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The Man Who Said „Maybe“
He said a European flight
from Macedonia took more time
going than returning
because the earth turned favorably.
Try to explain the world a single entity — earth
sky and sea — he'd
listen patiently.
Next time he'd mention
travel, his theory
of anti-gravity
was there again
more steadfast than
Galileo’s pendulum.
Ifa helicopter
hovered over a city,
would the next city
come along eventually?“
„Maybe.“
A Single Heron
There is a single heron,
tilts in the night waters
a foot poised
an eye for silver to flash
down — a patient fisher
after supper; teaches me
that balance counts
as much as speed, grace
an equal for any force.
From it I learn to swallow
life whole and down the gullet.
The art of being too jewish
It was a very good summer for me in 1982. My career was taking
off as a poet with a big New and Selected Poems just published
and lots of performances. One prominent venue on Long Island,
Guild Hall in fashionable East Hampton, scheduled me to per¬
form and it was particularly gratifying as I would have so many
friends and even some senior poets and mentors in the audience.
Thad already lived on Long Island for a dozen years and the renown
poet, David Ignatow, had taken me under his wing. By then, he
was in all the anthologies, as often for the poem about chasing
a bagel! He‘d won awards and grants, but to me he complained,
»Never the Pulitzer.“ Other senior poets presided in the Hamp¬
tons—like Michael Braude, Simon Perchik, Kenneth Koch, Phil
Appleman, H. R.Hayes, Amrand Schwerner, Richard Elman,
Stanley Moss, Frank O‘Hara, Harvey Shapiro. Even John Hall
Wheelock elderly as he was, was still actively writing.
Guild Hall was well-attended the night of my solo performance.
I don't call myself a performance poet, but Iam known for my
repartee between poems—even some jokes and ,,shtick“ that
liven up my presentations. I was particularly on the mark—or
so I thought—that evening. Certainly, the audience laughed,
and as is always the measure, the laughs were ,,on cue“—with
me, not at me!
It ended with some gratifying applause but even before I could
make my way off stage I saw a flange of three poets aiming at me
at. It was Dave Ignatow, Michael Braude and Si Perchik rushing
me from the back of the hall. They were visibly agitated. Reaching
me, surrounding me, they said, all but in unison, „How could
you do that?“
»What did I do?“ I asked, concerned I had crossed some unseen
line of political correctness or propriety.
„You said all those Jewish things. You should never do that.“ They
were clearly horrified.
It had never occurred to me that would be an issue. The book had
a little section of poems „For my Family“ which even included
a series of three poems for Jewish holidays. In the course of the
reading I told a story about my Lithuanian Orthodox Jewish
grandfather, Louis Axelrod, and even used a Yiddish accent. I
read a poem about Hanukkah and my Russian grandfather Philip
Kransberg and did a little shuckle that he used to do when he
lit the menorah.
„It's the kiss of death,“ the threesome told me. Oh, how upset they
were. How concerned I‘d sunk myself. , Don't you understand?“
they berated me. You can't ever get ahead if you are known as
a Jewish poet.
Later, Dave Ignatow told me he really believed that folks like
Untermeyer, a king maker in his days of his Golden Books Family
Treasury of Poetry, and Robert Lowell with his „Brahmins,“ were
the ones. „I'd have had the Pulitzer if not for being Jewish,“ Ig¬
natow said. (Louis Simpson, got one, but he converted!)
Not long after, I picked up Howard Nemerov at the Port Jefferson,
Long Island train station and hosted him for a reading at an event
I sponsored. At a private dinner with me after, at which he drank
more than his share, he was talking freely so I asked him, was it
so? Was it so dangerous to be publicly Jewish as a poet. ,Oh yes,
absolutely,“ he said. „Look at me,“ he said. „What do they call
me? An ‚epigramist‘?“
Well, what can I do? I have a cousin who is very assertive about
his Jewishness. I‘ve told him about anti-Semites I met over the
years; folks who wouldn't rent an apartment to me if they knew
I was a Jew, or even let me stay in their motel.
»l'd have taken them by the collar and punched them in the
face,“ my cousin hollered.
„L told them I was Welsh and got the place I needed to stay,“ I
confessed. But I‘m no self-hating Jew. I may not be at all religious
but I grew up glad for my cultural roots and there is one thing I
also know. Try as a Jew may, pretend, put on airs, deny... One
day just one little ,Oy“ will creep out and it will all be over!
That's why I figure I might as well shout it out, even at
a fancy East Hampton performance.
David Axelrod was born in 1943 in Beverly, Massachusetts. He
resides in Selden, Long Island where he is Suffolk County Poet Lau¬
reate (2007-2009). Axelrod has published eighteen volumes of poetry,
the newest of which is The Impossibility of Dreams. He is founder!
Director of Writers Unlimited Agency, Inc., publisher of Writers
Ink Press, and president of 3WS, World Wide Writers Services. He
can be found on the web at www.writersunlimited.org/laureate
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