Thursday, May 30, 2024

Two Upcoming Events Celebrating Bergen County History

The Lustron Home in Closter

1. Tour a Porcelain-Enameled Steel Lustron Home in Closter, June 2

This event posted on Craigslist looks interesting enough on its own:
"Why did the NY Times call Haworth a "concrete town" in 1907? Learn the answer on a historical house tour sponsored by the Friends of the Haworth Library, Sunday, June 2, 1-5 PM...featuring 6 of Haworth's early "concrete houses, PLUS the all-metal Lustron house in Closter."
Wait. "The all-metal Lustron house in Closter"?
I couldn't wait. So I ventured to Closter on a recent Saturday, and caretaker Mike Pisano was kind enough to give me a tour and let me take these photos.
You can read all about the history of the Lustron home at this Closter Historic Preservation Commission page, so I'll let these images speak for themselves. The house, located at 421 Durie Ave., has a Bergen County Historical Society marker out front that states:
"To ease post WWII housing shortages, the Lustron Corp. of Ohio made a unique house of all pre-fabricated steel parts on an assembly line basis and shipped them directly to owners' lots. Harold Hess purchased a Westchester Deluxe model with attached garage from an NJ dealer and assembled it on this site in 1950. All walls, roof and chimney are porcelain-enameled steel panels. Between 1948 and 1950, Lustron made 2,498 homes."
Only nine such houses survive throughout New Jersey.
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2. Honoring Jack Antonoff and Ruth Beiner in New Milford, June 7

This Facebook post from the New Milford Historic Preservation Commission is promoting its June 7 Hall of Fame dinner at the local/historic/nostalgic Athletic Club.

Of particular interest, the post references an eclectic mix of famous people who at one time or another lived in New Milford (aka, "The Birthplace of Bergen County").

This local Hall of Fame includes The Fontane Sisters (who often sang with Perry Como); Joe Regalbuto (the actor who portrayed Frank Fontana on "Murphy Brown"); two-time Tony Award nominee Rob McClure; football star and actor Ed Marinaro; and Jack Antonoff, the Grammy winning producer who has worked with Taylor Swift, Lana Del Rey, Lorde, and Bruce Springsteen.

While Jack can't attend the June 7 dinner because he's on tour, this event is an opportunity to honor some current great (and locally famous) contributors to the community, such as Ruth Beiner, a teacher at New Milford High School who has produced its spring musical for two decades.

The deadline for reserving tickets is end-of-day tomorrow, Friday, May 31. One interesting give-away will be "New Jersey Go Fish!" -- a card game designed by Alex Flannery in partnership with Jersey Collective. To find out more about the imagery chosen for the cards, visit https://www.jerseycollective.org/gofish

Meanwhile, I hear there's a bowling alley and wood-paneled bar at the unassuming-on-the-outside Athletic Club on Boulevard, so you know where I'll be on the 7th!


Tuesday, May 14, 2024

A Bouquet of Haikus in April in New Jersey

This post is all about poets, organizations, and events in New Jersey... all who inspired me to write a poem a day during Poetry Month in April.

I even read one poem -- a mashup of a dozen haikus -- at two open mics. One reading was virtual, thanks to Project Write Now's Friday Zoom, and the other was in real life at the mic pictured here, thanks to poet Toney Jackson.

Toney hosts warm, welcoming poetry readings monthly at the Puffin Cultural Forum in Teaneck. I recommend attending the next one: Friday, May 31, at 7 p.m. (details at the link).

I also enjoyed some pro-level poets reading from their work at the Poetry Month event hosted by Talena Lachelle Queen in late April at The Paterson Museum. Talena is Paterson's poet laureate, and pictured below is Teaneck's poet laureate, Scott Pleasants, performing one of his works, with Jersey City's former poet laureate, Rashad Wright, interpreting his words in the wings.

All the poets were wonderful, including Felicia Sherelle, who often helps Talena in running programs and events for the great Paterson-based Word Seed Inc. organization.

Thanks to their efforts... and many more throughout the state... poetry is alive and well in New Jersey, every month of the year.


A Dozen Haikus for Poetry Month in April 2024


1. Dedication


Hi, Toney Jackson.

Thank you, I feel welcome here.

I feel inspired.


2. NYC Subway Haiku


My hands slip inside

Her orange bomber jacket.

Ghosts on the A Train.


3. Attending a Poetry Festival


Lost in Dobbs Ferry,

where Westchester poets hide.

I seek to destroy.


4. Eclipse Haiku


Please remember us

in 2079.

We were once like you


5. I’d Trip at the End of the Universe


Fall into the void,

Bounce from the edge of a star,

Break eternal love.


6. Haiku to My Wife


I drink beer alone.

I only drink wine with you.

I like wine better.


7. Along the New Jersey Turnpike


Wood trellis crosses

Fill barren raspberry fields.

Golgotha in Spring.


8. Haiku Written at Citi Field


The Mets in April,

warming my heart in the cold.

Unlike October.


9-11. Love Is, A Haiku Trilogy


Love is a zombie.

A zombie with a warm heart.

Pulsing. Cheating death.


Love is regretful.

Sorrow that ages like wine.

Full of scorpions.


Love is not jealous.

Love is patient. Love is kind.

Claims Corinthians.


12. Goodbye


Writer’s block is real. 

My ordinariness, revealed. 

This is not a poem.


Sunday, April 7, 2024

The Return of Poetry Month: Lost in Westchester

Yesterday, at the Tarrytown Reservoir

April is, of course, Poetry Month -- a fact that should strike fear and wonder into the hearts of anyone reading this blog.

I am, of course, once again, following a random poetry prompt to write a poem each day in April 2024. Some of the poems will undoubtedly wind up here because I consider myself in the Prehistoric Man phase of my poetic path. My MacBook Air provides durable pigments, and this blog provides the walls of a cave that will go undiscovered for melleniums.

Yesterday, I sought inspiration at the Westchester Poetry Festival. My ticket claimed the festival would be held  at the Hudson Valley Writers Center at Philipse Manor Station in Sleepy Hollow. Which turned out to be deserted when I arrived. I didn't take this as a metaphor. I didn't take this as a practical joke or as a sign I was unwanted. No, I persisted.

A flyer at the haunted train station informed me that the festival was instead being held in Dobbs Ferry, a mere 6 miles away as the foreboding crow flies, but a 25-minute odyssey amid winding roads and long stop lights in weekend Westchester traffic.

I eventually arrived there. There, being The Masters School, a complex of buildings surrounding a crowded playing field, which was absurdly trafficked and crowded despite seemingly no athletic event in progress. Then again, perhaps it was track and field.

Still, I persisted. I found the festival, which looked like this from above:


I enjoyed myself There. I ate free cookies and brownies. The poets informed, provoked, and inspired me. Arriving back home, I prompted myself to create my own "writing prompt" poem. This:

A Dozen Poetry Prompts Inspired by a Visit to the Westchester Poetry Festival

 

1.        The Tony Soprano Rest Area on the New Jersey Parkway is under constant renovation. Is there a poem you are constantly revising? Why, and when do you think it will be finished?

2.        Consider the beauty of the bird-of-prey wingspan of the Tappan Zee Bridge. What work of architecture inspires you? Animate or personify it.

3.        Imagine you are lost in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Are you anxious, frustrated, reminded of a recurring nightmare? Write about your emotions.

4.        While driving and still lost, you approach a scenic waterfall and reservoir in Tarrytown. Do you pull over to admire it, perhaps take a photo? Why or why not?

5.        The site the festival isn’t clearly marked amid a complex of school buildings. You chance to see an old man in a skull cap with an oversized scarf draped around his shoulders walk out of one building, so you decide to enter where he exited. Describe someone you would suspect is leaving a poetry festival.

6.        The festival’s location is indeed a seemingly abandoned mansion. Write about a place or a person you think has been abandoned. What meaning does this place or person hold for you?

7.        Arrive at intermission. The MC advises that student poets have already read their works and the “Capital P” poets will soon read from their books, for sale at the table near the refreshments. Write about the difference between a poet and a Poet, or about an intermission in your life.

8.        Louise Gluck wrote a promotional blurb for one Poet’s book. What poet or Poet, living or dead, would you want to review your work? What do you hope he or she would write?

9.        Imagine that you are a Poet who teaches literature. Write a poem that weaves in lines or images from Shakespeare’s “King Lear” or Checkhov’s “Gooseberries.” Alternately, write a poem about Donald Trump without mentioning “Donald Trump.”

10.  One Poet reads a ghazal poem, (pronounced “ghuzzle” although you hear “huzzle”). You are meant to hear a repeating rhyme or phrase at the end of each of at least five couplets of the same length. Write a ghazal about love, human or divine.

11.  One Poet didn’t show up. Write about someone who didn’t show up for you. What was the cost to you, to them?

12.  One Poet was inspired by this fortune cookie: “We are made to persist. That is how we know who we are.” Open a fortune cookie. Write a poem.

 

First thing this morning, on the Seventh Day of Poetry Month, I received this prompt in email from Another Poet (say hi to Dimitri):


I promptly scratched this into the wall of my virtual cave:

Lost in Dobbs Ferry,

where Westchester poets hide.

I seek to destroy.


Tuesday, March 19, 2024

3 Poems, With Thanks to Dimitri Reyes


I love following prompts for inspiration to write poems. A poet I follow, Dimitri Reyes, offers a prompt every Sunday on Patreon, and the virtual me recently attended one of his (highly recommended) Saturday workshops.

"Write a poem about a bird," Dimitri said one recent Sunday, which prompted a haiku about the keepsake pictured above. It serves as a memento of my late uncle, a priest. The cardinal is a bird of remembrance, a sign that those who have passed are with us in spirit.

---------


Haiku in My Living Room


Pray to my uncle,
Now a stained-glass cardinal.
Church, a bamboo cage.

---------

"Write about a favorite TV show," Dimitri suggested on another Sunday. So I flew back in time to write about a favorite episode, "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," from the first "Star Trek" series, a guilty Thursday night pleasure for Dad and me when I was young.

---------

Tomorrow Is Yesterday


It’s a Thursday night in March 2024,
And I have conjured my father in this poem.

Dad is a thousand miles away from me
In the same TV room in New Jersey.

He has boldly returned from the dead,
And we are watching “Star Trek” together.

Dad loves to pretend he’s Captain Kirk.
I love to pretend Captain Kirk is my Dad.

Suddenly, on the fluorescent screen before us,
Multicolored lights begin to flash. Sirens sound.

Dad holds tight to the arms of his chair,
Rocking side to side in an exaggerated motion.

The crew of the Starship Enterprise surrounds us.
We slingshot around the sun and land back in our TV room.

It’s a Thursday night in January 1967,
The day 2 feet of snow fell in Chicago.

My father sits in his easy chair, 57 years ago,
775 miles away from the storm.

He is still a thousand miles away
From the boy nestled on the room’s orange couch.

I join my former self there. I place a protective arm
That envelops my small body. I whisper in my ear.

“It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,”
I say over and over again.

Soon, a tractor beam surrounds me.
Its light absorbs me.

My grasp on myself dissolves,
As credits begin to roll.

An otherworldly vessel -- this poem --
Takes me home, this image implanted in my brain:

Dad, like Captain Kirk, at the conn,
Exploring strange new worlds,

Changing my future forever.

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During Dimitri's Saturday workshop, we talked about our weaknesses as writers. I thought about how -- with the ability to try anything, accomplish anything, create or destroy anything -- I so often fall short of my ambitions. "On a blank page, I can do anything," I often think, with a boldness that rarely surfaces in my work. So, when prompted, I became a hollow men in 11 lines, and even ended the poem, with apologies to T.S. Eliot, with a whimper.

---------

About Me


Behold the hollow man.
Behold the writer without a soul.
Behold my face,

The lines that formed and hardened
When my brow furrowed in suppression,
When I pursed my lips and kept silent.

Hear the poems I never wrote.
Imagine images I dared not share.
Watch the ghost of me dissolve.

As I disappear,
without a whimper.


Wednesday, February 21, 2024

Ruthlessly Pruning My First Sonnet


One interesting assignment in a recent poetry class was to take a poem I've written before and pare it down by focusing on the economy of language.

I'm all for economy of language. As a journalist and editor in my past life, I let hardly any adjective or adverb survive.

But life has changed. At recent readings, I've been captivated by the performance aspect of poetry, less so with classical poetic form.

So I took this opportunity to take the first sonnet I ever wrote... for a girl... in college... when I thought I was so smart... and ruthlessly prune it to reflect my current life... for anyone who might care... right here... when I simply crave relevance and connection.

This is...

Sonnet 1

There's something in the air, or so they say. 

It's certainly not magic or the heat. 

It's just the moon, white-full and young -- the way, 

like water, people splash and spill beneath. 

 

And you and I remind me of the tides. 

We hate and love; we rise and fall. It scares 

me that I don't know why or that I find 

no fault in us, just something in the air. 

 

So still above us rests the moon, content 

and seemingly unmoved. It doesn't hate 

or love; it doesn't care -- without relent, 

without a passing judgment of our fate. 

 

The moonlight falls like smoke between the mist. 

What fools we are compared to such as this. 


---------

And this is...

Sonnet Unbound

You and I are tides 

under a faithless light. 

 

We rise and fall, 

splash and spill. 

 

Helpless, 

in the mist. 

 

Reckless, 

in our love and hate. 

 

The moon, 

relentless and immutable, 

 

casts indifferent shadows 

on our foolish fate.