Elegy For Allen
That was a break In the fiber of things Sorrowful When Ginsberg died Because I still have students Wanting to be Beats And even some Wanting to be Buddhists Why not, but when That brilliant Jew poet took The train for the next world American nirvana Temporarily went with him. Not that he ever attained The tranquility Supposedly sought, He was so nervous And somehow ailing, The neurotic utopian Prophetic fairy side Of the guy never Surrendered really To those Asian things And too much ginseng Makes a man feeble-like. Yes, B— says You would be there At a party and he’d say Excuse me I have to follow That young man, you’d think Fine but why are you obliged To announce it, why not Just do it.
The greatest Jewish poet After Celan and Amichai, I cry, grieving, and B— says better not try To sell him as a rabbi Though what else is he For heaven’s sake Beads and bells And dreams of peace And all.
~~~
The University of South Carolina and The Katie and Irwin Kahn Jewish Community Center Present
an evening of poetry with Alicia Ostriker
Thursday, March 20th at 7:30 pm
“I write as an American, a woman, a Jew, a mother, a wife, a lover of beauty and art, a teacher, an idealist, a skeptic. Critics seem often to remark that I am ‘intelligent’—but I see myself also as passionate. Actually, I am a combination of mind, body, and feelings, like everyone else, and I try to get them all into play.”
Ostriker has received awards and fellowships from the NEA, the Guggenheim and Rockefeller foundations, the Poetry Society of America, and the San Francisco State Poetry Center, among others. Ostriker has taught in the low-residency Poetry MFA program of Drew University and New England College. She lives in Princeton, NJ, is professor emerita of English at Rutgers University.
This event is FREE and open to everyone.
For more information, please call Laurie Slack at 787-2023 x201