Broadway for Paul: Poems

by Vincent Katz

Overview

Friendship, love, and the potential energy of change animate these poems of walking through New York City.

"I love the vibrant cinematic hunger of this book, its urbanity, yours and mine too.” —Eileen Myles
 
Broadway, the famous artery, both off the grid and definitive of Manhattan as it cuts its way downtown, is a metaphor for Katz's path through these poems.
 
From Lincoln Plaza on the Upper West Side to the African Burial Ground and the courthouses downtown, Katz mines his native city for the deep humanity that undergirds its streets. His title, with its implication that one could give something as large and undefinable as Broadway to a single person, courts an impossibility that generates the possibility of friendship, as well as the largesse Katz wants to find in our civic discourse. In poems such as "Ivanka Skirting" and "This Beautiful Bubble" we encounter his reckoning with a divisive culture that can, he suggests, be healed through our daily acts—through a kind of alert graciousness that also defines his poetry.
 
In this moving collection, we enter Katz's world, both public and private, and experience poetry as a way of seeing that can change hearts and minds.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781524711535
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	07/12/2022
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.49(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.43(d)

About the Author

VINCENT KATZ is the author of the poetry collections Southness (2016) and Swimming Home (2015) and of the book of translations, The Complete Elegies of Sextus Propertius (2004), which won a National Translation Award from the American Literary Translators Association. He is the editor of Black Mountain College: Experiment in Art (2002), and his writing on contemporary art and poetry has appeared in publications such as Apollo, Art in America, ARTnews, The Brooklyn Rail, and The Poetry Project Newsletter. As curator of the "Readings in Contemporary Poetry" series at Dia: Chelsea, Katz also edited the anthology Readings in Contemporary Poetry (Dia Art Foundation, 2017). He lives in New York City.

Read an Excerpt

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
Extensive 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

Table of Contents

1

Between the Griffon and Met Life 3

This Beautiful Bubble 5

7 a.m. Poem 7

Seasons 8

City Tone 9

Morning, or Evening? 10

A Song Beyond 12

Flows 13

River 14

Metro-North 15

Ivanka Skirting 18

Riverside 20

Propensities 21

A Glass 22

Walking 23

June 24

I Miss Bern Nix 25

Broadway for Paul 28

Avenue 30

Shadow Avenue 31

Times Square, 2017 32

Lincoln Plaza 33

Maine Hours & Days 38

Autumn Days & Hours 47

2

The Cliff 59

Four Notes 60

Family 61

Smoke 62

Sitting 63

Four Women 64

Six Figures, Fire 65

Yellow Towel 66

Encounter 67

Calligraphy at the Beach 68

Looking at the Sea 69

Arabesque 70

Beginning of the Picnic 71

Five Notes 72

Conversation by the Sea 73

Morning 74

Evening, Clouds, Fire 75

Woman in Green 76

Moon and Fire 77

3

Lights 81

Hotel Empire 82

Alone 83

The Man Who Left 84

August 2018 93

Late August 96

Island 97

A Longing for Bugs 98

September Poem 99

Nothing Is Lost 100

A Quiet Zone 101

Two Dreams 102

A Marvelous Sky 103

Café with Bryan Ferry 104

Cavalleria Rusticana 106

Young in the Hamptons 107

A City Marriage 109

Acknowledgments 123

Notes 125

Editorial Reviews

A mature and accomplished collection . . . A voice in the grand tradition of New York poetry, from Walt Whitman to Frank O’Hara, engaging in ‘equable’ conversation (Whitman’s term) with the city’s people and places . . . Poetic comradeship is at the heart of one of Katz’s tours-de-force in the collection, ‘Lincoln Plaza,’ where optimism emerges as an essential ingredient for life . . . [Pushes] the reader to often arresting conclusions, encompassing ever-growing human and spatial relationships.” —Paul Vangelisti, Los Angeles Review of Books

“Often matter-of-fact in tone, stripped of rococo embellishment or flowery pretense, these poem-objects by poet, art writer and translator Vincent Katz stand as testimony to keen observance and thoughtful assessment . . . [Katz] denotes the connective tissue we share not only with the seen but the experienced as well.” —Greg Masters, Sensitive Skin

“The poet shows his hometown from many different vantage points—always with a sense of love and subtle astonishment . . . Katz pushes one mood against another and turns abruptly from shadow to light . . . [Broadway for Paul] is like a good conversation, in which you listen with care to the possibilities language affords.” —Neeli Cherkovski, periodicities

“A wedding bouquet is tossed and we can’t see who the recipient is, yet the poems you read here are permissive, grateful, it’s the detail itself exploring, the foot on the edge of the river, the eye too, the man walking, standing, lyric love for manyness, and “suddenly I have x-ray vision, as Rudy said” and Vincent has history, anyone, everyone’s view, and a thirst for justice, public love and blue parks. I love the vibrant cinematic hunger of this book, its urbanity, yours and mine too.” —Eileen Myles
 
“We need this book. At a time when the world’s cultures seem to be closing up on themselves, Vincent Katz emphasizes the pleasure of sharing spaces, ideas, and art. His vision is generous and panoramic, with an eye toward detail and the abstract compositional beauty of crowds in motion and at rest, his style a combination of classical elegance and casual grace. But what makes these poems especially powerful is their democratic ethic. This is a virtuoso collection—and we’re all part of it.” —Elaine Equi

“Celebrates walking down the streets of Manhattan, keenly aware of what Hart Crane called ‘the veins of eternity flowing through the crowds around us’ . . . all the while maintaining an awareness of the rainbow of people whose suffering and very bones prop us up and sustain our existence, leading the pedestrian to appreciate the sanctity of the ground on which they tread.” —Jim Feast, Rain Taxi

“Remarkable . . . Katz’s wondrous and erratic perspective amuses the reader’s mind . . . One gets the impression that the poet is telling his story as he has lived it, in his own words and in his own way . . . Lucid, succinct, and fluent.” —Rochak Agarwal, Pegasus Literary

From the Publisher