northeast with LJ
31st and Burnside with LJ

Brooklyn
Franklin and Hancock with the Japanese craigslist roommate--Naeko, I think?
Hancock with Laurice (also a craigslist roommate but more too) and Ruby

Syracuse
that apartment across from Thornden Park with Tiara
Sarah and Hannah and Dan's house briefly, then...
Sarah and Hannah's house for two years (except for living with Laurice in there for the brain tumor summer, plus her roommate... whose name I don't remember)

Brooklyn again
Hancock with Laurice again
Hancock with Andrea
Hancock with Nick

next Portland again


So I've had 24 homes, and I've lived with 26 different people. Assuming memory serves, and assuming we count even those people with whom I lived relatively briefly (all of them at least a month...?)

Observed.

Text message sent to Rachel on Sunday: "Wow--leggings like Sandy's in Grease!* Except in soho! Worn without irony!"




*Shiny spandex, for those of you who do not immediately have a visual image to accompany my cinematic allusion. I'm referring to "bad girl" Sandy, in the final scene.

More Mavis (& a little Flannery).

Except I don't think she's Mavis. Ms. Gallant. Finally read the last three stories in The End of the World & Other Stories, partly because I'd just finished Play It As It Lays and wanted a couple stories before starting another novel, and partly because my Facebook profile showed me as currently reading eight books, which was driving me crazy--both because it showed up on the profile as "currently reading 8 books" and partly because of the frequent automatically generated emails asking me if I am still reading Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara, the Koran, and all these pedagogical theory books I am poking my way through and referencing frequently, but won't really have time to read till summer--plus until summer I need to lose myself in fiction.* And the occasional poem, but who can read a book of poems straight through beginning to end, even a little book of poems like Lunch Poems? I don't read poems like that, just like you wouldn't listen to your John Cage box set all in one sitting. At least I wouldn't.

Anyway. Ms. Gallant. The last paragraph of the last story in this collection is one of my favorite conclusions to any story ever, I think. (Though having said that, I'll have to go look at a bunch of others. Except not tonight. But curious to hear about others' favorite endings?) Anyway the conclusion is perfect in the context of the story ("In the Tunnel") and the way things are pulled together, and just how excellently it's about the first "adult" love affair, and that moment of being young enough to believe the first one is all there will ever be, and then realizing there will be the rest of your life and so many pieces to that whole life, love affairs just one of them. But one great line: "She was in love with his mystery, his hardships, and the death of Trotsky."

Also recently reread Flannery O'Connor's story "Parker's Back," because it's about a tattoo. I have been thinking about tattoos a lot, see. Anyway I think I really got "Parker's Back" on this reading (maybe my twentieth? thirtieth? I've had Flannery's complete stories in my top ten [top five?] since about the tenth grade) for the first time, not because of my tattoo, but because it clicked. Sometimes I forget that all her stories are about God and revelation, and then I remember and I am so impressed by her and scared of her all over again. No one else like her. Though Ms. Gallant is a piece of work, too--and I'll never get to read Flannery's complete stories for the first time again, but I still haven't read most of Gallant's.





*Hell of a sentence there, Elissa--you an English teacher or something?

My Wunderkammer

...or Cabinet of Curiosities. Which isn't really a cabinet, but an assortment of random objects on shelves and window ledges and stuffed in the closet and under the bed.

I just finished Mr. Wilson's Cabinet of Curiosities: Pronged Ants, Horned Humans, and Other Marvels of Jurassic Technology by Lawrence Weschler--read at Molly Kalkstein's suggestion, not shockingly, since it is thoroughly related to our shared interest in ephemera, being a sort of history of/tribute to such things, and being a celebration of David Wilson's Museum of Jurassic Technology (whose website is the most Victorian website I could ever imagine--though I hadn't realized I could imagine such a thing).

This got me started thinking about my own Wunderkammer, my cabinet of wonder, and my assorted ephemera. Hereby briefly catalogued and categorized. I'd thought at one point that I would update and edit, but since this is extremely incomplete in the first place, I doubt that will happen. I have more than what is listed here in every one of these categories. And here we go again, deciding what gets moved.

Books. (The primary category--may not seem to be ephemera, but read on. Note that this is a sampling; not all titles are listed.)
Countless volumes by Horatio Alger, Junior
Fruit Scones
Chansons de Frances, 1950, with built in xylophone and small wooden mallet
Where Are the Mothers? by Dorothy Marino, 1959 (Shocking how many mothers are working while their little ones are at school!)
The Delivery Men, by Charlotte Kuh, pictures by Kurt Wiese, 1929 (beautifully lithographed and featuring a milkman and his horse, an iceman, a push-cart man with fish, and many others)
Tierra Nativa, Libro Unico Para 3er Grado, Guyaquil, Ecuador, 1940
Here is New York City, 1962, stamped Property of Board of Education
Little Man's Family, a Navaho primer, Publication of the Education Division--U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, 1940
Standardized Textbook of Barbering, Third Edition, published by Associated Master Barbers of America, 1931 (signed Property of Hank Jangula, with his notes folded up and stuffed inside)
So many more. Also zines. Also magazines and random paper, including three issues of Partisan Review from the fifties featuring work by James Baldwin, Elizabeth Bishop, H.L. Mencken, Delmore Schwartz, and their luminous peers; "A Question of Taste" pamphlet on the wonders of Miracle Whip, illustrated, from what looks like the thirties judging from the housewife's carefully marcelled hair; the similarly charming "Thrifty JELL-O Recipes to Brighten Your Menus: Desserts, Salads"; "Outdoor Edition GIRLS Lighting and Technical Data No. 4," 1952, less about technical data and more about GIRLS; and a program from an October 1897 performance of "Madame Sans Gene" at the Irving Place Theater, Deutiches Theater, Irving Place and 15th Street, New York. Oh, I miss that bookstore in Syracuse, and I will miss the Strand--but there is that fabulous thrift store on 82nd in Portland, with the best-organized book section of any thrift store anywhere, plus the Bins, plus of course Powell's. (Looking over what's listed here, I realize that this is not even hardly a thorough sampling; I didn't even mention the multiple Home Ec and Stenography textbooks, for example, nor the random 19th century self-published guides to everything...)


Ephemera That Cannot Be Categorized. (which seems to be redundant, but in the face of evidence, but I don't think it is)
Pale Blue Rotary Princess Phone*
A large E, found by Rana in the dump between Bard and Tivoli, presumably from a ChEvrolet
Another E, found on the street
Ten random medals and coins including Sears National Baby Contest 1934 Honorable Mention and COIN OF ANCIENT ITHACA ODYSSEUS commemorating the opening of the new building of the First National Bank of Ithaca, NY, May 1932
"take it or leave it!" board game, Series "B." Tag lines: "TRY FOR THE $64. QUESTION!" and "PLAY YOUR FAVORITE RADIO QUIZ AT HOME!" Categories: Football Teams, National Radio Programs of 1943 (you guess the sponsor; "Fibber McGee & Molly" is sponsored by Johnson's Wax, of course, and "Aldrich Family" is sponsored by Jello Puddings), Famous Pairs (Pelleas and Melisande, Aladdin and the Lamp, David Windsor and Wally Simpson, Salome and John the Baptist, Gilbert and Sullivan), Games or Sports (clue: spread, answer: pinochle), Capitals of Foreign Countries [footnote included in game: As of January, 1943], Famous Resorts (resort: Garden of the Gods, answer: Colorado), Synonyms (clue: beatitude, answer[s]: bliss, felicity, blessedness), Movie Stars (clue: Footlight Serenade, answer: Victor Mature, Betty Grable, John Payne), Jack Pot Questions (Q. What is white coal? A. A figurative expression for water power.)
Full set of Dewey Decimal Posters featuring the PEANUTS characters, copyright 1968, rescued from the library renovation at my last school


Catholicisms.
A genuine bottle of water from the grotto at Lourdes
Assorted other Lourdes memorabilia: t-shirt, mug, etc.
A lovely pale green wallet thrifted in Syracuse, empty except for a prayer card featuring a boy Jesus, a scapular medal of Saint Ann, and two medals of Mary, including one wrapped in a typewritten note from the Servite Fathers in Chicago explaining that the medal enclosed has been blessed and touched to a relic of the true Cross
A medal of St. Anthony, Patron Saint of Lost Things, found in a pair of thrift store pants, rubbed almost flat (I didn't buy the pants, but I did take the medal)
A black clay Virgin Mary from Mexico
The miraculous keyhole I found at a flea market, with blue and white paint on it forming an outline of the Virgin Mary (the lady gave it to me when I pointed out the clear apparition and asked how much she wanted for it)

Art.
Various maps
Two of Amy's paintings, stark, bizarre, and lovely
Donna's fabulous forest scene with blue dots
My great-grandfather Julius Thomley's painting of the family homestead in Minnesota, as it looked in the 1920's (painted from memory in the 1970's, when he was in his nineties)
SPACE POPS sign from Keight
Obama poster from Texas
The issue of Dance Index magazine with Joseph Cornell's Isadora Duncan collage on the cover
Three of Molly's prints


Photographs.
My grandmother as a young woman, sitting in a tree with her sister
The Nelson family seed and feed store in Eau Claire after it was hit by the train sometime in the...early 1960's? Late 1950's?
My father in college, shaking hands with Nixon in his official capacity as Young Republican
My father the hippie, standing on a Wisconsin hillside holding me as a baby
Countless old photos of people I never knew, some with names or places or a date scrawled on the back



*Mine is clearly a 20th century Wunderkind, with digressions into the 19th and 21st centuries, not counting a couple fossils and some rocks, undated but older than the rest of it.



[I started this post a couple months ago and finally gave up on ever completing it.]

Didion.

I continue to love Joan Didion. Read all her non-fiction in one fell swoop last year, tried to read Democracy and couldn't get into it, but now Play It As It Lays is exactly the book I want to be reading, and I have a feeling that when it ends I will want to read another book just like it except there isn't. Maria talking about being a kid in Silver Wells, Nevada: "...(my mother's yearnings suffused our life like nerve gas, cross the ocean in a silver plane, she would croon to herself and mean it, see the jungle when it's wet with rain)..."

Eventually I'll write more than blog posts and facebook status updates again. Nice to be reading books that remind me why I want to.

The boa constrictor who swallowed an elephant, outside view.

boa constrictor 1 cropped
Originally uploaded by elissanelson

Donna asked for an explanation of the tattoo, so here it is--for posterity, I suppose, though my sister did warn me that I'll spend the rest of my life explaining it.

In Antoine de Saint Exupery's 1943 novel The Little Prince, he opens with a story about a picture he saw in a book when he was six, of a boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal. The picture is accompanied by an explanation about how boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without chewing it, and then they can't move, so they sleep for six months while they digest. This inspires our hero to make a drawing, his "Drawing Number One" (see picture). After completing it, "I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing frightened them. But they answered: 'Frighten? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?'" He keeps trying, even making a Drawing Number Two, inside view, showing the elephant inside the boa constrictor, but he soon gives up on drawing and on "what might have been a magnificent career as a painter," realizing that "Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them."

For the rest of his life, whenever our hero meets "one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the experiment of showing him my Drawing Number One, which I have always kept. I would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding. But, whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:

"'That is a hat.'

"Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval forests, or stars. I would bring myself down to his level. I would talk to him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties. And the grown-up would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man."

So to answer your question, Donna, I guess it's a reminder.

Bus, overheard.

On the bus home, two moms are talking and one of them catches my attention even through the headphones and the music when she says, outraged, "One little chicken was eight dollars! I said forget it, I'll get the one with the steroids," and they laugh.

Progress.

Something great happened last week with one of my kids who's learning to read. He did something terrific. When it happened I was so excited, but then later I was thinking about it and I could remember the excitement and the pride but not the event, only that it was very small, not something anyone would have noticed except me--I'm not sure A. even registered it.

A couple days later, I remembered what it was.

When we started working together he'd always put a heading on the page, his name sloppy and the date written 5/5/08. One of the first things I asked him to do was write it out, spelling out the month. He groaned every time, but we talked about how we become better writers through every little bit of practice, and writing the date is a quick easy way to practice. He gets that, and I get why he doesn't want to deal. But on Thursday, I glanced at the heading and he'd written "May 1, 2008."

(Yeah, it was a different battle in February for multiple reasons, but hey--progress. It's one indicator, and I'm generally impressed with A. these days. I always have been, actually--when you can't read but you're interested and curious about the world, you pay better attention and notice more stuff than just about anybody else, your teachers included. And when it's all in your head, you can just pull things out and make fabulous connections that other people would need the book in front of them to notice. Any class discussion is better if A. is in[to] it.)

Observations in a coffee shop.

Friday was my third consecutive after-school visit to the coffee shop near my school in Williamsburg during which the person at the table next to me was job-hunting on craigslist--further evidence, if any was required, that when you are hip, young, white, and new to NYC, there is only one neighborhood for you. The guy next to me on Thursday was looking at barista jobs & talking on his cell to someone about how hard it is to get a barista job in New York.

Looking out the window I see a guy skating down Lorimer, carrying a large piece of broken mirror with the beveled edge on the unbroken side painted black and gold.

Overheard at the counter: "I keep picking up this Tom Robbins book and just, like, laughing. I have to give up on Lolita and just stop trying to make it work."

the life I want

In an entry in March, I quoted Mavis Gallant: "Journalism was a life I liked, but not the one I wanted," recognizing that a reader might think that the obvious parallel for me would be "Teaching was a life I liked, but not the one I wanted." I wasn't sure that was true, was pretty sure it wasn't, but couldn't figure out why the quote rang so true somehow. Well, how about: "Brooklyn was a life I liked, but not the one I wanted."

Though I have been making my "what I'll miss, what I won't miss" lists, and "what I'll miss" is much longer (and more tangible: Ali's Roti Shop, the Strand, Cafe Gitan, the Whitney and Calder's Circus...). Plus I spent a lovely gray morning reading Patricia Reilly Giff's All the Way Home, about a little girl growing up in Brooklyn in the 40's, walking distance from Ebbets Field and Prospect Park. Just as with the Algers, having my own Brooklyn makes all the books about this town so much better. Any place is like that--but there are so many books about this one. So I will move, and haul my books with me (although I have been culling! six bags of clothes shoes and junk hauled to Goodwill, three bags of books ready to take to housing works next weekend when the C is running on the F line, a French typewriter set aside for Eleanor...does anyone want my huge collection of random old tattered magazines, of no collector value but of much collager value? be in touch. pick-up ONLY.)