by Vincent Katz
ALSO BY VINCENT KATZ
POETRY
Fantastic Caryatids (with Anne Waldman)
Southness
Swimming Home
One-Liners
Judge (with art by Wayne Gonzales)
Rapid Departures (with art by Mario Cafiero)
Understanding Objects
Pearl (with art by Tabboo!)
Boulevard Transportation (with photographs by Rudy Burckhardt)
New York Hello! (with photographs by Rudy Burckhardt)
Cabal of Zealots
Rooms
ARTIST’S BOOKS/COLLABORATIONS
Katz Katz (with drawings by Alex Katz)
4 × 5 (with art by Polly Apfelbaum, Leda Catunda, Philippe Mayaux, Nabil Nahas, and Juan Uslé)
Swimming Home (with woodcuts by Alex Katz)
The Dive (with etchings by Alex Katz)
Alcuni Telefonini (with watercolors by Francesco Clemente)
Berlin (with woodcuts by Matthias Mansen)
Park, Bari, Ostia (monotypes by Francesco Clemente and Vincent Katz)
Terra Fragile (with art by Francesco Clemente)
Voyages/Hyde Park Boulevard, (in collaboration with James Brown)
Smile Again (with art by Alex Katz)
A Tremor in the Morning (with linocuts by Alex Katz)
AS EDITOR
Readings in Contemporary Poetry: An Anthology
Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art, with essays by Martin Brody, Robert Creeley, Vincent Katz, and Kevin Power
THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2020 by Vincent Katz
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Penguin Random House Canada Limited, Toronto.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Katz, Vincent, [date] author.
Title: Broadway for Paul : poems / Vincent Katz.
Description: First edition. | New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2020. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2019022474 (print) | LCCN 2019022475 (ebook) | ISBN 9780525656579 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780525656586 (ebook)
Classification: LCC PS3561.A776 A6 2020 (print) | LCC PS3561.A776 (ebook) | DDC 811/.54—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022474
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019022475
Ebook ISBN 9780525656586
Cover photograph © Beat Streuli
Cover design by Janet Hansen
v5.4
ep
to Vivien
Contents
Cover
Also by Vincent Katz
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
1
Between the Griffon and Met Life
This Beautiful Bubble
7 a.m. Poem
Seasons
City Tone
Morning, or Evening?
A Song Beyond
Flows
River
Metro-North
Ivanka Skirting
Riverside
Propensities
A Glass
Walking
June
I Miss Bern Nix
Broadway for Paul
Avenue
Shadow Avenue
Times Square, 2017
Lincoln Plaza
Maine Hours & Days
Autumn Days & Hours
2
The Cliff
Four Notes
Family
Smoke
Sitting
Four Women
Six Figures, Fire
Yellow Towel
Encounter
Calligraphy at the Beach
Looking at the Sea
Arabesque
Beginning of the Picnic
Five Notes
Conversation by the Sea
Morning
Evening, Clouds, Fire
Woman in Green
Moon and Fire
3
Lights
Hotel Empire
Alone
The Man Who Left
August 2018
Late August
Island
A Longing for Bugs
September Poem
Nothing Is Lost
A Quiet Zone
Two Dreams
A Marvelous Sky
Café with Bryan Ferry
Cavalleria Rusticana
Young in the Hamptons
A City Marriage
Acknowledgments
Notes
A Note About the Author
1
BETWEEN THE GRIFFON AND MET LIFE
for Vivien
I am totally enamored of every person passing in this unseasonably warm mid-March evening near 39th and Park
The young women, of course, with their lives in front of them, and the young men too, just standing here as I am, checking it out, hanging out, talking
But everyone here, every age, every type, is beautiful, the moment, somehow, the weather, has made them all real and for this moment, before it turns to night, they’re all fantastic
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
And the two guys who were here a moment ago, paused, have moved on, and the light is deepening, every moment or so, actually falling into a deeper stupor, which is night
But if I look south I still see the pink flush of desire there at the bottom, the southness of all our lives, and it’s okay that it’s darkening here, people accept it as they concoct plans for tonight, Thursday
Soon I’ll have to go too, lose this spot, this moment, but some we’ve met and some experience we had somewhere else is becoming ever more important
THIS BEAUTIFUL BUBBLE
Everyone takes the subway, and you can look up,
And look at all the people, and each one is different,
And they look different, and each one has a story, and suddenly,
You are awake and want to know each story, only you can’t,
Don’t have time, they don’t, don’t want to maybe.
But some you do, you glean, you approximate yourself to something of them,
Like the delicate, chestnut-skinned woman who, leaning,
Listened to the announcer before getting in, and, confused, because the 2 was called a 5,
Asked advice, and three people responded,
Explaining in their different ways, some of them silent,
Eyes met with approval, warmth only subway-known,
Among equals, fellow travelers, denizens;
She sat and smiled, and looking at an infant,
Smiled more, her hair was a flag of self-joy too,
She was real, at ease among people.
The rule is: to speak.
Make contact, and you will find more people than you thought.
But back to our bubble. It is everywhere around us.
Everywhere, walking in the city, you are seeing people,
All different kinds, shapes, sizes, the best education
You can give a child is to bring them up inside this
Bubble. I complain, but I’ll never leave.
I feed off the looks, the stories, the hungering here.
I’m aware, we’re all aware, what goes on outside the bubble.
We’re not stupid. We just thought people outside the bubble wanted the same thing:
To live as variously as possible.
Or, put another way: I am the least difficult of men.
All I want is boundless love.
It took us sixty years or so to understand
What the word “boundless” meant.
And now we know.
7 A.M. POEM
They carry their lunches in paper or plastic bags
They are rushing but composed
They don’t speak much
They’re quiet this morning, maybe preoccupied with big violent forces moving in the capital
They have work to do and they are trying to do it
Families to feed and teach or else
Just moving ahead with life, trying to be someplace better
A little further on ahead
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
SEASONS
I used to love the seasons
Now I try to find one in a day
Sometimes all four, and others
But I still revel in fall wind causing me
To zip my jacket in early February
CITY TONE
People across the way are getting work done
Cluttered offices, boxes in windows, sill loaded
On the other side, direct view down hallway
Lined with photos, bricks in reflection, our gargoyle
This city’s primary tone is ambiguity
A building here, a spire there, nothing connected
February 10, 2017
Washington DC
MORNING, OR EVENING?
Everywhere, right now, parents are making breakfast,
Older people waking up alone, another day
Walking down platform, seeing the flood of faces coming into the city,
One is taken, not by a Heinrich Böllian sense of dull sameness,
But rather that this is an epochal moment
We all share, we are all somehow in this together.
Repeated rhythms, every Thursday, placing coins or a bill or two
Into the open valise of the trumpeter always there—
Grand Central he plays, and the lineage, where that music flows from,
Where it is going, an undeniable story in our midst,
Woven into our fabric, that none, in their heart of hearts, can deny.
Important to be in one’s own head, not subject to advertising or even others’ art.
Leaving tracks covered in snow, tracks in snow, rock imposing wall,
Cross the river, gain speed, struts protect the building from falling down.
Clouds travel faster than houses, farther back, we pass towns,
Skirt highways, fly through wetlands,
Faster than speed, we are bringing information, ways of seeing:
Transmit focus to fingers on controls,
So blighted, threatened, scared as little children, terrified of own ignorance.
This is a chapter; it will end,
And there will be another chapter, and that will end, and so on,
Until we come to the end of the book, and that’s that.
But the thing is, what did your book add up to, what did it say?
The Greeks believed your character determines your fate.
You can veer here and there, but ultimately something inside you, the way you are,
Has already determined the kinds of choices you will make.
A SONG BEYOND
for Audrey
How do you measure success?
There were two things I asked people.
She traveled, wrote songs, and a clacking was heard in trees.
A fox appeared in a field, waited, sat, seemed to want caress.
The trees’ black trunks stood, their branches intricate veining.
The sky went from dark blue to light cream,
A star floated in its ether.
The field grew darker, less hospitable to the human.
Most people never go anywhere.
By “go anywhere” I don’t mean a trip to Europe or Asia.
I mean expand beyond their bounds.
FLOWS
I saw a couple embrace passionately on the corner
An old woman holding a young woman’s hand
A woman escorting two toddlers
A blast of sun in warm February almost March
Against black and grey granite façade
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
METRO-NORTH
Stratford’s arched bridge in haze
Bridgeport big business and sea
Empty lots and highways still courts
Arenas smoke ruined fabrication
Fairfield Metro giant facility shops
Fairfield cuteness is dilemma
Greenwich blonde brunette a modern
Sculpture and blasted rock
Stamford many get off a river
Modern dullness distracted by personal life
Church spire handles the sky
Noroton Heights Darien cute little nervousness
Westport light flickers on tree vines
A river sailboat then shrubs
Fairfield glory tree and split rail
Bridgeport massive columns gutted field
Iglesia Cristiana Pescadores de Hombres
Giant Machiavellian Factory
Convolute intricate destruction
Church darkly subdues neighboring roomers
Stratford graffiti and prone rusted culverts
Ancient bridge abandoned piles
Milford ancient buried dead
West Haven tall grass and cranes
West Haven golden arch elevated
Elevated highway low homes
Pockets of inlets
Milford’s grave scrub bridge
Pass over highway highway pass over Bridgeport
Tug barge and ferry defrocked church
Green’s Farms highways electrical mains yard
Ocean wetlands Westport the gates to town
Pelham Bay manor homes
Exte
nsive cemeteries
Rain-soaked ball courts
Fairfield Metro a large area
A blank wall some parts painted white
An arch huge wood chunks stained
Metal flap: rain protection? on bridge
Derelict buildings being demolished
Milford delapidated shacks with skylights
West Haven dirty snow mounds still line parking lot
New Haven rainy platform train half in shed
Array of tracks large-gauge dark gravel
Milford a nice little street and marina
Southport a swan on an inlet
Green’s Farms wetlands yellow swamp grass leading out
New Haven tower as in Christ Church painting
Sculls surprisingly on the Westport
This station is South Norwalk
The next station is Rowayton
It is Spring, the trees are in leaf
Flowers lend a gentleness
To stocky warehouses
Barracks-like storage units
Giant, jagged rocks surge
The earth is full of life
The sun almost too bright in
Darien’s cloud-fostered haze
Riverside’s delicate apples
Long-view river mouth
Docks and decks like in Maine