I Hear the Bronx Singing

A student at my alma mater published this poem, a sort of homage and reply to Walt Whitman, in The New Yorker this week. It made me nostalgic.

Along the East River and in the Bronx Young Men Were Singing

I heard them and I still hear them
above the threatening shrieks of police sirens
above the honking horns of morning traffic,
above the home-crowd cheers of Yankee Stadium
above the school bells and laughter
lighting up the afternoon
above the clamoring trudge of the 1 train
and the 2 and 4, 5, 6, the B and the D
above the ice-cream trucks’ warm jingle
above the stampede of children
playing in the street,
above the rush of a popped fire hydrant
above the racket of eviction notices
above the whisper of moss and mold moving in
above the High Bridge and the 145th Street Bridge
above mothers calling those children
to come in for dinner, to come in
before it gets dark, to get your ass inside
above them calling a child who may never come home
above the creaking plunge of nightfall
and darkness settling in the deepest corners
above the Goodyear blimp circling the Stadium
above the seagulls circling the coastal trash
along the East River and in the Bronx
young men are singing and I hear them,
eastbound into eternity even
as morning destars the sky.

-- Ariel Francisco

"This is what you shall do"

This is the day 156 years ago that Walt Whitman self-published his first edition of Leaves of Grass.  It began with a preface that would be left out of future editions, which read in part: 

The land and sea, the animals, fishes, and birds, the sky of heaven and the orbs, the forests, mountains, and rivers, are not small themes … but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than [their] beauty and dignity [. . . ] … they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. Men and women perceive the beauty well enough … [. . . ] The passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people [. . . ] The poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else and is in the soul [. . . ] This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families . . .

For more, go here.

(H/T: The Writer's Almanac)

The Fruits of Blogging, Part 2

There is arguably no time more beautiful in New York City than right now.  At the cusp of summer the air is still fresh, with still another two or three weeks before it hardens into a solid wall of brass-smelling heat that assaults you (the pedestrian and subway rider) the whole day long.  The little patches of green you encounter, especially in the outer boroughs -- the grass at the curb and the modest little gardens that front the low brick two-families that are a staple of Bronx architecture -- seem so much lovelier than they would in the suburbs or the country, because they give solace and respite to souls conditioned to asphalt and concrete.  This time of year is more than usually evocative for me of other times passed in the city in which I lived most of my life, especially times passed in the largely-untrodden and -unsung regions of Brooklyn and the Bronx.

We went back to New York this weekend to go to a wedding.  The marriage was between two Portuguese-Americans, and the welcoming, relaxed warmth and ease of the bride and groom's families and wedding guests, as well as the fantastic music and food, gave both me and my non-Latin husband a sense of nostalgia for our old home town above and beyond that inspired by the beauty of the season.  I found myself thinking of Walt Whitman's great poem Crossing Brooklyn Ferry:

I too lived -- Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;           
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island . . .

Walking those streets, one feels as if one has a purpose, as if one is working as part of a unified organism oriented toward a goal larger than oneself -- a feeling I do not have living in semi-suburban semi-isolation in the small city where I live now, a city where no one walks the streets except at the end of the day, and then either in jogging suits with arms pumping, or with dogs in tow.  There is nowhere really to walk to, after all, and no sense that you are walking along with others.  On the rare occasions when I pass someone else in my solitary perambulations, the other pedestrian, more often than not, will turn and look away.

But there are reasons we are here aside from the obvious one of my husband's work, I am sure of it, though I'm not entirely sure yet what they are.  Life has unfolded here in a way altogether different from the way it did for all those many years in New York, and, if it's lonelier, it's also been blessed by some incredible friendships with some fellow lady-bloggers and commenters. I attempted to write about the wonderful recent visit from New Zealand of Otepoti, who blogs at Reading for Believers, before my post was demolished when Blogger crashed earlier this month.  Then, just a couple of weeks ago, I had a delightful real-life visit from Mr. and Mrs. Darwin and their children as they drove through my patch of northern Appalachia on the way to see family in New York.  And finally, while in town for the wedding last weekend, I met Mrs. C of Adoptio, which was, for me, one of those rare experiences when you can almost palpably feel the presence of the Holy Spirit fluttering around you. 

Mrs. C is a lovely, graceful, accomplished woman, and also the rare sort of person who has a truly mature faith.  Because of her deep understanding of our faith - an understanding born, in part, of suffering - and because of her great love for Jesus Christ and His Church, she also has a heart full of compassion.  Believe me when I tell you that - as you may already know - these are rare gifts indeed, even (or perhaps especially) in orthodox Catholic circles.  I feel as if her friendship itself is a very generous gift.  And she is the one who introduced my husband and me to little Jude, who is in a Chinese orphanage awaiting adoption (another selfless gift on her part, and in which process we are currently waiting for fingerprint clearance from Homeland Security).  I have asked Mrs. C to be his godmother.

She and her husband flew to Texas yesterday, where they are awaiting the birth of their daughter.  Please pray with me that all will go well for them.  She is going to be an incredible mother.

"There shall be no difference between them and the rest"

Happy Walt Whitman's birthday.

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

(-- excerpt from Song of Myself)

"You that shall cross from shore to shore years hence . . . "

I'm still a member of the union that represents adjunct teachers at the university where I taught and received my doctorate, and I still get the union paper.  It came in the mail yesterday, and featured an article on urban studies, an interdisciplinary field that uses the the suchess of the city itself to teach various subjects.  I loved reading about an English professor who teaches a course called "Literature of the City" (wouldn't you love to take that course?) and leads her students on a foot journey across the Brooklyn Bridge when the class reads "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry."  She said about one such outing:  "The students felt connected to [Whitman] through crossing this water. . . They felt like they were walking in his footsteps.  They were ecstatic and smiling from ear to ear."

The park at Fulton Ferry Landing in Brooklyn has a series of railings inscribed with the text of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry."  The professor described her students' reaction to seeing Whitman's words made public and worked into the architecture of the place where the ferries used to arrive and set out:  "Students were incredibly moved by seeing his words -- words they had read -- there on a wall . . . they ran their hands along the words as if they were somehow Whitman's own imprint, evidence of his having been there."

I thought this was incredibly moving, too.  I will be in Brooklyn this weekend for a family gathering, and may try to make it over to the Fulton Ferry Landing park.

"I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud"

It's nearly time for the annual interior orgy of nostalgia that autumn brings, and there is no better way, to my mind, to start it off than with excerpts from one of the greatest poems in the English language, "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry" by Walt Whitman, a poem which, by projecting the author's voice into the future from beyond the grave, has the groundwork for nostalgia inlaid in its very structure.  

This time of year, too, I always think of the years I spent in Brooklyn, because the maritime light refracted through the oxidizing leaves in the neighborhoods there is so very beautiful.

1

Flood-tide below me! I watch you face to face;   
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.   
   
Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you
          are to me!   
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home,
          are more curious to me than you suppose;   
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me,
          and more in my meditations, than you might suppose. 

. . . . 

3 

I too many and many a time cross'd the river, the sun half an hour high;   
I watched the Twelfth-month sea-gulls—I saw them high in the air,
          floating with motionless wings, oscillating their bodies,   
I saw how the glistening yellow lit up parts of their bodies, and left the rest
          in strong shadow,
I saw the slow-wheeling circles, and the gradual edging toward the south.   
   
I too saw the reflection of the summer sky in the water,   
Had my eyes dazzled by the shimmering track of beams,   
Look'd at the fine centrifugal spokes of light around the shape of my head
          in the sun-lit water,   
Look'd on the haze on the hills southward and southwestward,
Look'd on the vapor as it flew in fleeces tinged with violet,   
Look'd toward the lower bay to notice the arriving ships,   
Saw their approach, saw aboard those that were near me,   
Saw the white sails of schooners and sloops—saw the ships at anchor,   
The sailors at work in the rigging, or out astride the spars,
The round masts, the swinging motion of the hulls, the slender serpentine
          pennants,   
The large and small steamers in motion, the pilots in their pilot-houses,   
The white wake left by the passage, the quick tremulous whirl of the wheels,   
The flags of all nations, the falling of them at sun-set,   
The scallop-edged waves in the twilight, the ladled cups, the frolicsome crests
          and glistening,
The stretch afar growing dimmer and dimmer, the gray walls of the granite
          store-houses by the docks,   
On the river the shadowy group, the big steam-tug closely flank'd on each
          side by the barges—the hay-boat, the belated lighter,   
On the neighboring shore, the fires from the foundry chimneys burning high
          and glaringly into the night,   
Casting their flicker of black, contrasted with wild red and yellow light, over
          the tops of houses, and down into the clefts of streets.   
   

4

These, and all else, were to me the same as they are to you;
I project myself a moment to tell you—also I return.   
   
I loved well those cities;   
I loved well the stately and rapid river;   
The men and women I saw were all near to me;   
Others the same—others who look back on me, because I look'd
          forward to them;
(The time will come, though I stop here to-day and to-night.)   
   

5

What is it, then, between us?   
What is the count of the scores or hundreds of years between us?   
   
Whatever it is, it avails not—distance avails not, and place avails not.   
   

6

I too lived—Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;
I too walk'd the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters
          around it;   
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,   
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,   
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.   
   
I too had been struck from the float forever held in solution;
I too had receiv'd identity by my Body;   
That I was, I knew was of my body—and what I should be,
          I knew I should be of my body.   

   
7

It is not upon you alone the dark patches fall,   
The dark threw patches down upon me also;   
The best I had done seem'd to me blank and suspicious;
My great thoughts, as I supposed them, were they not in reality meagre?
          would not people laugh at me?   
   
It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;   
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;   
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,   
Blabb'd, blush'd, resented, lied, stole, grudg'd,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,   
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;   
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,   
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,   
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.
   
But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!   
I was call'd by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men
          as they saw me approaching or passing,   
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh
          against me as I sat,   
Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never
          told them a word,   
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play'd the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,   
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,   
Or as small as we like, or both great and small. . . .   
 

For an online critical edition of "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry," go here. 

"I am with you,/and know how it is."

This is the meal equally set, this the meat for natural hunger,
It is for the wicked just the same as the righteous, I make
appointments with all,
I will not have a single person slighted or left away,
The kept-woman, sponger, thief, are hereby invited,
The heavy-lipp'd slave is invited, the venerealee is invited;
There shall be no difference between them and the rest.

Happy birthday, Walt Whitman.

Blogging Brooklyn Ferry

My time in New York City can be described as a journey, geographically if not literally, from the bottom to the top. My first home here was in Flatbush, Brooklyn, in a predominantly Carribean neighborhood (I was very young, and young men used to chivalrously walk me home from the subway at night upon catching sight of me, usually after saying something along the lines of "Miss? What are you doing here?"). I gradually moved north from there, making stops in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn; the Lower East Side; the Upper East Side; Manhattan Valley, as it was then called (I believe it's now being remarketed as "SoHa," South of Harlem, but it remains the scariest neighborhood I've ever lived in); a long sojourn in Washington Heights; an Italian neighborhood in the eastern Bronx, and, finally, the furthest point geographically north you can stand and still be within city limits. (I'm going to try to blog a little about my neighborhood before I leave it for good; I've always liked the outskirts of large cities, which seem to have their own cultures and characters, usually more like those of small provincial towns than the cities of which they're technically a part).

Yesterday I went to my sister's baby shower, which took place as far geographically south as you can stand and still be in New York City, in a little waterfront neighborhood at the end of Brooklyn called Gerritsen Beach. It's more than thirty miles away from my home, and it took more than two hours to get there by subway and bus. But the ride included the memorable Manhattan Bridge crossing; two of the train lines that serve the most marginal areas of the city actually cross the Manhattan Bridge overpass (above, seen from the Brooklyn side), and it's a thrilling sight to see the East River, Brooklyn Heights, the Brooklyn and Williamsburg Bridges, and the opening of New York Harbor in the setting sun from that high vantage. This is the way I used to go from my very first Brooklyn apartment (served, as it happened, by one of those marginal train lines), and I was flooded with memories of that long-ago time, especially of the glimpse of women at work at their sewing machines in small-time Chinatown sweatshops that I would catch after the train crossed the river, before it headed underground. Though the Brooklyn ferry is long gone, I was reminded of Walt Whitman's stirring words:

FLOOD-TIDE below me! I watch you face to face;
Clouds of the west! sun there half an hour high! I see you also face to face.

Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me!
On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose;
And you that shall cross from shore to shore years hence, are more to me, and more in my meditations, than you might suppose.

. . . . It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself—also I return—I am with you, and know how it is.

. . . . I too lived — Brooklyn, of ample hills, was mine;
I too walk’d the streets of Manhattan Island, and bathed in the waters around it;
I too felt the curious abrupt questionings stir within me,
In the day, among crowds of people, sometimes they came upon me,
In my walks home late at night, or as I lay in my bed, they came upon me.

. . . . It is not you alone who know what it is to be evil;
I am he who knew what it was to be evil;
I too knitted the old knot of contrariety,
Blabb’d, blush’d, resented, lied, stole, grudg’d,
Had guile, anger, lust, hot wishes I dared not speak,
Was wayward, vain, greedy, shallow, sly, cowardly, malignant;
The wolf, the snake, the hog, not wanting in me,
The cheating look, the frivolous word, the adulterous wish, not wanting,
Refusals, hates, postponements, meanness, laziness, none of these wanting.

But I was Manhattanese, friendly and proud!
I was call’d by my nighest name by clear loud voices of young men as they saw me approaching or passing,
Felt their arms on my neck as I stood, or the negligent leaning of their flesh against me as I sat,
Saw many I loved in the street, or ferry-boat, or public assembly, yet never told them a word,
Lived the same life with the rest, the same old laughing, gnawing, sleeping,
Play’d the part that still looks back on the actor or actress,
The same old role, the role that is what we make it, as great as we like,
Or as small as we like, or both great and small. . .

Year that Trembled and Reel'd beneath Me

I’m giving my writing class for musicians the assignment of writing program notes for George Crumb’s song cycle Apparition. I found a website from which they can download and listen to the entire piece, and I am putting one of my copies of the score on reserve (I bought two when I performed the piece several years ago, one for me and one for my pianist), along with an anthology of Walt Whitman’s complete poems that I’ve had for many years (the text of Apparition is taken from Whitman’s great lament on the death of Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d”). I just had a very odd sensation as I wrote my name on the inside cover of this volume, as if I’d seen a doppelganger.

The book, while I’m not sure if it was a gift from my former husband M., is one that I very much associate with the years I spent with him. I was deeply enamored of Whitman’s verses in those days, and used to read them as if they were sacred texts. M. did not share my love of the poet he called Uncle Waltie, but he indulged me. One night towards the end of our marriage, I remarked as we were getting ready for bed that I missed Whitman; I suppose I hadn’t leafed through "Leaves of Grass" for a few weeks. M. got out of bed and brought me the book, and, instead of being grateful, I was angry with him. I’m not sure exactly why; I suppose I was upset that he didn’t understand that I wanted to safeguard and savor my sense of longing, rather than have it fulfilled, and I concluded from this that he would never really see or understand who I was.

I’m chagrined now by my overweening pride and self-importance then, not to mention my utter foolishness. I still pray that M. will be able to forgive me for my thoughtless, careless, selfish unkindness to him (not only in that incident). I felt just now that I was being disloyal to him and to that time by writing my new, married name on the flyleaf of that old book.