'Xmas on Bay State Road, Boston' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge
by Michael Benedikt Poems in Verse & Prose. Includes 3 Holiday Prose Poems. Some poems have mini-consoles for Holiday Season Midi Music.
This is the Xmas '04 & New Year's '05 Edition of this site
Verse at this site was written while poet was Visiting Writing Prof. at Boston University some years ago. In addition to Xmas on Bay State Road & Other Verse, this page has 3 Prose Poems about Xmas & New Year's Day. All poems in revisions completed only relatively recently: l997-2003. Other revisions here & there.
Info on this site's 'Virtual Fireplace' with Yule Log companion-page + New Year's Greetings + other Holiday Music is here. Click to go directly to our 'Virtual Fireplace' Click here to see our Featured Site Award from about.com.
A little Quiet Xmas Music from A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten Poems At This Site Verses about a Boston Xmas * Verses about Mid-Winter * Verses about Writing Verses re Americana: Visit to friends Don Hall & Jane Kenyon in New Hampshire in Summertime '78 Prose poem about pre-Xmas Days & Xmas Angel * Prose poem about Xmas Gifts * Prose poem about New Year's Day E x p a n d e d D e s c r i p t i o n o f P o e m s Verse poem about Xmas: XMAS ON BAY STATE ROAD, BOSTON. Narrative Poem. Also a Christmas story in verse, upholding & updating a main theme in Charles Dickens'A Christmas Carol--and saying that even amid hardship & hard times, celebrating Xmas really matters. Setting: Xmas in--of all places, Academia. (Poem offers a rather unusual perspective on 'Academic Life'). As Xmas-Day nears, a Creative Writing Prof. recently settled in a city new and unfamiliar to him--and where he's been invited to teach as "Guest Poet"--finds himself faced with the prospect of spending his lst Xmas alone. (Adding to his bleak Xmas prospects: a recent marital break-up). But he finds an Xmas-tree to trim & decorate his academic digs in the Hub with, & retains his sense of humor about a preposterous Xmas situation. And tho' accompanied only by fond memories of a one-time close companion--Alice, his beloved pet cat whom he misses--he manages to celebrate Xmas-Day anyway. Poem's a couple of pages in printed form, but moves rather quickly for a narrative poem--rather like a lyric poem. Verse poem re Mid-Winter: BROWNSTONE IN BOSTON. Lyric. A lonely house on a bleak, windy street, in snowy mid-winter. Verse poem re Writing: UP LATE WRITING. Brief Narrative. A writer in Boston is astonished afresh by his devotion to the art of poetry. (Late-night Net-Surfers, too, may have experienced the kind of temporal disorientation evoked in this poem). Note: A Satirical Narrative called 'A Professor Emeritus Without Merit'--dedicated to all those Professors Emeritii with merit, & which was formerly at this site--may be found grinding its teeth at this site's parent site: Poems from Boston & Cambridge. Verse poem re a visit to Fellow Writers: DON HALL & JANE KENYON OF 'EAGLE POND FARM' IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, INVITE A N.Y. CITY BOY--RESETTLED FOR A TIME IN BOSTON--TO A COUNTRY PARTY; AND EVERYBODY GOES OUT TO HEAR SOME POETRY AT THE 'BLAZING STAR' GRANGE IN DANBURY, N.H., ON KATE FOWLER'S 100th (!) BIRTHDAY, July 16, l978. Some might consider this title to be somewhat self-explanatory. Opening sections of a long Narrative practically awash in Historic, Traditional Americana. Closing sections of poem--featuring a stroll around the awesomely vintage attic at Eagle Pond Farm--still in work. If you're one of those who've been longing for poetry honoring centennarians & homespun New England rural traditions, this should hold you. Also, we're pleased to present this poem as a vignette picturing a few moments in the lives of 2 well-known & exceptionally fine American poets: Donald Hall, and the late Jane Kenyon. Prose Poem about days before Xmas: THE XMAS ANGEL. Seasonal devotional nostalgia followed by sudden appearance of a secular Xmas Angel. Prose poem about Xmas presents: NEW TOYS. Yes, it's that relatively rare thing: a really grumpy, unsentimental poem about a really grumpy Santa with inappropriately sensuous proclivities. Something for 21st century adult computer or other high-tech enthusiasts who--though surrounded by new high-tech toys at Xmas-- sometimes feel nostalgic about low-tech childhoods and even for the relatively innocent past in general. Echoes of another 19th-century classic Xmas tale, the Clement Clarke Moore verses in A Visit From St. Nicholas--a.k.a. The Night Before Christmas--haunt this holiday prose poem. Prose poem about New Year's Day: NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS. A person highly aware of the fact that for most of us life involves ongoing change, attempts nonetheless to "take stock" of himself. But like most people who show any signs of life whatsoever, he finds to his amusement that that's somewht self-contradictory & fortunately almost impossible. Click for Brief Benedikt Bio If you'd like tune for poem, below, tap arrow on console. Tap square to stop music. Adjust speaker volume at right. XMAS ON BAY STATE ROAD, BOSTON In Fond Memory, a Dear Cat Named Alice A larger version of this Boston map appears at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge. To check out current Boston weather at boston.com, try here. To browse Alice's 59 Bay State Road & BU neighborhood in Boston further & to check out local stores & visitor info. etc. at mapquest.com, click here. (Zipcode to enter is 02215). It's Xmas Xmas well almost Xmas & hardly anybody's home Around here, in Boston, where I've been living & teaching as visiting Poet-in-Residence at Boston U., for three semesters now; yes, it seems they've all gone off, Every student & (seems stranger yet) every local Prof. All, all gone off to their extra-curricular, really serious, "Serious Lives." Oh how fleeting, so oft, are the joys of "Serious Academic 'Communities'"! --Seldom have I seen so many weighty, truly serious suitcases In the hands of so many still virtually total strangers. & Me?--Today, day of Xmas Eve, I go poking moseyingly around the blocks by red-brick Brownstone where I dwell at campus-edge, thru streets strip't now of their usual local color--with bright winter coats & jackets gone now, hardly even a double-parked, street-blocking "B.U."-stickered car here Gives relief to this background of almost total, academic factory, concrete gray; Oh, it's been one year & 1/2 almost exactly, since B.U. invited me (from NYC) To be their peripatetic "Visiting Prof.," in both English & Creative Writing Dep'ts, for Poetry; 'Cept they said "move up here, too"--which whimsical invitation it turned out meant (as oft such doth for many a so-called "colorfully-living," that is, cash-short Vagabond Professor & Poet)-- It was for me & me alone to locate & search out Like an instant local real-estate expert, my one-room convenient- to-B.U.-apartment to negotiate, furnish, & rent In the midst (no less) of a then still-ongoing, still dragging-on, expensive N.Y.C. marital divorcement. True, I had company, for a while, in a little 16-year-old white cat-- "Alice" she was, subject of several Boston-set epic poems I wrote, who '78 saw surface cancerous. Following Major Operation She died, at start of term-time, as leaves fell, in the Fall... Alice Looking Out of Window at Bay State Road, Xmas '77 But if this poet was, in the midst of this, somewot tense from matters demandingly domestic, forensic, esthetic, & financial & Therefore whilst dealing with all these, acting odd & emotional, & generally Bizzy-Crazy Hardly anybody (least of all the folks at "host" B.U.), cared to Ask The Poet Why... --& So, as host to these sad tho'ts & bitter, on Xmas Eve I wander Suddenly I espy it!: A recently & much-too-early tossed-out (for still-fresh) little Xmas Tree Behind a store, green fir tip sticking up invitingly, from heap of so-called trash in dumpster All undecorated & untinselled o'er as yet; & with paper-scrap from memo-pad scotch-taped to it Requesting, "Please Take Me!" Sweet!--its identity evidently, too, this late-in- '78 December day, come 'round as Xmas throwaway. & So I lifts this Tree Joyfully from out of the surrounding trash (thanking the Good Lord that Even if there had been bugs on it, I would not have thought "oh horrors," or flinched anymore, due to the nature of this particular, somewot hellish year--or even batted a single Eyelash); but no, that tree's quite clear, & clean--almost pristinely; & so I can take it back to dwelling immediately; but think To wit: Does I have any decorations somewhere to go with it? Oh yes, Oh yes & happy day! (I guess); & Oh how I thank the Holy Spirit Of our human ingeniousness--for despite the difficulties of this past year (& with me sometimes feeling about 100 years beyond my age) Deep-down, I must still be resourceful, cheery, & undiscouraged;--for, ah yes, roughly 10 days ago, returning pre-holiday-time From an early closing bookstore, I recalls I bought some discount Xmas-balls Near Harvard, at 5¢ & 10¢-store o'er in sparkling town of Cambridge; Matter-of-fact (says the joyous mem'ry I'm suddenly flooded by) I also bought myself a set of little flickering lights at dime-store, perhaps for Christmas meant Or else maybe my close-of-divorcement year to celebrate, which midst haste At term-end, what with term-papers to read & tests to grade, I just plugged in & set whilst all-still-in-box, propped up on the back of living-room couch facing one big bay window of the first floor apartment wherein I hold academic tenancy; & Then left on, winking & flashing for all to see. . . But oh why? --I suppose only to show anybody still left sentient in this transient district & walking by--whether or not they cared-- That I'd survived; & was still alive; & still wished A Merry Xmas To Them; & also hoping, I suppose secretly, that maybe somebody'd see it (Surviving, too, it seems, is my sense of the fantastic) & invite me Mayhap, to Xmas party-visit! But now I got an Xmas tree Oh yes my very own Xmas Tree Which I fleet-foot off like some itinerant academic Tiny Tim across Bay State Road with, Evergreen over shoulder, & with hardly a needle falling; & back home & a few steps upstairs back in my room I find an old plant-pot left from summertime, so's to set it up, Using some old root-drainage rocks as chocks (I checks To make sure they're dry, 'cause they'll be around electricity soon, & lately my wearied system, I think Has had enuf shocks). & Oh, in its pot, facing big bay window, & at edge of my earth-brown carpet It stands upright! A regular traditional Xmas landscape! & So then I run Backtrackwards with enthusiasm, as far as corner grocer--the ever-open Kenmore Square "24-Hour Village Food Store" (where I'm a relatively well-known persona gratia Because of manifold night-time purchases, during my frequent insomnia)-- Dawn on Kenmore Square 1 block from 59 Bay State Rd. all so's just to supplement at last minute, my low-budget, bits-&-pieces hall-decking supply; & so for my One large semi-bare room with its two big bay windows now winter-dim I buy A plastic envelope containing 20 multicolored pretty ribbon-bows, plus tinsel-pak; --& Also, out of keen-focussing side-of-eye, spies I (On counter-corner), six smashed-up plastic candy-canes, just remnants, Which I decide to run home the one brief block without; & then I think some more about having multicolored Tree galore, what with the ribands, tinsel, & Xmas-balls from my half-forgot hall-closet hall-bedecking store; & so exclaim silently (after duly shaking the upright tree, to recheck out the chocks-- Oh my own dear fir-Tree, from which still no evergreen needle doth unsightly fall!)--"Why Some of them candy-canes still had the hook-on part left intact!"; & So I run back to grocery store, after counting out 60 pennies (All spare change that had been accumulating lately); & Leaning once more o'er the counter announce to an impossibly grumpy store-manager: "It's a true Xmas-in-Boston late-night Neighborhood Miracle!--here's a customer Thinking of buying three of those still-priced-at 20¢ candy-canes; any Xmas-Eve bargains"? --But he don't blink a grizzled eyelash, I heard onc't, e'en before I moved up here, that famous-for-book-banning, Puritanical Boston Could also be a sometimes hostile, stand-offish, & populationally somewot grim city (dug-in "Townie" local-folk Oft hostile here to transcient "Gownies"); but this reaction's quite beyond Proper-Bostonian & tight-lipped-humorless, & verging on the totally witless!--& So, still smiling, after parting with all pence rushes I happily out; & back once again upstairs at home hangs I the three semi-intact candy-canes from the lower-limbs Of the Tree; & dances I about a bit, throwing handfuls of glittering tinsel o'er it; then plugs I in the (now) unboxed-at-leisure light-bulb-string Oh in & on & Oh What Glory O Wot Glory (& OhMiGod this reads almost Like a regular if somewot goofy Xmas-story!); then sits I down & Turns I around on couch towards big bay windows & admires it As, amazingly, cheerily, it glows its purely improvised, new-found light down into once-dark street; & Then, some only-yesterday fresh-bought pure Cow eggnog in my hand I relaxes utterly, & flips on my old b. & w. household portable T.V.-- ('77 saw vanish the color-one, by property-settling decree); & Watches I The Pope at Vatican Square offering Enlightening Holiday-Time Meditations to huge multitudes in Vatican Square which have turned out; & then (changing channels) Several local Reverend-folk giving lengthy fireside chats to roomfuls of the dinner-tabl'd devout; Yet, e'en whilst happily beholding sitting-&-salivating & sometimes milling throngs I chance to wonder a little bit too (I hope not too oddly, but rather out of natural human curiosity): Just Who Could it have been recently, who left behind that brand new Xmas Tree? --Some affluent student spirit, who tho't he or she would spend pre-Xmas In Boston locally, but who then panicked & optioned-out "home-sickly"?; or p'raps some other well-loved, family- Supported sport, who gen'rusly offered the Tree's odors for a few hours to dorm room-mates, & then abandoned it; & As for his or her own imminent prodigal home-flight return, completely planned it? Oh, there have been times when I have felt like the most woebegone creature on this planet --'Cept all this whole freaking flickering Tree's beautiful now, in its glow On a little table beside my bedstead with its worn-out leftover-from-marriage coverlet Where, towards the midnight, I suddenly saw fit to transplant it (for reasons half-unknown to me, not sure I understand it) --All I know is I feel peaceful, & almost glowing too, suddenly, as I lie down beneath it; & Somehow feel that tho' it's already nearing Midnight It might be nice, since this Tree's so very pretty, if I shared it --& Since once again at year-end I'm thinking of Alice, my dear at-sweet-sixteen ded-&-cremated pussycat I haul across the apartment a small wicker basket I kept (it must be confessed), with her little cream-white ceramic Ashes-Urn inside of it; & thus & so, lying down Beneath the Tree & beside this real & literal & virtually tactile souvenir of my dear Alice (since with its compact, oval, or rounded shapes, Urn reminds me of former her, when snoozing all curled up on my brown carpet), With a single chaste candle burning bright between it & my pretty Xmas tree I spend with Alice Xmas-day dawning hours, discoursing philosophically On Various Events transpir'd Since Her Deceasement... --&, Oh, compared to most Of the rest of 1978, thus far the most curious-strenuous of all my years, This hour seems Oh so amazingly calm & peaceful, as slowly The Holy Spirit of Xmas gently registers... & Perhaps, too, suitably, Next noonday, with lights still flickering in their chain, & with Alice Inside the wicker-work basket, snug in her casket of porcelain & with the candle by then out, I awake suddenly, to find me only me beneath the Tree --& Christmas Day's so calm, so decent, & so fine (being at last my own: & my own's own, pain-free & with all recent irritations-- & indeed with almost all other recent or distant mem'ry absent) that I find I can even Resist making analogies either arcane or else too easy, & specious & deadly old-time literary --For example, I shall not even compare my tiny little Xmas Tree To the enormous shared tree in Rockefeller Center back in N.Y.C. Midst a long-lost, ghostly host of gone but never I swear never-to-be-forgotten Company: Various old "Fast Friends," the dozens, who midst times that were hard, banded together almost just as one, To help send me this year's single Xmas card. (Boston, Xmas '78--poem completed, NYC, Xmas '97) Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' Brief Benedikt Bio Holiday Season Prose Poems BROWNSTONE IN BOSTON In that little three-story house, with its rented rooms, the tenants were not exactly what one would call, "Mutually Hospitable." --Even when snow lay piled up on front stoop & back stairs, rendering all exits almost impassable Occupants continued to gather word of developments in one another's apartments, such as tea-time gatherings, card-games, & parties By either listening to scraps of conversation & faint strains of music which escaped, sometimes, through their mutual walls; Or else by counting the dots on, or in, the thrown-out roach-traps Which they discovered out front, in their neighbors' garbage piles; & The openings & closing of their doors, as they peered out of them & eavesdropped, Were like the tumblers, rising & falling, of some enormous lock To which the wind, all that winter-- Which always seemed exceptionally strong blowing around that lonely brownstone building, on that cold, cold street where once, in Boston, I both dwelt & worked-- Was the only key that could be found.... UP LATE WRITING What a strange feeling it was!--waking up suddenly, in one's new & unfamiliar city; & not only that, but at 10:30 AM, After an especially long, excited night's writing About one's new location, & recent changes in one's life in general; & Then sitting up, bolt upright, semi-stunned at the edge of the bed To find oneself uncertain at first as to whether one had--for the third night in a row!-- Just gone to bed, & was therefore still trying to get a good night's sleep, starting around 6:30 AM Or whether one was merely arising a little later than most people once again, in the middle of what one's new neighbors--as well as most other people everywhere!-- Would conventionally call, "The Working Morning." & Then, despite the relative lateness of the hour in conventional terms, totally disorientedly, & besides that totally exhaustedly, going back to bed & sleeping half the day away anyway, Feeling, after one's vast efforts during the prior night, vaguely heroic, like some inspired beatific saint; or maybe like some dedicated athlete or else some dauntless trooper; & then only afterwards, yes only upon fully awakening, remembering half-startled & yet finally for absolute certain That one had once again, actually gone to sleep the prior night (or rather, that very same morning) not just by dawnlight, but especially late --in fact, at 8:30 AM! --While also realizing with some sadness, too, that despite one's tremendous efforts The balance of the "Working World," from all easily available visible signs (such as the one's shining, sun-struck big front bay windows, shrouded in their still conspicuously closed curtains facing the busy street) Would most likely--if it noticed at all (maybe during lunch-breaks?)-- not only regard one as a person who's inveterately lazy But still worse yet, as a really disgracefully self-flaunting type of "Goof-Off"! --"General Confusion & Probably Temporary Temporal Disorientation," The heavily underlined, cautionary phrase explains In the psychology book one left open quite circumspectly the prior night as a warning to oneself, re one's predictable morning confusion, there upon the nightstand beside one's bedside; --Ah yes, that must be why one woke up so fitfully, & fuzzily, only to engage in some quite self-astonished thinking, about that long, long night just passed; --& Ah yes too, that must be why, following that brief hiatus One sat up on the edge of the bed, & then immediately looked around frantically for one's new yet already somewhat worn-out working-&-writing jeans --& Sure enough, discovered the exact location of those jeans, Looking only just a little the worse for wear & only slightly crumpled up, Sitting there, in a sort of soldier's stance--even without one's being back in them yet!-- Still poised there, around 2 PM, At the foot of the bed. DON HALL & JANE KENYON OF 'EAGLE POND FARM,' IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, INVITE A N.Y. CITY BOY, RESETTLED FOR A TIME IN BOSTON, TO A COUNTRY PARTY; AND EVERYBODY GOES OUT TO HEAR SOME POETRY, AT 'THE BLAZING STAR GRANGE' IN DANBURY, N.H., ON KATE FOWLER'S 100TH (!) BIRTHDAY, JULY 16, l978 This Webversion for Donald Hall. And, In Memorium, Jane Kenyon "One of the primary problems for the composer in an industrial society like that of America is to achieve integration, to find justification for the life of art in the life about him." --Aaron Copland Be That As It May: To paraphrase the well-known song by folksinger Woody Guthrie, It wasn't my land, it was your land, up they-ah. So, for me, it was a bit like theatre (At first), for a native New Yorker to not only have Boston back there, as a Point of Departure, but also to find himself still farther away--'way up North there-- in Danbury area & near the middle of New Hampshire, Twice-a-tourist, at Ms. Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday Party. It was held (Stranger still), in one of those grand old "grange"-places (this one, called "The Blazing Star"), that they had built, farmer-folk, almost a full century ago, so as to hold meetings against various Eastern-urban railroad barons Who wanted to go running express-trains through their cow-pastures and their barns Or who (perhaps still far worse yet!) envisioned railroad yards & coalyards where there once grew grainfields. Doubtless, I thought, Old Kate Don't Forget, what that struggle was like (perhaps even as she made her stately entrance there --with all faces suddenly turned towards her form from afar, there at that sunlight-bright Entrance-Door, so many yards off in 'The Star'); yes turned towards Kate, long-awaited Kate, suddenly present among us at last here, calm in shining new wheelchair, in pretty white party-dress, with her smiling, tiny, pretty face beaming keenly from above its nice clear collar; then looking thoughtful withal, as Kate moved forth towards her audience whilst being wheeled athwart one staunch grange wall-- And, as Kate went by us then, gesturing to & greeting nearby "grange" neighbors (many of those still standing, bending down as if quasi-curtseying to whisper things to her--in passing as it were), I scanned (in background), various commemorative plaques along the grange-walls, some of them (as Don had earlier, in an aside said) with various names of the Halls' Relatives engraved thereupon;--& yea, in the midst of that plaque-plethora, from beside me, Don and Jane pointed out to me yet some more! And, looking & waiting, & temporarily located here midst all this well-situated history, this traveler had to remind himself, somewhat as if for stability: So here it is, somewhere well forward of the last quarter of The Twentieth Century; And, here I was, in the midst of it, sitting firmly there as could be; and, finally, slowly arrived up front before all her folks, there was a very old & patient lady, quietly awaiting her personal centennial ceremony; --Oh, calm poised Kate, evincing at odd moments some slight fidget-disconcertment, but fundamentally seeming not at all surprised to have turned up today here, situated there in her fabulously shiny and perhaps for all I knew totally quite brand new, too, tubular-chrome model wheelchair; And then there was all that sudden applause and also a surprise-message being recited slowly now to Kate by the flowery-flanneled & snappily-shirted red-suspender'd M.C.-of-the-Affair: A personal homespun message (via telegram) from her U.S. President, "Jimmy" Carter (!) And Wife Rosalind; & this living, personal moment in a region's history was clearly overwhelming & thrilling everybody & (even stranger still), twice-a-stranger here, me; & yet quite rightly, it somehow seemed, yes indeed somehow quite rightly; And suddenly beside me and beside themselves those dear sweeties Don and Jane was largely weeping in the seats (they had sat down on either side Of me; and this too was trav'ler-kindly; & made me feel kind of like Family); & There was Jane shedding some lovely large globs and there was Don most tenderly misting (for this was happening almost exactly on the literal land that they live on, as those plaques I could not help but keep glancing at, over & over again by my own curious accord, kept reminding me & indeed Insisting); And next thing we all knew there was a suddenly azzif-from-nowhere Young Lady Singer down on one knee crouching beside Kate & then uttering also her own tender All beside that wheelchair Almost as if before some present-day secular U.S. of A. altar, the Young Lady Singer now be-bent over herself-- but still steadying Kate Fowler's tiny little hand with gestures of her own fond young hand & exchanging gaze-for gaze and adding her own memento to the day with her own birthday-keeping, & time & history-honoring song message-- Singing what was described as a "Kate Old Favorite," nothing less than "God Be With You, 'Til We Meet Again"--a tune from by-gone days yet full of positive sentiment appropriate at that moment & spot, the main point there & then being the presentness of the past, and the serious importance to all of us serious humans present there, of the sense of Dearly Remembering; & I still can think with awed astonishment at the effect of her brave art: that Young Lady Singer actually compressing her own diaphragm with one free hand (she, so clearly & absolutely determined to secure one hard-to-reach still-distant virtuosic superb high-note which she wanted to--& indeed, did--actually at last make); & That made sense, too, at that particular historical site & date, for to celebrate right then & there with what would most please Kate, whilst evoking all her art, was after all that musician's whole point; --& Just Then, as if in accompanyment to that generously-given, tenderly tendered, & (I thought also) movingly-memorializing song-message What was announced as "The Official Birthday-Celebration Poem," was recited aloud --Composed, it was, I heard from Don in whisper by (for-at-least-that-one-time) one literarally-inclined relative of Don & of Jane; & I suppose it was what the relative-poet himself & some of us all would call "Occasional," all set up so simply & touchingly-neat in its direct and feelingful couplets; & I could not help but be moved by it, the poetry from start-to-finish expressing nothing but the best of circumstantial sentiments for Kate's birthday, that most pleasant & aupicious & historical New Hampshire Day; & So moved was everybody else, in the rows all around us; oh, to the very edges of that Grange, I saw numerous verges & surges of tears and many other tiny visible evidences of emotional interior overwhelment (the latter evinced by delicate meek twitches of meet public restraint); and there was something else in there in that poem Besides that, that spoke out freely for me: I liked The Definite Fact That tho' writ most assuredly for a sweet-nostalgic party, that work wasn't frilly, or superfluous, in the sense that it was Accomplishing Something As, in Kate Fowler's birth-century, the 19th, Poets--self-bespoke "unacknowledged legislators" of all the world so many long & accumulat'd songs ago-- Once said Poetry Should Do (and, I think, once again ought to Try To Do)--; & anyway, certainly, minimally, from the depths of its directness That poem made an old lady & I think somehow all of us who were tearful & there feel somehow joyous; & Yes!--since it ever-so-openly expressed & summed-up our own warm feelings, too-- a whole lot definitely better --Reminding us as it did of such things as our rich, colorful American Heritage, & In passing, too, of the wealth of significance of events around us in our own times & probably any later Day & Age Which events after all--with the passage of time--become a form of history too... Additional stanzas of this-as-yet uncompleted poem appear at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Site & Table of Contents Xmas On Bay State Road Brownstone In Boston Up Late Writing Don Hall & Jane Kenyon Holiday Season Prose Poems "Xmas On Bay State Road" is from a manuscript-still-in-work about a 3 year sojourn in Boston l977-l980, called Family Blessings, Family Curses. Eventually, poem may become part of Transitions. An earlier version of "Xmas on BSR" was published in The Massachusetts Review in l985, © Michael Benedikt, l985. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l997. Drawing of Alice based on photo by M.B., © Oriole Farb, l979. "Brownstone in Boston" & "Up Late Writing" are from Transitions. An earlier version of "Brownstone in Boston" was pubished in ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) during the l980's, © Michael Benedikt l98-. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998. An earlier version of "Up Late Writing" appeared in Colorado Review, © Michael Benedikt l991. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998. "Don Hall & Jane Kenyon of 'Eagle Pond Farm' in New Hampshire, Invite A City Boy--Resettled For A Time in Boston--To A Country Party; And Everybody Goes Out To Hear Some Poetry at 'The Blazing Star' Grange in Danbury, N.H., on Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday, July 16, l978." Also from Family Blessings, Family Curses. An earlier version was published in Agni Review, © Michael Benedikt, l982. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l999. Top of Site & Table of Contents Holiday Season Prose Poems Brief Benedikt Bio. Complete bio in print medium of poet appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in The World, etc. Contemporary US poet Michael Benedikt has published 5 volumes of poetry: The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980); and with Wesleyan University Press, Night Cries ( prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, l971); Sky (l970); and The Body (l968). Anthologies of poetry under his editorship are The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976); and The Poetry of Surrealism (Little Brown, l974). Other anthologies include three volumes of European plays co-edited with theater critic George E. Wellwarth: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism (E.P. Dutton, l964); Post-War German Theater (Dutton, l967); and Modern Spanish Theater (Dutton, l969). He's also the editor of Theatre Experiment, a collection of American Plays (Doubleday, l967). Benedikt's a former Associate Editor of Art News and Art International. A former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review, his editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology (Norton, l990). He's currently a Contributing Editor for The American Poetry Review. Recent, thus far uncollected poetry published in New York Quarterly, Agni, Iowa Review, Jerusalem Review, Lips, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, and Washington Square--and in The Paris Review (#151), which includes a long poem in honor of Einstein (External link: online version at our site here). Work appears in numerous anthologies of Contemporary US poetry. Literary criticism in Poetry, The American Book Review and elsewhere. Grants and awards have included an NEA Fellowship, a NY State Council On The Arts Grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. Benedikt has taught as Visiting Prof. at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar College/s; and in the English/Creative Writing Department at Boston University. He's read from his poetry at many colleges and universities around the USA--most recently at several Barnes & Noble 'superstores' in NY Metro area. He lives in Manhattan. In addition to this site, Benedikt's work is represented on the Web at numerous Other Benedikt Links Top HOLIDAY SEASON PROSE POEMS 'Welcome Yule'--Jubilant pandemonium from A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL _________ Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose.... "The Christmas Angel" lst appeared as ''The Church of The Immaculate Peanut-Brittle" as one of several poems about Angels in Mole Notes (Wesleyan U. Press, l971), © Michael Benedikt l971. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, 2001. NEW TOYS "Twas the Night Before Christmas..." Clement Clarke Moore "You better watch out, you better not cry/Better not pout, I'm telling you why/Santa Claus is coming to town..." --Popular Song New toys, new toys... every year, around this time, that's all you hear children talking about. And that's fine! But what about mine? My new toys are a ball, a bat, and a jack. That is to say, a brand new trackball for my laptop, an updated autoexec.bat, and a modem with a quick-connect telephone jack--and a whole box-full of other high-tech toys operated electronically and even via infared remote control! Now that I'm supposed to be an adult, I realize all too well that if I'm to have the kind of brand new toys I want and think I richly deserve, for the most part I'll have to buy them for myself! And--since I like being generous towards myself--consequently I expect it to be Christmas Every Day! Still, like most of us former children, I can't forget my carefree childhood, replete with showers of Christmas gifts of all kinds from every side--so that when it comes to the present, I'm disappointed and sometimes resent it! My parents, of course, do the best they can. So do some others! But somehow lately I've even begun to think of my dear, recently-deceased 90-year-old Auntie--who for some reason refuses to buy me any new toys all anymore--as some kind of sinister, malingering Scrooge! Oh, preserve me from being rebellious enough towards being my own age, and even to this entire Y2K age, to want to change the name on my doorbell to Robert Crachit! Yes, I've shopped until I've dropped--yet somehow I feel neglected! Having completed all my shopping, on Christmas Eve I finally fall asleep exhausted. And guess who I dream about? Of course, dear old Santa Claus! Yes, with a great "Ho Ho Ho," here comes good old Kris Kringle sliding down my chimney! Only now, he too is operated by remote-control. Oh, ho, at least he hasn't forgotten to carry on his back his famous bulging sack! "Santa, you know," I say, as into my artificial fireplace he falls with a clatter, "what with all that dust you're throwing off and that big pack slung over your back, you look just like a vacuum-cleaner!" "And you--you've got enough toys already!" he shouts back at me; and in a huff, he turns and sails back up the chimney. What a nightmare of a Santa! Immediately, half-way around the world, a radio-controlled Kris Kringle comes in on his homing-beam... He's getting bored by then, so instead of using the chimney like he's supposed to, he picks a front-door lock and smashes down a doorway--the doorway to a lonely lady's bedroom! As he enters, he says, of course : "Ho Ho!" "Oh, Oh, Santa," the lonely lady says, pulling the covers up beneath her chin, "where are your dear reindeer?" "Ho Ho, my reindeer are up there on your roof--where did you think they were all this time, dear little dummy--did you think I arrived here at your house in a Hertz Rent-A-Car?' "Oh, Oh, what are they doing up there, Santa?" his astonished hostess cries out, drawing up the covers still further. "Ho Ho, they're making it--and F.Y.I., that's what I always meant to suggest when in less sophisticated times than these, you heard me shouting "On Dancer, On Prancer!'" Santa tosses a big box of condoms onto the lady's coverlet, leaves a boxed assortment of state-of-the art sex-toys at the foot of the bed and--back at the fireplace--hangs up a pair of black nylon stockings for her to use as next year's Christmas-stockings. He then says good-bye--leaving by jumping out of the window while pulling on the pants of his red zoot suit and zipping his fly back up. The lonely lady jumps up, runs through her shattered bedroom doorway, and throws up the sash of her kitchen window --apparently looking forward at least, to the pleasure of seeing Santa and his reindeer team rushing over the crest of the new-fallen-snow and then rising picturesquely into the night. In the night, an outcry: "Oh Santa, dear Santa, my kitchen closet's open--where's my family silverware? "Ho Ho Ho ho ho..."--and Santa and his reindeer team vanish into the darkness, after nearly colliding with a descending jet. Well, even in dreams, I guess that's just the way it is for some of us, on this fourth Christmas eve after the end of the mean old 20th Century. Too many wars have bent our perceptions of Good Will into pretzels! Personal Injustices and Abandonments we've all suffered threaten to twist our conceptions of generosity into silly putty! As for me, all I can say today about the new toys I still long for and feel I richly deserve, is that as a child what I wanted most for Christmas was for all my friends to be just a little bit nicer and kinder to one another--and maybe even to me; but these days, what I want--and fully expect--from Santa, is nothing less than Peace On Earth for all Humankind And Also Throughout The Entire Universe For The Next Two Hundred Thousand Years. Ho Ho Ho, ho ho ho ho, Ho! "New Toys" is from yet another Benedikt mss.-in-progress-- a collection of prose poems called Universe. An earlier version of "New Toys" was published in Works: Edson, Benedikt, & Ackerson , ed. by Duane Ackerson (Dragonfly Press, l972), © Michael Benedikt l972. Thanks to Duane Ackerson for © transfer to author, l997. Based on revisions of mss. of Universe completed in Boston in 1980, this Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l999. (Xmas Eve reference, updated in '04 to '04). (Note: Animated image below first appeared Xmas '00, in initial edition of this webpage. We like it so much that we're keeping it-- pending of course discovery of an animated .gif with a bouncing numeral for the current year). NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS New Year's eve had been great fun, what with all its partying, silliness and celebrating; but then, next thing we all knew, the clock struck midnight! Time for still more partying, silliness and celebrating! But also--if one is normally of an at least moderately serious and punctilious turn-of-mind, as of course I consider myself to be--time to begin effecting at the very start of the New Year, resolutions made towards the end of the old year! Throw all those champagne-glasses into the fireplace, throw those champagne-bottles into the recycling-bin, and let's get started! The first thing I thought I'd do, since the prior year had been a year of really extraordinary change for me--as, come to think of it, periods as long as an entire year are for most people--is to resolve once again, just as most people do around the turn of the New Year--to "Take Stock Of Oneself." Yes, it was due time for that! Past due time for that, in fact! "Just who do you think you are, anyway, Mr. B.? " I asked myself gravely, from the place on the rug where I and several other guests had fallen together, after jumping up and down while the T.V. Times Square ball fell. (An answer to that ongoing question at last? Wow!--I could hardly wait to hear it!). But then I heard a stubborn, cantankerous little voice within myself reply: "Sorry, Mr. B: even after all these years, I'm really sorry to say I'm not sure who you are yet...--or rather, come to think of it, even after all these years, I'm really happy to say that I'm not sure yet! After all, even after quite a few decades of living, that's not the kind of question anyone can answer off the top of his or her head or by trying to force the issue, is it?" "But," I heard that little inner voice continue, "just in case I do happen to find out once and for all just exactly who you are Mr. B., or who anybody else is as a matter of fact--either on this particular day or on any other day during the course of the forthcoming year--here's a New Year's Resolution I will not only make, but actually keep: I promise you that when it comes to hearing the answer to that particular question, at least you won't be among the very last to know." "New Year's Resolutions" is also from Universe. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l998. Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems The Christmas Angel New Toys New Year's Resolutions Xmas On Bay State Road Other Benedikt Links Alice in NYC as cover-girl for book, Night Cries (prose poems, l976). Please click (top of) Image for Site Contents Table FORTHCOMING TO THIS SITE'S PARENT SITE POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE --A NARRATIVE POEM ABOUT ALICE'S PRE-POSTHUMOUS LIFE & TIMES ALSO A BOSTON PHOTO-ALBUM PAGE WITH PIX IN ADDITION TO THOSE ALREADY AT POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE ALL TO BE ADDED IN 2002 2003 2004 2005 Top Quick-Link to Guest Poem by Laura Boss re--of all things!--a year-round Allergy to Cats. Other Boss poems now there, too. Back button to return to this site. ('Return-Link' at Guest page connects to this site's parent site, 'Poems from Boston & Cambridge'). OTHER BENEDIKT LINKS Notes by The Benedikt Team A B O U T 'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net' Feature article on Benedikt & websites & on his publications in print media. Posted by About.com 4/99 Academy of American Poets: Michael Benedikt With detailed Bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's 5 published poetry books. Posted by Academy 5/99 BENEDIKT'S 'SITES FOR ALL SEASONS' Music to look at link-list at Xmas-tide by TWO OTHER MUCH-BOOKMARKED POETRY PAGES RE OTHER HOLIDAYS 'The 4th of July: NY & NJ & Laura & Me' Re the word "Independence" in term "Independence Day." Subtopic: Uneasy relationship between Public Events & Private Events in our times. Spooky Poems for Halloween Part of a multi-paged site with Selected Poems from The Body and Sky, Benedikt's lst two, generally haunting poetry books. Other pages include a page with Notes & Commentary on those 2 books by The Benedikt Team: a Thematic Index focusing on the multi-media background of the poems. With visual arts-related photos from Benedikt's 1960's Archive. Modern poetry teaching aid may be useful to students writing poetry term-papers. Site even has a Home Page. Sky -page. PROSE POEMS If you had fun with the prose poems at this site, you might also enjoy these two sites with other Fact & Fantasy-fusing prose poems from Benedikt's book Night Cries Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose, droll (?) prose poems about domestic life from section of Night Cries called "Household Hallucinations." Site also has interview from Poetry Society of American Newsletter answering such questions as "just what is a prose poem, anyway?" & "when did prose poetry start?" Also at site: essay on "Future of American Prose Poem." Prose Poems & Microfictions, other prose poems from Night Cries--about the same size & shape as "New Toys." With book review from London Times Literary Supplement. Also w. info on Benedikt's landmark 600-page antho. of global prose poetry: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. PROSE POEMS & OTHER Theater, Film & TV Poems, miscellany including 2 Showbiz-related prose poems from Benedikt's book Mole Notes. About Mole Notes, reviewer for Modern Poetry Studies wrote: "As far as I can tell, the volume has no precedent in US Literature, although certainly it belongs to the tradition of our modern epics beginning with Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Also poem re 1960's pop-star lookalikes Ringo Starr & Brit. film actress Rita Tushingham, & other later verse. With info on Benedikt's 3 anthologies of 20th-Century European drama--"Black Humor" from France, Germany, & Spain. Many plays in French collection are Surrealism-based & translated by Benedikt. If you enjoyed reading poems with music, you might also enjoy the Bertrand prose poem site just below Aloysius Bertrand: Fantasies by First French Prose Poet. Selected Prose Poems by a 19th-Century 'original.' Fantasies on dark side from masterwork, Gaspard de la Nuit. Music based on 3 Bertrand poems by Ravel of Bolero fame. SHOWBIZ--RELATED MINI-SITES 'Of Orson Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The Worlds' Poem-in-progress re early radio program that shook the nation. Closing stanzas still to be added. With notes on the poem's conclusion. Subtopic: State Censorship of Airwaves in times of crisis. 'Of The Colorful Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' Re a daring, free-spirited theater co. which still plays in Moscow's Taganka district today. Also about eternal, year-round human need for more bliss in life. Subtopic: State Censorship of Arts 'Runixie' Site with song lyric about flying faerie whose sole limit is limitless stars. Image by Canadian artist Marina Badani. With info about stratospheric sprite-sightings by NASA. Subtopics: Freedom. Links among Arts & Sciences. AND THEN THERE'S 3 Poems Praising Peace With Intro re Peaceful Individuals being a prerequisite for World Peace. At Xmastide et seq. Peace site is part of a larger site with many other selections from Benedikt's recent poetry: The Thesaurus & Other New Verse The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Sequence of comical love poems. (After Xmas & New Year's Day, can Valentine's Day be far behind?) AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET Cat Fanciers - http://www.fanciers.com Queen Midnight of CLAW (Visitors' Center) - http://www.claw.org (includes Claw Theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' & a 'Poetry In Motion' page for cats who write poetry) More Modern American Xmas Literature at: Poems by Cambridge poet Peter Payack--incl. the ecology-minded "Santa & The Ho Ho Ho Zone" - http://www.peterpayack.com Virtual Fireplace with Hearth & Yule Log With crackling hearth for Yuletide, Xmas Eve, & Cold Wintry Nights In '03--a jubilant version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' (Note: Boston's 59 Bay State Rd. has a chimney. And, last we looked, fireplaces too). Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems Top of 'Other Benedikt Links' 'Sussex Carol' (traditional) arr. by Ralph Vaughan-Williams Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! ! Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. Top Yule Log
Poems At This Site Verses about a Boston Xmas * Verses about Mid-Winter * Verses about Writing Verses re Americana: Visit to friends Don Hall & Jane Kenyon in New Hampshire in Summertime '78 Prose poem about pre-Xmas Days & Xmas Angel * Prose poem about Xmas Gifts * Prose poem about New Year's Day
E x p a n d e d D e s c r i p t i o n o f P o e m s
Verse poem about Xmas: XMAS ON BAY STATE ROAD, BOSTON. Narrative Poem. Also a Christmas story in verse, upholding & updating a main theme in Charles Dickens'A Christmas Carol--and saying that even amid hardship & hard times, celebrating Xmas really matters. Setting: Xmas in--of all places, Academia. (Poem offers a rather unusual perspective on 'Academic Life'). As Xmas-Day nears, a Creative Writing Prof. recently settled in a city new and unfamiliar to him--and where he's been invited to teach as "Guest Poet"--finds himself faced with the prospect of spending his lst Xmas alone. (Adding to his bleak Xmas prospects: a recent marital break-up). But he finds an Xmas-tree to trim & decorate his academic digs in the Hub with, & retains his sense of humor about a preposterous Xmas situation. And tho' accompanied only by fond memories of a one-time close companion--Alice, his beloved pet cat whom he misses--he manages to celebrate Xmas-Day anyway. Poem's a couple of pages in printed form, but moves rather quickly for a narrative poem--rather like a lyric poem.
Verse poem re Mid-Winter: BROWNSTONE IN BOSTON. Lyric. A lonely house on a bleak, windy street, in snowy mid-winter.
Verse poem re Writing: UP LATE WRITING. Brief Narrative. A writer in Boston is astonished afresh by his devotion to the art of poetry. (Late-night Net-Surfers, too, may have experienced the kind of temporal disorientation evoked in this poem). Note: A Satirical Narrative called 'A Professor Emeritus Without Merit'--dedicated to all those Professors Emeritii with merit, & which was formerly at this site--may be found grinding its teeth at this site's parent site: Poems from Boston & Cambridge.
Verse poem re a visit to Fellow Writers: DON HALL & JANE KENYON OF 'EAGLE POND FARM' IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, INVITE A N.Y. CITY BOY--RESETTLED FOR A TIME IN BOSTON--TO A COUNTRY PARTY; AND EVERYBODY GOES OUT TO HEAR SOME POETRY AT THE 'BLAZING STAR' GRANGE IN DANBURY, N.H., ON KATE FOWLER'S 100th (!) BIRTHDAY, July 16, l978. Some might consider this title to be somewhat self-explanatory. Opening sections of a long Narrative practically awash in Historic, Traditional Americana. Closing sections of poem--featuring a stroll around the awesomely vintage attic at Eagle Pond Farm--still in work. If you're one of those who've been longing for poetry honoring centennarians & homespun New England rural traditions, this should hold you. Also, we're pleased to present this poem as a vignette picturing a few moments in the lives of 2 well-known & exceptionally fine American poets: Donald Hall, and the late Jane Kenyon.
Prose Poem about days before Xmas: THE XMAS ANGEL. Seasonal devotional nostalgia followed by sudden appearance of a secular Xmas Angel.
Prose poem about Xmas presents: NEW TOYS. Yes, it's that relatively rare thing: a really grumpy, unsentimental poem about a really grumpy Santa with inappropriately sensuous proclivities. Something for 21st century adult computer or other high-tech enthusiasts who--though surrounded by new high-tech toys at Xmas-- sometimes feel nostalgic about low-tech childhoods and even for the relatively innocent past in general. Echoes of another 19th-century classic Xmas tale, the Clement Clarke Moore verses in A Visit From St. Nicholas--a.k.a. The Night Before Christmas--haunt this holiday prose poem.
Prose poem about New Year's Day: NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS. A person highly aware of the fact that for most of us life involves ongoing change, attempts nonetheless to "take stock" of himself. But like most people who show any signs of life whatsoever, he finds to his amusement that that's somewht self-contradictory & fortunately almost impossible.
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If you'd like tune for poem, below, tap arrow on console. Tap square to stop music. Adjust speaker volume at right. XMAS ON BAY STATE ROAD, BOSTON In Fond Memory, a Dear Cat Named Alice A larger version of this Boston map appears at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge. To check out current Boston weather at boston.com, try here. To browse Alice's 59 Bay State Road & BU neighborhood in Boston further & to check out local stores & visitor info. etc. at mapquest.com, click here. (Zipcode to enter is 02215). It's Xmas Xmas well almost Xmas & hardly anybody's home Around here, in Boston, where I've been living & teaching as visiting Poet-in-Residence at Boston U., for three semesters now; yes, it seems they've all gone off, Every student & (seems stranger yet) every local Prof. All, all gone off to their extra-curricular, really serious, "Serious Lives." Oh how fleeting, so oft, are the joys of "Serious Academic 'Communities'"! --Seldom have I seen so many weighty, truly serious suitcases In the hands of so many still virtually total strangers. & Me?--Today, day of Xmas Eve, I go poking moseyingly around the blocks by red-brick Brownstone where I dwell at campus-edge, thru streets strip't now of their usual local color--with bright winter coats & jackets gone now, hardly even a double-parked, street-blocking "B.U."-stickered car here Gives relief to this background of almost total, academic factory, concrete gray; Oh, it's been one year & 1/2 almost exactly, since B.U. invited me (from NYC) To be their peripatetic "Visiting Prof.," in both English & Creative Writing Dep'ts, for Poetry; 'Cept they said "move up here, too"--which whimsical invitation it turned out meant (as oft such doth for many a so-called "colorfully-living," that is, cash-short Vagabond Professor & Poet)-- It was for me & me alone to locate & search out Like an instant local real-estate expert, my one-room convenient- to-B.U.-apartment to negotiate, furnish, & rent In the midst (no less) of a then still-ongoing, still dragging-on, expensive N.Y.C. marital divorcement. True, I had company, for a while, in a little 16-year-old white cat-- "Alice" she was, subject of several Boston-set epic poems I wrote, who '78 saw surface cancerous. Following Major Operation She died, at start of term-time, as leaves fell, in the Fall... Alice Looking Out of Window at Bay State Road, Xmas '77 But if this poet was, in the midst of this, somewot tense from matters demandingly domestic, forensic, esthetic, & financial & Therefore whilst dealing with all these, acting odd & emotional, & generally Bizzy-Crazy Hardly anybody (least of all the folks at "host" B.U.), cared to Ask The Poet Why... --& So, as host to these sad tho'ts & bitter, on Xmas Eve I wander Suddenly I espy it!: A recently & much-too-early tossed-out (for still-fresh) little Xmas Tree Behind a store, green fir tip sticking up invitingly, from heap of so-called trash in dumpster All undecorated & untinselled o'er as yet; & with paper-scrap from memo-pad scotch-taped to it Requesting, "Please Take Me!" Sweet!--its identity evidently, too, this late-in- '78 December day, come 'round as Xmas throwaway. & So I lifts this Tree Joyfully from out of the surrounding trash (thanking the Good Lord that Even if there had been bugs on it, I would not have thought "oh horrors," or flinched anymore, due to the nature of this particular, somewot hellish year--or even batted a single Eyelash); but no, that tree's quite clear, & clean--almost pristinely; & so I can take it back to dwelling immediately; but think To wit: Does I have any decorations somewhere to go with it? Oh yes, Oh yes & happy day! (I guess); & Oh how I thank the Holy Spirit Of our human ingeniousness--for despite the difficulties of this past year (& with me sometimes feeling about 100 years beyond my age) Deep-down, I must still be resourceful, cheery, & undiscouraged;--for, ah yes, roughly 10 days ago, returning pre-holiday-time From an early closing bookstore, I recalls I bought some discount Xmas-balls Near Harvard, at 5¢ & 10¢-store o'er in sparkling town of Cambridge; Matter-of-fact (says the joyous mem'ry I'm suddenly flooded by) I also bought myself a set of little flickering lights at dime-store, perhaps for Christmas meant Or else maybe my close-of-divorcement year to celebrate, which midst haste At term-end, what with term-papers to read & tests to grade, I just plugged in & set whilst all-still-in-box, propped up on the back of living-room couch facing one big bay window of the first floor apartment wherein I hold academic tenancy; & Then left on, winking & flashing for all to see. . . But oh why? --I suppose only to show anybody still left sentient in this transient district & walking by--whether or not they cared-- That I'd survived; & was still alive; & still wished A Merry Xmas To Them; & also hoping, I suppose secretly, that maybe somebody'd see it (Surviving, too, it seems, is my sense of the fantastic) & invite me Mayhap, to Xmas party-visit! But now I got an Xmas tree Oh yes my very own Xmas Tree Which I fleet-foot off like some itinerant academic Tiny Tim across Bay State Road with, Evergreen over shoulder, & with hardly a needle falling; & back home & a few steps upstairs back in my room I find an old plant-pot left from summertime, so's to set it up, Using some old root-drainage rocks as chocks (I checks To make sure they're dry, 'cause they'll be around electricity soon, & lately my wearied system, I think Has had enuf shocks). & Oh, in its pot, facing big bay window, & at edge of my earth-brown carpet It stands upright! A regular traditional Xmas landscape! & So then I run Backtrackwards with enthusiasm, as far as corner grocer--the ever-open Kenmore Square "24-Hour Village Food Store" (where I'm a relatively well-known persona gratia Because of manifold night-time purchases, during my frequent insomnia)-- Dawn on Kenmore Square 1 block from 59 Bay State Rd. all so's just to supplement at last minute, my low-budget, bits-&-pieces hall-decking supply; & so for my One large semi-bare room with its two big bay windows now winter-dim I buy A plastic envelope containing 20 multicolored pretty ribbon-bows, plus tinsel-pak; --& Also, out of keen-focussing side-of-eye, spies I (On counter-corner), six smashed-up plastic candy-canes, just remnants, Which I decide to run home the one brief block without; & then I think some more about having multicolored Tree galore, what with the ribands, tinsel, & Xmas-balls from my half-forgot hall-closet hall-bedecking store; & so exclaim silently (after duly shaking the upright tree, to recheck out the chocks-- Oh my own dear fir-Tree, from which still no evergreen needle doth unsightly fall!)--"Why Some of them candy-canes still had the hook-on part left intact!"; & So I run back to grocery store, after counting out 60 pennies (All spare change that had been accumulating lately); & Leaning once more o'er the counter announce to an impossibly grumpy store-manager: "It's a true Xmas-in-Boston late-night Neighborhood Miracle!--here's a customer Thinking of buying three of those still-priced-at 20¢ candy-canes; any Xmas-Eve bargains"? --But he don't blink a grizzled eyelash, I heard onc't, e'en before I moved up here, that famous-for-book-banning, Puritanical Boston Could also be a sometimes hostile, stand-offish, & populationally somewot grim city (dug-in "Townie" local-folk Oft hostile here to transcient "Gownies"); but this reaction's quite beyond Proper-Bostonian & tight-lipped-humorless, & verging on the totally witless!--& So, still smiling, after parting with all pence rushes I happily out; & back once again upstairs at home hangs I the three semi-intact candy-canes from the lower-limbs Of the Tree; & dances I about a bit, throwing handfuls of glittering tinsel o'er it; then plugs I in the (now) unboxed-at-leisure light-bulb-string Oh in & on & Oh What Glory O Wot Glory (& OhMiGod this reads almost Like a regular if somewot goofy Xmas-story!); then sits I down & Turns I around on couch towards big bay windows & admires it As, amazingly, cheerily, it glows its purely improvised, new-found light down into once-dark street; & Then, some only-yesterday fresh-bought pure Cow eggnog in my hand I relaxes utterly, & flips on my old b. & w. household portable T.V.-- ('77 saw vanish the color-one, by property-settling decree); & Watches I The Pope at Vatican Square offering Enlightening Holiday-Time Meditations to huge multitudes in Vatican Square which have turned out; & then (changing channels) Several local Reverend-folk giving lengthy fireside chats to roomfuls of the dinner-tabl'd devout; Yet, e'en whilst happily beholding sitting-&-salivating & sometimes milling throngs I chance to wonder a little bit too (I hope not too oddly, but rather out of natural human curiosity): Just Who Could it have been recently, who left behind that brand new Xmas Tree? --Some affluent student spirit, who tho't he or she would spend pre-Xmas In Boston locally, but who then panicked & optioned-out "home-sickly"?; or p'raps some other well-loved, family- Supported sport, who gen'rusly offered the Tree's odors for a few hours to dorm room-mates, & then abandoned it; & As for his or her own imminent prodigal home-flight return, completely planned it? Oh, there have been times when I have felt like the most woebegone creature on this planet --'Cept all this whole freaking flickering Tree's beautiful now, in its glow On a little table beside my bedstead with its worn-out leftover-from-marriage coverlet Where, towards the midnight, I suddenly saw fit to transplant it (for reasons half-unknown to me, not sure I understand it) --All I know is I feel peaceful, & almost glowing too, suddenly, as I lie down beneath it; & Somehow feel that tho' it's already nearing Midnight It might be nice, since this Tree's so very pretty, if I shared it --& Since once again at year-end I'm thinking of Alice, my dear at-sweet-sixteen ded-&-cremated pussycat I haul across the apartment a small wicker basket I kept (it must be confessed), with her little cream-white ceramic Ashes-Urn inside of it; & thus & so, lying down Beneath the Tree & beside this real & literal & virtually tactile souvenir of my dear Alice (since with its compact, oval, or rounded shapes, Urn reminds me of former her, when snoozing all curled up on my brown carpet), With a single chaste candle burning bright between it & my pretty Xmas tree I spend with Alice Xmas-day dawning hours, discoursing philosophically On Various Events transpir'd Since Her Deceasement... --&, Oh, compared to most Of the rest of 1978, thus far the most curious-strenuous of all my years, This hour seems Oh so amazingly calm & peaceful, as slowly The Holy Spirit of Xmas gently registers... & Perhaps, too, suitably, Next noonday, with lights still flickering in their chain, & with Alice Inside the wicker-work basket, snug in her casket of porcelain & with the candle by then out, I awake suddenly, to find me only me beneath the Tree --& Christmas Day's so calm, so decent, & so fine (being at last my own: & my own's own, pain-free & with all recent irritations-- & indeed with almost all other recent or distant mem'ry absent) that I find I can even Resist making analogies either arcane or else too easy, & specious & deadly old-time literary --For example, I shall not even compare my tiny little Xmas Tree To the enormous shared tree in Rockefeller Center back in N.Y.C. Midst a long-lost, ghostly host of gone but never I swear never-to-be-forgotten Company: Various old "Fast Friends," the dozens, who midst times that were hard, banded together almost just as one, To help send me this year's single Xmas card. (Boston, Xmas '78--poem completed, NYC, Xmas '97) Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' Brief Benedikt Bio Holiday Season Prose Poems BROWNSTONE IN BOSTON In that little three-story house, with its rented rooms, the tenants were not exactly what one would call, "Mutually Hospitable." --Even when snow lay piled up on front stoop & back stairs, rendering all exits almost impassable Occupants continued to gather word of developments in one another's apartments, such as tea-time gatherings, card-games, & parties By either listening to scraps of conversation & faint strains of music which escaped, sometimes, through their mutual walls; Or else by counting the dots on, or in, the thrown-out roach-traps Which they discovered out front, in their neighbors' garbage piles; & The openings & closing of their doors, as they peered out of them & eavesdropped, Were like the tumblers, rising & falling, of some enormous lock To which the wind, all that winter-- Which always seemed exceptionally strong blowing around that lonely brownstone building, on that cold, cold street where once, in Boston, I both dwelt & worked-- Was the only key that could be found.... UP LATE WRITING What a strange feeling it was!--waking up suddenly, in one's new & unfamiliar city; & not only that, but at 10:30 AM, After an especially long, excited night's writing About one's new location, & recent changes in one's life in general; & Then sitting up, bolt upright, semi-stunned at the edge of the bed To find oneself uncertain at first as to whether one had--for the third night in a row!-- Just gone to bed, & was therefore still trying to get a good night's sleep, starting around 6:30 AM Or whether one was merely arising a little later than most people once again, in the middle of what one's new neighbors--as well as most other people everywhere!-- Would conventionally call, "The Working Morning." & Then, despite the relative lateness of the hour in conventional terms, totally disorientedly, & besides that totally exhaustedly, going back to bed & sleeping half the day away anyway, Feeling, after one's vast efforts during the prior night, vaguely heroic, like some inspired beatific saint; or maybe like some dedicated athlete or else some dauntless trooper; & then only afterwards, yes only upon fully awakening, remembering half-startled & yet finally for absolute certain That one had once again, actually gone to sleep the prior night (or rather, that very same morning) not just by dawnlight, but especially late --in fact, at 8:30 AM! --While also realizing with some sadness, too, that despite one's tremendous efforts The balance of the "Working World," from all easily available visible signs (such as the one's shining, sun-struck big front bay windows, shrouded in their still conspicuously closed curtains facing the busy street) Would most likely--if it noticed at all (maybe during lunch-breaks?)-- not only regard one as a person who's inveterately lazy But still worse yet, as a really disgracefully self-flaunting type of "Goof-Off"! --"General Confusion & Probably Temporary Temporal Disorientation," The heavily underlined, cautionary phrase explains In the psychology book one left open quite circumspectly the prior night as a warning to oneself, re one's predictable morning confusion, there upon the nightstand beside one's bedside; --Ah yes, that must be why one woke up so fitfully, & fuzzily, only to engage in some quite self-astonished thinking, about that long, long night just passed; --& Ah yes too, that must be why, following that brief hiatus One sat up on the edge of the bed, & then immediately looked around frantically for one's new yet already somewhat worn-out working-&-writing jeans --& Sure enough, discovered the exact location of those jeans, Looking only just a little the worse for wear & only slightly crumpled up, Sitting there, in a sort of soldier's stance--even without one's being back in them yet!-- Still poised there, around 2 PM, At the foot of the bed. DON HALL & JANE KENYON OF 'EAGLE POND FARM,' IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, INVITE A N.Y. CITY BOY, RESETTLED FOR A TIME IN BOSTON, TO A COUNTRY PARTY; AND EVERYBODY GOES OUT TO HEAR SOME POETRY, AT 'THE BLAZING STAR GRANGE' IN DANBURY, N.H., ON KATE FOWLER'S 100TH (!) BIRTHDAY, JULY 16, l978 This Webversion for Donald Hall. And, In Memorium, Jane Kenyon "One of the primary problems for the composer in an industrial society like that of America is to achieve integration, to find justification for the life of art in the life about him." --Aaron Copland Be That As It May: To paraphrase the well-known song by folksinger Woody Guthrie, It wasn't my land, it was your land, up they-ah. So, for me, it was a bit like theatre (At first), for a native New Yorker to not only have Boston back there, as a Point of Departure, but also to find himself still farther away--'way up North there-- in Danbury area & near the middle of New Hampshire, Twice-a-tourist, at Ms. Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday Party. It was held (Stranger still), in one of those grand old "grange"-places (this one, called "The Blazing Star"), that they had built, farmer-folk, almost a full century ago, so as to hold meetings against various Eastern-urban railroad barons Who wanted to go running express-trains through their cow-pastures and their barns Or who (perhaps still far worse yet!) envisioned railroad yards & coalyards where there once grew grainfields. Doubtless, I thought, Old Kate Don't Forget, what that struggle was like (perhaps even as she made her stately entrance there --with all faces suddenly turned towards her form from afar, there at that sunlight-bright Entrance-Door, so many yards off in 'The Star'); yes turned towards Kate, long-awaited Kate, suddenly present among us at last here, calm in shining new wheelchair, in pretty white party-dress, with her smiling, tiny, pretty face beaming keenly from above its nice clear collar; then looking thoughtful withal, as Kate moved forth towards her audience whilst being wheeled athwart one staunch grange wall-- And, as Kate went by us then, gesturing to & greeting nearby "grange" neighbors (many of those still standing, bending down as if quasi-curtseying to whisper things to her--in passing as it were), I scanned (in background), various commemorative plaques along the grange-walls, some of them (as Don had earlier, in an aside said) with various names of the Halls' Relatives engraved thereupon;--& yea, in the midst of that plaque-plethora, from beside me, Don and Jane pointed out to me yet some more! And, looking & waiting, & temporarily located here midst all this well-situated history, this traveler had to remind himself, somewhat as if for stability: So here it is, somewhere well forward of the last quarter of The Twentieth Century; And, here I was, in the midst of it, sitting firmly there as could be; and, finally, slowly arrived up front before all her folks, there was a very old & patient lady, quietly awaiting her personal centennial ceremony; --Oh, calm poised Kate, evincing at odd moments some slight fidget-disconcertment, but fundamentally seeming not at all surprised to have turned up today here, situated there in her fabulously shiny and perhaps for all I knew totally quite brand new, too, tubular-chrome model wheelchair; And then there was all that sudden applause and also a surprise-message being recited slowly now to Kate by the flowery-flanneled & snappily-shirted red-suspender'd M.C.-of-the-Affair: A personal homespun message (via telegram) from her U.S. President, "Jimmy" Carter (!) And Wife Rosalind; & this living, personal moment in a region's history was clearly overwhelming & thrilling everybody & (even stranger still), twice-a-stranger here, me; & yet quite rightly, it somehow seemed, yes indeed somehow quite rightly; And suddenly beside me and beside themselves those dear sweeties Don and Jane was largely weeping in the seats (they had sat down on either side Of me; and this too was trav'ler-kindly; & made me feel kind of like Family); & There was Jane shedding some lovely large globs and there was Don most tenderly misting (for this was happening almost exactly on the literal land that they live on, as those plaques I could not help but keep glancing at, over & over again by my own curious accord, kept reminding me & indeed Insisting); And next thing we all knew there was a suddenly azzif-from-nowhere Young Lady Singer down on one knee crouching beside Kate & then uttering also her own tender All beside that wheelchair Almost as if before some present-day secular U.S. of A. altar, the Young Lady Singer now be-bent over herself-- but still steadying Kate Fowler's tiny little hand with gestures of her own fond young hand & exchanging gaze-for gaze and adding her own memento to the day with her own birthday-keeping, & time & history-honoring song message-- Singing what was described as a "Kate Old Favorite," nothing less than "God Be With You, 'Til We Meet Again"--a tune from by-gone days yet full of positive sentiment appropriate at that moment & spot, the main point there & then being the presentness of the past, and the serious importance to all of us serious humans present there, of the sense of Dearly Remembering; & I still can think with awed astonishment at the effect of her brave art: that Young Lady Singer actually compressing her own diaphragm with one free hand (she, so clearly & absolutely determined to secure one hard-to-reach still-distant virtuosic superb high-note which she wanted to--& indeed, did--actually at last make); & That made sense, too, at that particular historical site & date, for to celebrate right then & there with what would most please Kate, whilst evoking all her art, was after all that musician's whole point; --& Just Then, as if in accompanyment to that generously-given, tenderly tendered, & (I thought also) movingly-memorializing song-message What was announced as "The Official Birthday-Celebration Poem," was recited aloud --Composed, it was, I heard from Don in whisper by (for-at-least-that-one-time) one literarally-inclined relative of Don & of Jane; & I suppose it was what the relative-poet himself & some of us all would call "Occasional," all set up so simply & touchingly-neat in its direct and feelingful couplets; & I could not help but be moved by it, the poetry from start-to-finish expressing nothing but the best of circumstantial sentiments for Kate's birthday, that most pleasant & aupicious & historical New Hampshire Day; & So moved was everybody else, in the rows all around us; oh, to the very edges of that Grange, I saw numerous verges & surges of tears and many other tiny visible evidences of emotional interior overwhelment (the latter evinced by delicate meek twitches of meet public restraint); and there was something else in there in that poem Besides that, that spoke out freely for me: I liked The Definite Fact That tho' writ most assuredly for a sweet-nostalgic party, that work wasn't frilly, or superfluous, in the sense that it was Accomplishing Something As, in Kate Fowler's birth-century, the 19th, Poets--self-bespoke "unacknowledged legislators" of all the world so many long & accumulat'd songs ago-- Once said Poetry Should Do (and, I think, once again ought to Try To Do)--; & anyway, certainly, minimally, from the depths of its directness That poem made an old lady & I think somehow all of us who were tearful & there feel somehow joyous; & Yes!--since it ever-so-openly expressed & summed-up our own warm feelings, too-- a whole lot definitely better --Reminding us as it did of such things as our rich, colorful American Heritage, & In passing, too, of the wealth of significance of events around us in our own times & probably any later Day & Age Which events after all--with the passage of time--become a form of history too... Additional stanzas of this-as-yet uncompleted poem appear at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Site & Table of Contents Xmas On Bay State Road Brownstone In Boston Up Late Writing Don Hall & Jane Kenyon Holiday Season Prose Poems "Xmas On Bay State Road" is from a manuscript-still-in-work about a 3 year sojourn in Boston l977-l980, called Family Blessings, Family Curses. Eventually, poem may become part of Transitions. An earlier version of "Xmas on BSR" was published in The Massachusetts Review in l985, © Michael Benedikt, l985. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l997. Drawing of Alice based on photo by M.B., © Oriole Farb, l979. "Brownstone in Boston" & "Up Late Writing" are from Transitions. An earlier version of "Brownstone in Boston" was pubished in ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) during the l980's, © Michael Benedikt l98-. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998. An earlier version of "Up Late Writing" appeared in Colorado Review, © Michael Benedikt l991. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998. "Don Hall & Jane Kenyon of 'Eagle Pond Farm' in New Hampshire, Invite A City Boy--Resettled For A Time in Boston--To A Country Party; And Everybody Goes Out To Hear Some Poetry at 'The Blazing Star' Grange in Danbury, N.H., on Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday, July 16, l978." Also from Family Blessings, Family Curses. An earlier version was published in Agni Review, © Michael Benedikt, l982. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l999. Top of Site & Table of Contents Holiday Season Prose Poems Brief Benedikt Bio. Complete bio in print medium of poet appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in The World, etc. Contemporary US poet Michael Benedikt has published 5 volumes of poetry: The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980); and with Wesleyan University Press, Night Cries ( prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, l971); Sky (l970); and The Body (l968). Anthologies of poetry under his editorship are The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976); and The Poetry of Surrealism (Little Brown, l974). Other anthologies include three volumes of European plays co-edited with theater critic George E. Wellwarth: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism (E.P. Dutton, l964); Post-War German Theater (Dutton, l967); and Modern Spanish Theater (Dutton, l969). He's also the editor of Theatre Experiment, a collection of American Plays (Doubleday, l967). Benedikt's a former Associate Editor of Art News and Art International. A former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review, his editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology (Norton, l990). He's currently a Contributing Editor for The American Poetry Review. Recent, thus far uncollected poetry published in New York Quarterly, Agni, Iowa Review, Jerusalem Review, Lips, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, and Washington Square--and in The Paris Review (#151), which includes a long poem in honor of Einstein (External link: online version at our site here). Work appears in numerous anthologies of Contemporary US poetry. Literary criticism in Poetry, The American Book Review and elsewhere. Grants and awards have included an NEA Fellowship, a NY State Council On The Arts Grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. Benedikt has taught as Visiting Prof. at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar College/s; and in the English/Creative Writing Department at Boston University. He's read from his poetry at many colleges and universities around the USA--most recently at several Barnes & Noble 'superstores' in NY Metro area. He lives in Manhattan. In addition to this site, Benedikt's work is represented on the Web at numerous Other Benedikt Links Top HOLIDAY SEASON PROSE POEMS 'Welcome Yule'--Jubilant pandemonium from A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL _________ Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose.... "The Christmas Angel" lst appeared as ''The Church of The Immaculate Peanut-Brittle" as one of several poems about Angels in Mole Notes (Wesleyan U. Press, l971), © Michael Benedikt l971. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, 2001. NEW TOYS "Twas the Night Before Christmas..." Clement Clarke Moore "You better watch out, you better not cry/Better not pout, I'm telling you why/Santa Claus is coming to town..." --Popular Song New toys, new toys... every year, around this time, that's all you hear children talking about. And that's fine! But what about mine? My new toys are a ball, a bat, and a jack. That is to say, a brand new trackball for my laptop, an updated autoexec.bat, and a modem with a quick-connect telephone jack--and a whole box-full of other high-tech toys operated electronically and even via infared remote control! Now that I'm supposed to be an adult, I realize all too well that if I'm to have the kind of brand new toys I want and think I richly deserve, for the most part I'll have to buy them for myself! And--since I like being generous towards myself--consequently I expect it to be Christmas Every Day! Still, like most of us former children, I can't forget my carefree childhood, replete with showers of Christmas gifts of all kinds from every side--so that when it comes to the present, I'm disappointed and sometimes resent it! My parents, of course, do the best they can. So do some others! But somehow lately I've even begun to think of my dear, recently-deceased 90-year-old Auntie--who for some reason refuses to buy me any new toys all anymore--as some kind of sinister, malingering Scrooge! Oh, preserve me from being rebellious enough towards being my own age, and even to this entire Y2K age, to want to change the name on my doorbell to Robert Crachit! Yes, I've shopped until I've dropped--yet somehow I feel neglected! Having completed all my shopping, on Christmas Eve I finally fall asleep exhausted. And guess who I dream about? Of course, dear old Santa Claus! Yes, with a great "Ho Ho Ho," here comes good old Kris Kringle sliding down my chimney! Only now, he too is operated by remote-control. Oh, ho, at least he hasn't forgotten to carry on his back his famous bulging sack! "Santa, you know," I say, as into my artificial fireplace he falls with a clatter, "what with all that dust you're throwing off and that big pack slung over your back, you look just like a vacuum-cleaner!" "And you--you've got enough toys already!" he shouts back at me; and in a huff, he turns and sails back up the chimney. What a nightmare of a Santa! Immediately, half-way around the world, a radio-controlled Kris Kringle comes in on his homing-beam... He's getting bored by then, so instead of using the chimney like he's supposed to, he picks a front-door lock and smashes down a doorway--the doorway to a lonely lady's bedroom! As he enters, he says, of course : "Ho Ho!" "Oh, Oh, Santa," the lonely lady says, pulling the covers up beneath her chin, "where are your dear reindeer?" "Ho Ho, my reindeer are up there on your roof--where did you think they were all this time, dear little dummy--did you think I arrived here at your house in a Hertz Rent-A-Car?' "Oh, Oh, what are they doing up there, Santa?" his astonished hostess cries out, drawing up the covers still further. "Ho Ho, they're making it--and F.Y.I., that's what I always meant to suggest when in less sophisticated times than these, you heard me shouting "On Dancer, On Prancer!'" Santa tosses a big box of condoms onto the lady's coverlet, leaves a boxed assortment of state-of-the art sex-toys at the foot of the bed and--back at the fireplace--hangs up a pair of black nylon stockings for her to use as next year's Christmas-stockings. He then says good-bye--leaving by jumping out of the window while pulling on the pants of his red zoot suit and zipping his fly back up. The lonely lady jumps up, runs through her shattered bedroom doorway, and throws up the sash of her kitchen window --apparently looking forward at least, to the pleasure of seeing Santa and his reindeer team rushing over the crest of the new-fallen-snow and then rising picturesquely into the night. In the night, an outcry: "Oh Santa, dear Santa, my kitchen closet's open--where's my family silverware? "Ho Ho Ho ho ho..."--and Santa and his reindeer team vanish into the darkness, after nearly colliding with a descending jet. Well, even in dreams, I guess that's just the way it is for some of us, on this fourth Christmas eve after the end of the mean old 20th Century. Too many wars have bent our perceptions of Good Will into pretzels! Personal Injustices and Abandonments we've all suffered threaten to twist our conceptions of generosity into silly putty! As for me, all I can say today about the new toys I still long for and feel I richly deserve, is that as a child what I wanted most for Christmas was for all my friends to be just a little bit nicer and kinder to one another--and maybe even to me; but these days, what I want--and fully expect--from Santa, is nothing less than Peace On Earth for all Humankind And Also Throughout The Entire Universe For The Next Two Hundred Thousand Years. Ho Ho Ho, ho ho ho ho, Ho! "New Toys" is from yet another Benedikt mss.-in-progress-- a collection of prose poems called Universe. An earlier version of "New Toys" was published in Works: Edson, Benedikt, & Ackerson , ed. by Duane Ackerson (Dragonfly Press, l972), © Michael Benedikt l972. Thanks to Duane Ackerson for © transfer to author, l997. Based on revisions of mss. of Universe completed in Boston in 1980, this Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l999. (Xmas Eve reference, updated in '04 to '04). (Note: Animated image below first appeared Xmas '00, in initial edition of this webpage. We like it so much that we're keeping it-- pending of course discovery of an animated .gif with a bouncing numeral for the current year). NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS New Year's eve had been great fun, what with all its partying, silliness and celebrating; but then, next thing we all knew, the clock struck midnight! Time for still more partying, silliness and celebrating! But also--if one is normally of an at least moderately serious and punctilious turn-of-mind, as of course I consider myself to be--time to begin effecting at the very start of the New Year, resolutions made towards the end of the old year! Throw all those champagne-glasses into the fireplace, throw those champagne-bottles into the recycling-bin, and let's get started! The first thing I thought I'd do, since the prior year had been a year of really extraordinary change for me--as, come to think of it, periods as long as an entire year are for most people--is to resolve once again, just as most people do around the turn of the New Year--to "Take Stock Of Oneself." Yes, it was due time for that! Past due time for that, in fact! "Just who do you think you are, anyway, Mr. B.? " I asked myself gravely, from the place on the rug where I and several other guests had fallen together, after jumping up and down while the T.V. Times Square ball fell. (An answer to that ongoing question at last? Wow!--I could hardly wait to hear it!). But then I heard a stubborn, cantankerous little voice within myself reply: "Sorry, Mr. B: even after all these years, I'm really sorry to say I'm not sure who you are yet...--or rather, come to think of it, even after all these years, I'm really happy to say that I'm not sure yet! After all, even after quite a few decades of living, that's not the kind of question anyone can answer off the top of his or her head or by trying to force the issue, is it?" "But," I heard that little inner voice continue, "just in case I do happen to find out once and for all just exactly who you are Mr. B., or who anybody else is as a matter of fact--either on this particular day or on any other day during the course of the forthcoming year--here's a New Year's Resolution I will not only make, but actually keep: I promise you that when it comes to hearing the answer to that particular question, at least you won't be among the very last to know." "New Year's Resolutions" is also from Universe. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l998. Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems The Christmas Angel New Toys New Year's Resolutions Xmas On Bay State Road Other Benedikt Links Alice in NYC as cover-girl for book, Night Cries (prose poems, l976). Please click (top of) Image for Site Contents Table FORTHCOMING TO THIS SITE'S PARENT SITE POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE --A NARRATIVE POEM ABOUT ALICE'S PRE-POSTHUMOUS LIFE & TIMES ALSO A BOSTON PHOTO-ALBUM PAGE WITH PIX IN ADDITION TO THOSE ALREADY AT POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE ALL TO BE ADDED IN 2002 2003 2004 2005 Top Quick-Link to Guest Poem by Laura Boss re--of all things!--a year-round Allergy to Cats. Other Boss poems now there, too. Back button to return to this site. ('Return-Link' at Guest page connects to this site's parent site, 'Poems from Boston & Cambridge'). OTHER BENEDIKT LINKS Notes by The Benedikt Team A B O U T 'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net' Feature article on Benedikt & websites & on his publications in print media. Posted by About.com 4/99 Academy of American Poets: Michael Benedikt With detailed Bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's 5 published poetry books. Posted by Academy 5/99 BENEDIKT'S 'SITES FOR ALL SEASONS' Music to look at link-list at Xmas-tide by TWO OTHER MUCH-BOOKMARKED POETRY PAGES RE OTHER HOLIDAYS 'The 4th of July: NY & NJ & Laura & Me' Re the word "Independence" in term "Independence Day." Subtopic: Uneasy relationship between Public Events & Private Events in our times. Spooky Poems for Halloween Part of a multi-paged site with Selected Poems from The Body and Sky, Benedikt's lst two, generally haunting poetry books. Other pages include a page with Notes & Commentary on those 2 books by The Benedikt Team: a Thematic Index focusing on the multi-media background of the poems. With visual arts-related photos from Benedikt's 1960's Archive. Modern poetry teaching aid may be useful to students writing poetry term-papers. Site even has a Home Page. Sky -page. PROSE POEMS If you had fun with the prose poems at this site, you might also enjoy these two sites with other Fact & Fantasy-fusing prose poems from Benedikt's book Night Cries Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose, droll (?) prose poems about domestic life from section of Night Cries called "Household Hallucinations." Site also has interview from Poetry Society of American Newsletter answering such questions as "just what is a prose poem, anyway?" & "when did prose poetry start?" Also at site: essay on "Future of American Prose Poem." Prose Poems & Microfictions, other prose poems from Night Cries--about the same size & shape as "New Toys." With book review from London Times Literary Supplement. Also w. info on Benedikt's landmark 600-page antho. of global prose poetry: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. PROSE POEMS & OTHER Theater, Film & TV Poems, miscellany including 2 Showbiz-related prose poems from Benedikt's book Mole Notes. About Mole Notes, reviewer for Modern Poetry Studies wrote: "As far as I can tell, the volume has no precedent in US Literature, although certainly it belongs to the tradition of our modern epics beginning with Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Also poem re 1960's pop-star lookalikes Ringo Starr & Brit. film actress Rita Tushingham, & other later verse. With info on Benedikt's 3 anthologies of 20th-Century European drama--"Black Humor" from France, Germany, & Spain. Many plays in French collection are Surrealism-based & translated by Benedikt. If you enjoyed reading poems with music, you might also enjoy the Bertrand prose poem site just below Aloysius Bertrand: Fantasies by First French Prose Poet. Selected Prose Poems by a 19th-Century 'original.' Fantasies on dark side from masterwork, Gaspard de la Nuit. Music based on 3 Bertrand poems by Ravel of Bolero fame. SHOWBIZ--RELATED MINI-SITES 'Of Orson Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The Worlds' Poem-in-progress re early radio program that shook the nation. Closing stanzas still to be added. With notes on the poem's conclusion. Subtopic: State Censorship of Airwaves in times of crisis. 'Of The Colorful Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' Re a daring, free-spirited theater co. which still plays in Moscow's Taganka district today. Also about eternal, year-round human need for more bliss in life. Subtopic: State Censorship of Arts 'Runixie' Site with song lyric about flying faerie whose sole limit is limitless stars. Image by Canadian artist Marina Badani. With info about stratospheric sprite-sightings by NASA. Subtopics: Freedom. Links among Arts & Sciences. AND THEN THERE'S 3 Poems Praising Peace With Intro re Peaceful Individuals being a prerequisite for World Peace. At Xmastide et seq. Peace site is part of a larger site with many other selections from Benedikt's recent poetry: The Thesaurus & Other New Verse The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Sequence of comical love poems. (After Xmas & New Year's Day, can Valentine's Day be far behind?) AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET Cat Fanciers - http://www.fanciers.com Queen Midnight of CLAW (Visitors' Center) - http://www.claw.org (includes Claw Theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' & a 'Poetry In Motion' page for cats who write poetry) More Modern American Xmas Literature at: Poems by Cambridge poet Peter Payack--incl. the ecology-minded "Santa & The Ho Ho Ho Zone" - http://www.peterpayack.com Virtual Fireplace with Hearth & Yule Log With crackling hearth for Yuletide, Xmas Eve, & Cold Wintry Nights In '03--a jubilant version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' (Note: Boston's 59 Bay State Rd. has a chimney. And, last we looked, fireplaces too). Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems Top of 'Other Benedikt Links' 'Sussex Carol' (traditional) arr. by Ralph Vaughan-Williams Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! ! Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. Top Yule Log
XMAS ON BAY STATE ROAD, BOSTON
In Fond Memory, a Dear Cat Named Alice
A larger version of this Boston map appears at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge. To check out current Boston weather at boston.com, try here. To browse Alice's 59 Bay State Road & BU neighborhood in Boston further & to check out local stores & visitor info. etc. at mapquest.com, click here. (Zipcode to enter is 02215).
It's Xmas Xmas well almost Xmas & hardly anybody's home Around here, in Boston, where I've been living & teaching as visiting Poet-in-Residence at Boston U., for three semesters now; yes, it seems they've all gone off, Every student & (seems stranger yet) every local Prof. All, all gone off to their extra-curricular, really serious, "Serious Lives." Oh how fleeting, so oft, are the joys of "Serious Academic 'Communities'"! --Seldom have I seen so many weighty, truly serious suitcases In the hands of so many still virtually total strangers.
& Me?--Today, day of Xmas Eve, I go poking moseyingly around the blocks by red-brick Brownstone where I dwell at campus-edge, thru streets strip't now of their usual local color--with bright winter coats & jackets gone now, hardly even a double-parked, street-blocking "B.U."-stickered car here Gives relief to this background of almost total, academic factory, concrete gray; Oh, it's been one year & 1/2 almost exactly, since B.U. invited me (from NYC) To be their peripatetic "Visiting Prof.," in both English & Creative Writing Dep'ts, for Poetry; 'Cept they said "move up here, too"--which whimsical invitation it turned out meant (as oft such doth for many a so-called "colorfully-living," that is, cash-short Vagabond Professor & Poet)--
It was for me & me alone to locate & search out Like an instant local real-estate expert, my one-room convenient- to-B.U.-apartment to negotiate, furnish, & rent In the midst (no less) of a then still-ongoing, still dragging-on, expensive N.Y.C. marital divorcement. True, I had company, for a while, in a little 16-year-old white cat-- "Alice" she was, subject of several Boston-set epic poems I wrote, who '78 saw surface cancerous. Following Major Operation She died, at start of term-time, as leaves fell, in the Fall...
Alice Looking Out of Window at Bay State Road, Xmas '77
But if this poet was, in the midst of this, somewot tense from matters demandingly domestic, forensic, esthetic, & financial & Therefore whilst dealing with all these, acting odd & emotional, & generally Bizzy-Crazy Hardly anybody (least of all the folks at "host" B.U.), cared to Ask The Poet Why...
--& So, as host to these sad tho'ts & bitter, on Xmas Eve I wander Suddenly I espy it!: A recently & much-too-early tossed-out (for still-fresh) little Xmas Tree Behind a store, green fir tip sticking up invitingly, from heap of so-called trash in dumpster All undecorated & untinselled o'er as yet; & with paper-scrap from memo-pad scotch-taped to it Requesting, "Please Take Me!" Sweet!--its identity evidently, too, this late-in- '78 December day, come 'round as Xmas throwaway. & So I lifts this Tree Joyfully from out of the surrounding trash (thanking the Good Lord that Even if there had been bugs on it, I would not have thought "oh horrors," or flinched anymore, due to the nature of this particular, somewot hellish year--or even batted a single Eyelash); but no, that tree's quite clear, & clean--almost pristinely; & so I can take it back to dwelling immediately; but think To wit: Does I have any decorations somewhere to go with it? Oh yes, Oh yes & happy day! (I guess); & Oh how I thank the Holy Spirit Of our human ingeniousness--for despite the difficulties of this past year (& with me sometimes feeling about 100 years beyond my age) Deep-down, I must still be resourceful, cheery, & undiscouraged;--for, ah yes, roughly 10 days ago, returning pre-holiday-time From an early closing bookstore, I recalls I bought some discount Xmas-balls Near Harvard, at 5¢ & 10¢-store o'er in sparkling town of Cambridge;
Matter-of-fact (says the joyous mem'ry I'm suddenly flooded by)
I also bought myself a set of little flickering lights at dime-store, perhaps for Christmas meant Or else maybe my close-of-divorcement year to celebrate, which midst haste At term-end, what with term-papers to read & tests to grade, I just plugged in & set whilst all-still-in-box, propped up on the back of living-room couch facing one big bay window of the first floor apartment wherein I hold academic tenancy; & Then left on, winking & flashing for all to see. . . But oh why?
--I suppose only to show anybody still left sentient in this transient district & walking by--whether or not they cared-- That I'd survived; & was still alive; & still wished A Merry Xmas To Them; & also hoping, I suppose secretly, that maybe somebody'd see it (Surviving, too, it seems, is my sense of the fantastic) & invite me Mayhap, to Xmas party-visit! But now I got an Xmas tree Oh yes my very own Xmas Tree Which I fleet-foot off like some itinerant academic Tiny Tim across Bay State Road with, Evergreen over shoulder, & with hardly a needle falling; & back home & a few steps upstairs back in my room I find an old plant-pot left from summertime, so's to set it up, Using some old root-drainage rocks as chocks (I checks To make sure they're dry, 'cause they'll be around electricity soon, & lately my wearied system, I think Has had enuf shocks). & Oh, in its pot, facing big bay window, & at edge of my earth-brown carpet It stands upright! A regular traditional Xmas landscape! & So then I run Backtrackwards with enthusiasm, as far as corner grocer--the ever-open Kenmore Square "24-Hour Village Food Store" (where I'm a relatively well-known persona gratia Because of manifold night-time purchases, during my frequent insomnia)--
Dawn on Kenmore Square 1 block from 59 Bay State Rd.
all so's just to supplement at last minute, my low-budget, bits-&-pieces hall-decking supply; & so for my One large semi-bare room with its two big bay windows now winter-dim I buy A plastic envelope containing 20 multicolored pretty ribbon-bows, plus tinsel-pak; --& Also, out of keen-focussing side-of-eye, spies I (On counter-corner), six smashed-up plastic candy-canes, just remnants, Which I decide to run home the one brief block without; & then I think some more about having multicolored Tree galore, what with the ribands, tinsel, & Xmas-balls from my half-forgot hall-closet hall-bedecking store; & so exclaim silently (after duly shaking the upright tree, to recheck out the chocks-- Oh my own dear fir-Tree, from which still no evergreen needle doth unsightly fall!)--"Why Some of them candy-canes still had the hook-on part left intact!"; & So I run back to grocery store, after counting out 60 pennies (All spare change that had been accumulating lately); & Leaning once more o'er the counter announce to an impossibly grumpy store-manager: "It's a true Xmas-in-Boston late-night Neighborhood Miracle!--here's a customer
Thinking of buying three of those still-priced-at 20¢ candy-canes; any Xmas-Eve bargains"? --But he don't blink a grizzled eyelash, I heard onc't, e'en before I moved up here, that famous-for-book-banning, Puritanical Boston Could also be a sometimes hostile, stand-offish, & populationally somewot grim city (dug-in "Townie" local-folk Oft hostile here to transcient "Gownies"); but this reaction's quite beyond Proper-Bostonian & tight-lipped-humorless, & verging on the totally witless!--& So, still smiling, after parting with all pence rushes I happily out; & back once again upstairs at home hangs I the three semi-intact candy-canes from the lower-limbs Of the Tree; & dances I about a bit, throwing handfuls of glittering tinsel o'er it; then plugs I in the (now) unboxed-at-leisure light-bulb-string Oh in & on
& Oh What Glory O Wot Glory (& OhMiGod this reads almost Like a regular if somewot goofy Xmas-story!); then sits I down & Turns I around on couch towards big bay windows & admires it As, amazingly, cheerily, it glows its purely improvised, new-found light down into once-dark street; & Then, some only-yesterday fresh-bought pure Cow eggnog in my hand I relaxes utterly, & flips on my old b. & w. household portable T.V.-- ('77 saw vanish the color-one, by property-settling decree); & Watches I The Pope at Vatican Square offering Enlightening Holiday-Time Meditations to huge multitudes in Vatican Square which have turned out; & then (changing channels) Several local Reverend-folk giving lengthy fireside chats to roomfuls of the dinner-tabl'd devout; Yet, e'en whilst happily beholding sitting-&-salivating & sometimes milling throngs I chance to wonder a little bit too (I hope not too oddly, but rather out of natural human curiosity): Just Who Could it have been recently, who left behind that brand new Xmas Tree? --Some affluent student spirit, who tho't he or she would spend pre-Xmas In Boston locally, but who then panicked & optioned-out "home-sickly"?; or p'raps some other well-loved, family- Supported sport, who gen'rusly offered the Tree's odors for a few hours to dorm room-mates, & then abandoned it; & As for his or her own imminent prodigal home-flight return, completely planned it? Oh, there have been times when I have felt like the most woebegone creature on this planet --'Cept all this whole freaking flickering Tree's beautiful now, in its glow On a little table beside my bedstead with its worn-out leftover-from-marriage coverlet Where, towards the midnight, I suddenly saw fit to transplant it (for reasons half-unknown to me, not sure I understand it) --All I know is I feel peaceful, & almost glowing too, suddenly, as I lie down beneath it; & Somehow feel that tho' it's already nearing Midnight It might be nice, since this Tree's so very pretty, if I shared it
--& Since once again at year-end I'm thinking of Alice, my dear at-sweet-sixteen ded-&-cremated pussycat I haul across the apartment a small wicker basket I kept (it must be confessed), with her little cream-white ceramic Ashes-Urn inside of it; & thus & so, lying down Beneath the Tree & beside this real & literal & virtually tactile souvenir of my dear Alice (since with its compact, oval, or rounded shapes, Urn reminds me of former her, when snoozing all curled up on my brown carpet),
With a single chaste candle burning bright between it & my pretty Xmas tree I spend with Alice Xmas-day dawning hours, discoursing philosophically On Various Events transpir'd Since Her Deceasement... --&, Oh, compared to most Of the rest of 1978, thus far the most curious-strenuous of all my years, This hour seems Oh so amazingly calm & peaceful, as slowly The Holy Spirit of Xmas gently registers... & Perhaps, too, suitably, Next noonday, with lights still flickering in their chain, & with Alice Inside the wicker-work basket, snug in her casket of porcelain & with the candle by then out, I awake suddenly, to find me only me beneath the Tree --& Christmas Day's so calm, so decent, & so fine (being at last my own: & my own's own, pain-free & with all recent irritations-- & indeed with almost all other recent or distant mem'ry absent) that I find I can even Resist making analogies either arcane or else too easy, & specious & deadly old-time literary --For example, I shall not even compare my tiny little Xmas Tree To the enormous shared tree in Rockefeller Center back in N.Y.C. Midst a long-lost, ghostly host of gone but never I swear never-to-be-forgotten Company: Various old "Fast Friends," the dozens, who midst times that were hard, banded together almost just as one, To help send me this year's single Xmas card.
(Boston, Xmas '78--poem completed, NYC, Xmas '97)
Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road'
Brief Benedikt Bio
Holiday Season Prose Poems
BROWNSTONE IN BOSTON
In that little three-story house, with its rented rooms, the tenants were not exactly what one would call, "Mutually Hospitable." --Even when snow lay piled up on front stoop & back stairs, rendering all exits almost impassable
Occupants continued to gather word of developments in one another's apartments, such as tea-time gatherings, card-games, & parties By either listening to scraps of conversation & faint strains of music which escaped, sometimes, through their mutual walls; Or else by counting the dots on, or in, the thrown-out roach-traps Which they discovered out front, in their neighbors' garbage piles;
& The openings & closing of their doors, as they peered out of them & eavesdropped, Were like the tumblers, rising & falling, of some enormous lock
To which the wind, all that winter-- Which always seemed exceptionally strong blowing around that lonely brownstone building, on that cold, cold street where once, in Boston, I both dwelt & worked--
Was the only key that could be found....
UP LATE WRITING
What a strange feeling it was!--waking up suddenly, in one's new & unfamiliar city; & not only that, but at 10:30 AM, After an especially long, excited night's writing About one's new location, & recent changes in one's life in general; & Then sitting up, bolt upright, semi-stunned at the edge of the bed
To find oneself uncertain at first as to whether one had--for the third night in a row!-- Just gone to bed, & was therefore still trying to get a good night's sleep, starting around 6:30 AM Or whether one was merely arising a little later than most people once again, in the middle of what one's new neighbors--as well as most other people everywhere!-- Would conventionally call, "The Working Morning."
& Then, despite the relative lateness of the hour in conventional terms, totally disorientedly, & besides that totally exhaustedly, going back to bed & sleeping half the day away anyway, Feeling, after one's vast efforts during the prior night, vaguely heroic, like some inspired beatific saint; or maybe like some dedicated athlete or else some dauntless trooper; & then only afterwards, yes only upon fully awakening, remembering half-startled & yet finally for absolute certain That one had once again, actually gone to sleep the prior night (or rather, that very same morning) not just by dawnlight, but especially late --in fact, at 8:30 AM!
--While also realizing with some sadness, too, that despite one's tremendous efforts The balance of the "Working World," from all easily available visible signs (such as the one's shining, sun-struck big front bay windows, shrouded in their still conspicuously closed curtains facing the busy street) Would most likely--if it noticed at all (maybe during lunch-breaks?)-- not only regard one as a person who's inveterately lazy But still worse yet, as a really disgracefully self-flaunting type of "Goof-Off"!
--"General Confusion & Probably Temporary Temporal Disorientation," The heavily underlined, cautionary phrase explains In the psychology book one left open quite circumspectly the prior night as a warning to oneself, re one's predictable morning confusion, there upon the nightstand beside one's bedside; --Ah yes, that must be why one woke up so fitfully, & fuzzily, only to engage in some quite self-astonished thinking, about that long, long night just passed;
--& Ah yes too, that must be why, following that brief hiatus
One sat up on the edge of the bed, & then immediately looked around frantically for one's new yet already somewhat worn-out working-&-writing jeans --& Sure enough, discovered the exact location of those jeans, Looking only just a little the worse for wear & only slightly crumpled up, Sitting there, in a sort of soldier's stance--even without one's being back in them yet!--
Still poised there, around 2 PM, At the foot of the bed.
DON HALL & JANE KENYON OF 'EAGLE POND FARM,' IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, INVITE A N.Y. CITY BOY, RESETTLED FOR A TIME IN BOSTON, TO A COUNTRY PARTY;
AND EVERYBODY GOES OUT TO HEAR SOME POETRY, AT 'THE BLAZING STAR GRANGE' IN DANBURY, N.H., ON KATE FOWLER'S 100TH (!) BIRTHDAY, JULY 16, l978
This Webversion for Donald Hall. And, In Memorium, Jane Kenyon
"One of the primary problems for the composer in an industrial society like that of America is to achieve integration, to find justification for the life of art in the life about him." --Aaron Copland
Be That As It May: To paraphrase the well-known song by folksinger Woody Guthrie, It wasn't my land, it was your land, up they-ah. So, for me, it was a bit like theatre (At first), for a native New Yorker to not only have Boston back there, as a Point of Departure, but also to find himself still farther away--'way up North there-- in Danbury area & near the middle of New Hampshire, Twice-a-tourist, at Ms. Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday Party. It was held
(Stranger still), in one of those grand old "grange"-places (this one, called "The Blazing Star"), that they had built, farmer-folk, almost a full century ago, so as to hold meetings against various Eastern-urban railroad barons Who wanted to go running express-trains through their cow-pastures and their barns
Or who (perhaps still far worse yet!) envisioned railroad yards & coalyards where there once grew grainfields. Doubtless, I thought, Old Kate Don't Forget, what that struggle was like (perhaps even as she made her stately entrance there --with all faces suddenly turned towards her form from afar, there at that sunlight-bright Entrance-Door, so many yards off in 'The Star'); yes turned towards Kate, long-awaited Kate, suddenly present among us at last here, calm in shining new wheelchair, in pretty white party-dress, with her smiling, tiny, pretty face beaming keenly from above its nice clear collar; then looking thoughtful withal, as Kate moved forth towards her audience whilst being wheeled athwart one staunch grange wall--
And, as Kate went by us then, gesturing to & greeting nearby "grange" neighbors (many of those still standing, bending down as if quasi-curtseying to whisper things to her--in passing as it were), I scanned (in background), various commemorative plaques along the grange-walls, some of them (as Don had earlier, in an aside said) with various names of the Halls' Relatives engraved thereupon;--& yea, in the midst of that plaque-plethora, from beside me, Don and Jane pointed out to me yet some more!
And, looking & waiting, & temporarily located here midst all this well-situated history, this traveler had to remind himself, somewhat as if for stability: So here it is, somewhere well forward of the last quarter of The Twentieth Century; And, here I was, in the midst of it, sitting firmly there as could be; and, finally, slowly arrived up front before all her folks, there was a very old & patient lady, quietly awaiting her personal centennial ceremony;
--Oh, calm poised Kate, evincing at odd moments some slight fidget-disconcertment, but fundamentally seeming not at all surprised to have turned up today here, situated there in her fabulously shiny and perhaps for all I knew totally quite brand new, too, tubular-chrome model wheelchair; And then there was all that sudden applause and also a surprise-message being recited slowly now to Kate by the flowery-flanneled & snappily-shirted red-suspender'd M.C.-of-the-Affair: A personal homespun message (via telegram) from her U.S. President, "Jimmy" Carter (!)
And Wife Rosalind; & this living, personal moment in a region's history was clearly overwhelming & thrilling everybody & (even stranger still), twice-a-stranger here, me; & yet quite rightly, it somehow seemed, yes indeed somehow quite rightly; And suddenly beside me and beside themselves those dear sweeties Don and Jane was largely weeping in the seats (they had sat down on either side Of me; and this too was trav'ler-kindly; & made me feel kind of like Family);
& There was Jane shedding some lovely large globs and there was Don most tenderly misting (for this was happening almost exactly on the literal land that they live on, as those plaques I could not help but keep glancing at, over & over again by my own curious accord, kept reminding me & indeed Insisting); And next thing we all knew there was a suddenly azzif-from-nowhere Young Lady Singer down on one knee crouching beside Kate & then uttering also her own tender All beside that wheelchair
Almost as if before some present-day secular U.S. of A. altar, the Young Lady Singer now be-bent over herself-- but still steadying Kate Fowler's tiny little hand with gestures of her own fond young hand & exchanging gaze-for gaze and adding her own memento to the day with her own birthday-keeping, & time & history-honoring song message--
Singing what was described as a "Kate Old Favorite," nothing less than "God Be With You, 'Til We Meet Again"--a tune from by-gone days yet full of positive sentiment appropriate at that moment & spot, the main point there & then being the presentness of the past, and the serious importance to all of us serious humans present there, of the sense of Dearly Remembering; & I still can think with awed astonishment at the effect of her brave art: that Young Lady Singer actually compressing her own diaphragm with one free hand (she, so clearly & absolutely determined to secure one hard-to-reach still-distant virtuosic superb high-note which she wanted to--& indeed, did--actually at last make); & That made sense, too, at that particular historical site & date, for to celebrate right then & there with what would most please Kate, whilst evoking all her art, was after all that musician's whole point;
--& Just Then, as if in accompanyment to that generously-given, tenderly tendered, & (I thought also) movingly-memorializing song-message What was announced as "The Official Birthday-Celebration Poem," was recited aloud
--Composed, it was, I heard from Don in whisper by (for-at-least-that-one-time) one literarally-inclined relative of Don & of Jane; & I suppose it was what the relative-poet himself & some of us all would call "Occasional," all set up so simply & touchingly-neat in its direct and feelingful couplets; & I could not help but be moved by it, the poetry from start-to-finish expressing nothing but the best of circumstantial sentiments for Kate's birthday, that most pleasant & aupicious & historical New Hampshire Day;
& So moved was everybody else, in the rows all around us; oh, to the very edges of that Grange, I saw numerous verges & surges of tears and many other tiny visible evidences of emotional interior overwhelment (the latter evinced by delicate meek twitches of meet public restraint); and there was something else in there in that poem Besides that, that spoke out freely for me: I liked The Definite Fact
That tho' writ most assuredly for a sweet-nostalgic party, that work wasn't frilly, or superfluous, in the sense that it was Accomplishing Something As, in Kate Fowler's birth-century, the 19th, Poets--self-bespoke "unacknowledged legislators" of all the world so many long & accumulat'd songs ago-- Once said Poetry Should Do (and, I think, once again ought to Try To Do)--; & anyway, certainly, minimally, from the depths of its directness
That poem made an old lady & I think somehow all of us who were tearful & there feel somehow joyous; & Yes!--since it ever-so-openly expressed & summed-up our own warm feelings, too-- a whole lot definitely better
--Reminding us as it did of such things as our rich, colorful American Heritage, & In passing, too, of the wealth of significance of events around us in our own times & probably any later Day & Age Which events after all--with the passage of time--become a form of history too...
Additional stanzas of this-as-yet uncompleted poem appear at this site's parent site, Poems from Boston & Cambridge
Top of Site & Table of Contents
Xmas On Bay State Road
Brownstone In Boston Up Late Writing Don Hall & Jane Kenyon
"Xmas On Bay State Road" is from a manuscript-still-in-work about a 3 year sojourn in Boston l977-l980, called Family Blessings, Family Curses. Eventually, poem may become part of Transitions. An earlier version of "Xmas on BSR" was published in The Massachusetts Review in l985, © Michael Benedikt, l985. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l997. Drawing of Alice based on photo by M.B., © Oriole Farb, l979.
"Brownstone in Boston" & "Up Late Writing" are from Transitions. An earlier version of "Brownstone in Boston" was pubished in ACM (Another Chicago Magazine) during the l980's, © Michael Benedikt l98-. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998. An earlier version of "Up Late Writing" appeared in Colorado Review, © Michael Benedikt l991. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l998.
"Don Hall & Jane Kenyon of 'Eagle Pond Farm' in New Hampshire, Invite A City Boy--Resettled For A Time in Boston--To A Country Party; And Everybody Goes Out To Hear Some Poetry at 'The Blazing Star' Grange in Danbury, N.H., on Kate Fowler's 100th (!) Birthday, July 16, l978." Also from Family Blessings, Family Curses. An earlier version was published in Agni Review, © Michael Benedikt, l982. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l999.
Brief Benedikt Bio.
Complete bio in print medium of poet appears in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in The World, etc.
Contemporary US poet Michael Benedikt has published 5 volumes of poetry: The Badminton at Great Barrington; or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo (University of Pittsburgh Press, l980); and with Wesleyan University Press, Night Cries ( prose poems, l976); Mole Notes (prose poems, l971); Sky (l970); and The Body (l968). Anthologies of poetry under his editorship are The Prose Poem: An International Anthology (Dell/Laurel, l976); and The Poetry of Surrealism (Little Brown, l974). Other anthologies include three volumes of European plays co-edited with theater critic George E. Wellwarth: Modern French Theatre: The Avant-Garde, Dada, & Surrealism (E.P. Dutton, l964); Post-War German Theater (Dutton, l967); and Modern Spanish Theater (Dutton, l969). He's also the editor of Theatre Experiment, a collection of American Plays (Doubleday, l967). Benedikt's a former Associate Editor of Art News and Art International. A former Poetry Editor of The Paris Review, his editorial selections are represented in The Paris Review Anthology (Norton, l990). He's currently a Contributing Editor for The American Poetry Review. Recent, thus far uncollected poetry published in New York Quarterly, Agni, Iowa Review, Jerusalem Review, Lips, Michigan Quarterly Review, The New Republic, and Partisan Review, and Washington Square--and in The Paris Review (#151), which includes a long poem in honor of Einstein (External link: online version at our site here). Work appears in numerous anthologies of Contemporary US poetry. Literary criticism in Poetry, The American Book Review and elsewhere. Grants and awards have included an NEA Fellowship, a NY State Council On The Arts Grant, and a Guggenheim Grant. Benedikt has taught as Visiting Prof. at Bennington, Sarah Lawrence, Hampshire, and Vassar College/s; and in the English/Creative Writing Department at Boston University. He's read from his poetry at many colleges and universities around the USA--most recently at several Barnes & Noble 'superstores' in NY Metro area. He lives in Manhattan.
In addition to this site, Benedikt's work is represented on the Web at numerous Other Benedikt Links
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HOLIDAY SEASON PROSE POEMS
'Welcome Yule'--Jubilant pandemonium from A Ceremony of Carols by Benjamin Britten. THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL _________ Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose.... "The Christmas Angel" lst appeared as ''The Church of The Immaculate Peanut-Brittle" as one of several poems about Angels in Mole Notes (Wesleyan U. Press, l971), © Michael Benedikt l971. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, 2001. NEW TOYS "Twas the Night Before Christmas..." Clement Clarke Moore "You better watch out, you better not cry/Better not pout, I'm telling you why/Santa Claus is coming to town..." --Popular Song New toys, new toys... every year, around this time, that's all you hear children talking about. And that's fine! But what about mine? My new toys are a ball, a bat, and a jack. That is to say, a brand new trackball for my laptop, an updated autoexec.bat, and a modem with a quick-connect telephone jack--and a whole box-full of other high-tech toys operated electronically and even via infared remote control! Now that I'm supposed to be an adult, I realize all too well that if I'm to have the kind of brand new toys I want and think I richly deserve, for the most part I'll have to buy them for myself! And--since I like being generous towards myself--consequently I expect it to be Christmas Every Day! Still, like most of us former children, I can't forget my carefree childhood, replete with showers of Christmas gifts of all kinds from every side--so that when it comes to the present, I'm disappointed and sometimes resent it! My parents, of course, do the best they can. So do some others! But somehow lately I've even begun to think of my dear, recently-deceased 90-year-old Auntie--who for some reason refuses to buy me any new toys all anymore--as some kind of sinister, malingering Scrooge! Oh, preserve me from being rebellious enough towards being my own age, and even to this entire Y2K age, to want to change the name on my doorbell to Robert Crachit! Yes, I've shopped until I've dropped--yet somehow I feel neglected! Having completed all my shopping, on Christmas Eve I finally fall asleep exhausted. And guess who I dream about? Of course, dear old Santa Claus! Yes, with a great "Ho Ho Ho," here comes good old Kris Kringle sliding down my chimney! Only now, he too is operated by remote-control. Oh, ho, at least he hasn't forgotten to carry on his back his famous bulging sack! "Santa, you know," I say, as into my artificial fireplace he falls with a clatter, "what with all that dust you're throwing off and that big pack slung over your back, you look just like a vacuum-cleaner!" "And you--you've got enough toys already!" he shouts back at me; and in a huff, he turns and sails back up the chimney. What a nightmare of a Santa! Immediately, half-way around the world, a radio-controlled Kris Kringle comes in on his homing-beam... He's getting bored by then, so instead of using the chimney like he's supposed to, he picks a front-door lock and smashes down a doorway--the doorway to a lonely lady's bedroom! As he enters, he says, of course : "Ho Ho!" "Oh, Oh, Santa," the lonely lady says, pulling the covers up beneath her chin, "where are your dear reindeer?" "Ho Ho, my reindeer are up there on your roof--where did you think they were all this time, dear little dummy--did you think I arrived here at your house in a Hertz Rent-A-Car?' "Oh, Oh, what are they doing up there, Santa?" his astonished hostess cries out, drawing up the covers still further. "Ho Ho, they're making it--and F.Y.I., that's what I always meant to suggest when in less sophisticated times than these, you heard me shouting "On Dancer, On Prancer!'" Santa tosses a big box of condoms onto the lady's coverlet, leaves a boxed assortment of state-of-the art sex-toys at the foot of the bed and--back at the fireplace--hangs up a pair of black nylon stockings for her to use as next year's Christmas-stockings. He then says good-bye--leaving by jumping out of the window while pulling on the pants of his red zoot suit and zipping his fly back up. The lonely lady jumps up, runs through her shattered bedroom doorway, and throws up the sash of her kitchen window --apparently looking forward at least, to the pleasure of seeing Santa and his reindeer team rushing over the crest of the new-fallen-snow and then rising picturesquely into the night. In the night, an outcry: "Oh Santa, dear Santa, my kitchen closet's open--where's my family silverware? "Ho Ho Ho ho ho..."--and Santa and his reindeer team vanish into the darkness, after nearly colliding with a descending jet. Well, even in dreams, I guess that's just the way it is for some of us, on this fourth Christmas eve after the end of the mean old 20th Century. Too many wars have bent our perceptions of Good Will into pretzels! Personal Injustices and Abandonments we've all suffered threaten to twist our conceptions of generosity into silly putty! As for me, all I can say today about the new toys I still long for and feel I richly deserve, is that as a child what I wanted most for Christmas was for all my friends to be just a little bit nicer and kinder to one another--and maybe even to me; but these days, what I want--and fully expect--from Santa, is nothing less than Peace On Earth for all Humankind And Also Throughout The Entire Universe For The Next Two Hundred Thousand Years. Ho Ho Ho, ho ho ho ho, Ho! "New Toys" is from yet another Benedikt mss.-in-progress-- a collection of prose poems called Universe. An earlier version of "New Toys" was published in Works: Edson, Benedikt, & Ackerson , ed. by Duane Ackerson (Dragonfly Press, l972), © Michael Benedikt l972. Thanks to Duane Ackerson for © transfer to author, l997. Based on revisions of mss. of Universe completed in Boston in 1980, this Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l999. (Xmas Eve reference, updated in '04 to '04). (Note: Animated image below first appeared Xmas '00, in initial edition of this webpage. We like it so much that we're keeping it-- pending of course discovery of an animated .gif with a bouncing numeral for the current year). NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS New Year's eve had been great fun, what with all its partying, silliness and celebrating; but then, next thing we all knew, the clock struck midnight! Time for still more partying, silliness and celebrating! But also--if one is normally of an at least moderately serious and punctilious turn-of-mind, as of course I consider myself to be--time to begin effecting at the very start of the New Year, resolutions made towards the end of the old year! Throw all those champagne-glasses into the fireplace, throw those champagne-bottles into the recycling-bin, and let's get started! The first thing I thought I'd do, since the prior year had been a year of really extraordinary change for me--as, come to think of it, periods as long as an entire year are for most people--is to resolve once again, just as most people do around the turn of the New Year--to "Take Stock Of Oneself." Yes, it was due time for that! Past due time for that, in fact! "Just who do you think you are, anyway, Mr. B.? " I asked myself gravely, from the place on the rug where I and several other guests had fallen together, after jumping up and down while the T.V. Times Square ball fell. (An answer to that ongoing question at last? Wow!--I could hardly wait to hear it!). But then I heard a stubborn, cantankerous little voice within myself reply: "Sorry, Mr. B: even after all these years, I'm really sorry to say I'm not sure who you are yet...--or rather, come to think of it, even after all these years, I'm really happy to say that I'm not sure yet! After all, even after quite a few decades of living, that's not the kind of question anyone can answer off the top of his or her head or by trying to force the issue, is it?" "But," I heard that little inner voice continue, "just in case I do happen to find out once and for all just exactly who you are Mr. B., or who anybody else is as a matter of fact--either on this particular day or on any other day during the course of the forthcoming year--here's a New Year's Resolution I will not only make, but actually keep: I promise you that when it comes to hearing the answer to that particular question, at least you won't be among the very last to know." "New Year's Resolutions" is also from Universe. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l998. Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems The Christmas Angel New Toys New Year's Resolutions Xmas On Bay State Road Other Benedikt Links Alice in NYC as cover-girl for book, Night Cries (prose poems, l976). Please click (top of) Image for Site Contents Table FORTHCOMING TO THIS SITE'S PARENT SITE POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE --A NARRATIVE POEM ABOUT ALICE'S PRE-POSTHUMOUS LIFE & TIMES ALSO A BOSTON PHOTO-ALBUM PAGE WITH PIX IN ADDITION TO THOSE ALREADY AT POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE ALL TO BE ADDED IN 2002 2003 2004 2005 Top Quick-Link to Guest Poem by Laura Boss re--of all things!--a year-round Allergy to Cats. Other Boss poems now there, too. Back button to return to this site. ('Return-Link' at Guest page connects to this site's parent site, 'Poems from Boston & Cambridge'). OTHER BENEDIKT LINKS Notes by The Benedikt Team A B O U T 'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net' Feature article on Benedikt & websites & on his publications in print media. Posted by About.com 4/99 Academy of American Poets: Michael Benedikt With detailed Bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's 5 published poetry books. Posted by Academy 5/99 BENEDIKT'S 'SITES FOR ALL SEASONS' Music to look at link-list at Xmas-tide by TWO OTHER MUCH-BOOKMARKED POETRY PAGES RE OTHER HOLIDAYS 'The 4th of July: NY & NJ & Laura & Me' Re the word "Independence" in term "Independence Day." Subtopic: Uneasy relationship between Public Events & Private Events in our times. Spooky Poems for Halloween Part of a multi-paged site with Selected Poems from The Body and Sky, Benedikt's lst two, generally haunting poetry books. Other pages include a page with Notes & Commentary on those 2 books by The Benedikt Team: a Thematic Index focusing on the multi-media background of the poems. With visual arts-related photos from Benedikt's 1960's Archive. Modern poetry teaching aid may be useful to students writing poetry term-papers. Site even has a Home Page. Sky -page. PROSE POEMS If you had fun with the prose poems at this site, you might also enjoy these two sites with other Fact & Fantasy-fusing prose poems from Benedikt's book Night Cries Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose, droll (?) prose poems about domestic life from section of Night Cries called "Household Hallucinations." Site also has interview from Poetry Society of American Newsletter answering such questions as "just what is a prose poem, anyway?" & "when did prose poetry start?" Also at site: essay on "Future of American Prose Poem." Prose Poems & Microfictions, other prose poems from Night Cries--about the same size & shape as "New Toys." With book review from London Times Literary Supplement. Also w. info on Benedikt's landmark 600-page antho. of global prose poetry: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. PROSE POEMS & OTHER Theater, Film & TV Poems, miscellany including 2 Showbiz-related prose poems from Benedikt's book Mole Notes. About Mole Notes, reviewer for Modern Poetry Studies wrote: "As far as I can tell, the volume has no precedent in US Literature, although certainly it belongs to the tradition of our modern epics beginning with Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Also poem re 1960's pop-star lookalikes Ringo Starr & Brit. film actress Rita Tushingham, & other later verse. With info on Benedikt's 3 anthologies of 20th-Century European drama--"Black Humor" from France, Germany, & Spain. Many plays in French collection are Surrealism-based & translated by Benedikt. If you enjoyed reading poems with music, you might also enjoy the Bertrand prose poem site just below Aloysius Bertrand: Fantasies by First French Prose Poet. Selected Prose Poems by a 19th-Century 'original.' Fantasies on dark side from masterwork, Gaspard de la Nuit. Music based on 3 Bertrand poems by Ravel of Bolero fame. SHOWBIZ--RELATED MINI-SITES 'Of Orson Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The Worlds' Poem-in-progress re early radio program that shook the nation. Closing stanzas still to be added. With notes on the poem's conclusion. Subtopic: State Censorship of Airwaves in times of crisis. 'Of The Colorful Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' Re a daring, free-spirited theater co. which still plays in Moscow's Taganka district today. Also about eternal, year-round human need for more bliss in life. Subtopic: State Censorship of Arts 'Runixie' Site with song lyric about flying faerie whose sole limit is limitless stars. Image by Canadian artist Marina Badani. With info about stratospheric sprite-sightings by NASA. Subtopics: Freedom. Links among Arts & Sciences. AND THEN THERE'S 3 Poems Praising Peace With Intro re Peaceful Individuals being a prerequisite for World Peace. At Xmastide et seq. Peace site is part of a larger site with many other selections from Benedikt's recent poetry: The Thesaurus & Other New Verse The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Sequence of comical love poems. (After Xmas & New Year's Day, can Valentine's Day be far behind?) AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET Cat Fanciers - http://www.fanciers.com Queen Midnight of CLAW (Visitors' Center) - http://www.claw.org (includes Claw Theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' & a 'Poetry In Motion' page for cats who write poetry) More Modern American Xmas Literature at: Poems by Cambridge poet Peter Payack--incl. the ecology-minded "Santa & The Ho Ho Ho Zone" - http://www.peterpayack.com Virtual Fireplace with Hearth & Yule Log With crackling hearth for Yuletide, Xmas Eve, & Cold Wintry Nights In '03--a jubilant version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' (Note: Boston's 59 Bay State Rd. has a chimney. And, last we looked, fireplaces too). Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems Top of 'Other Benedikt Links' 'Sussex Carol' (traditional) arr. by Ralph Vaughan-Williams Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! ! Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. Top Yule Log
THE CHRISTMAS ANGEL
_________
Nearing Xmas Eve! I don't know why--since I'm not a believer in the conventional sense--but every year around this time I end up standing here, pausing before this gray, hulking building with so many of its tall, stained glass windows darkened and lit only by floodlights from outside of it, but with twin spires still pointing towards heaven. Tonight I can see only a single light still shining--in a half-open casement window located on the second floor. "Hello, hello," I call out, "Anybody around up there?--anybody home tonight?" Silhouetted at the casement window, a head appears. "Sure, we're open all night tonight all right--but this isn't a church anymore," the head shouts back in a decidedly irritated voice. "Didn't you know?--our entire operation was finally taken over last year--we were shut down for a while and then re-opened again converted to a peanut-brittle factory," "But don't I recognize you, Sir," I call back--"aren't you the former Sexton?" "Yes," the head says, after we were converted the takeover people thought it would be wise for the sake of efficiency to retain some of the same personnel for a while, so together with some of my staff, I agreed to stay on for a bit." "Does that include God, too?" I hear myself calling back to the former Sexton. "Sure it does," the Sexton shouts back, "have a Merry Christmas!"--and his head disappears from the window. Then I see no silhouetted head much less face, and hear a far deeper and far more resonant voice: "My Son, my Son--we've been putting you on, my Son. But you know you should really come up here anyway--you know in your heart that for all He's ever meant to you, Christ might as well have been a part-time worker in a peanut-brittle factory!" Then suddenly the casement window slams shut. "Oh My God!" I hear myself cry out--"Could that have been God Himself up there? And if so, was He genuinely angry with me, personally?" On the way up the stairs to find out--trembling slightly I must confess--I meet an angel. He's coming down the stairs after apparently just knocking off from working on the night-shift somewhere upstairs. He's beaming radiantly; his wings are folded neatly behind him and he's licking his lips; his cheeks are covered up with peanut-butter and candy and look like two big chocolate chip cookies; and there's a big blob of marshmallow on the tip of his nose....
"The Christmas Angel" lst appeared as ''The Church of The Immaculate Peanut-Brittle" as one of several poems about Angels in Mole Notes (Wesleyan U. Press, l971), © Michael Benedikt l971. This Webversion © Michael Benedikt, 2001.
NEW TOYS
"Twas the Night Before Christmas..." Clement Clarke Moore
"You better watch out, you better not cry/Better not pout, I'm telling you why/Santa Claus is coming to town..." --Popular Song
New toys, new toys... every year, around this time, that's all you hear children talking about. And that's fine! But what about mine? My new toys are a ball, a bat, and a jack. That is to say, a brand new trackball for my laptop, an updated autoexec.bat, and a modem with a quick-connect telephone jack--and a whole box-full of other high-tech toys operated electronically and even via infared remote control! Now that I'm supposed to be an adult, I realize all too well that if I'm to have the kind of brand new toys I want and think I richly deserve, for the most part I'll have to buy them for myself! And--since I like being generous towards myself--consequently I expect it to be Christmas Every Day! Still, like most of us former children, I can't forget my carefree childhood, replete with showers of Christmas gifts of all kinds from every side--so that when it comes to the present, I'm disappointed and sometimes resent it! My parents, of course, do the best they can. So do some others! But somehow lately I've even begun to think of my dear, recently-deceased 90-year-old Auntie--who for some reason refuses to buy me any new toys all anymore--as some kind of sinister, malingering Scrooge! Oh, preserve me from being rebellious enough towards being my own age, and even to this entire Y2K age, to want to change the name on my doorbell to Robert Crachit! Yes, I've shopped until I've dropped--yet somehow I feel neglected!
Having completed all my shopping, on Christmas Eve I finally fall asleep exhausted. And guess who I dream about? Of course, dear old Santa Claus! Yes, with a great "Ho Ho Ho," here comes good old Kris Kringle sliding down my chimney! Only now, he too is operated by remote-control. Oh, ho, at least he hasn't forgotten to carry on his back his famous bulging sack! "Santa, you know," I say, as into my artificial fireplace he falls with a clatter, "what with all that dust you're throwing off and that big pack slung over your back, you look just like a vacuum-cleaner!" "And you--you've got enough toys already!" he shouts back at me; and in a huff, he turns and sails back up the chimney. What a nightmare of a Santa! Immediately, half-way around the world, a radio-controlled Kris Kringle comes in on his homing-beam... He's getting bored by then, so instead of using the chimney like he's supposed to, he picks a front-door lock and smashes down a doorway--the doorway to a lonely lady's bedroom! As he enters, he says, of course : "Ho Ho!" "Oh, Oh, Santa," the lonely lady says, pulling the covers up beneath her chin, "where are your dear reindeer?" "Ho Ho, my reindeer are up there on your roof--where did you think they were all this time, dear little dummy--did you think I arrived here at your house in a Hertz Rent-A-Car?' "Oh, Oh, what are they doing up there, Santa?" his astonished hostess cries out, drawing up the covers still further. "Ho Ho, they're making it--and F.Y.I., that's what I always meant to suggest when in less sophisticated times than these, you heard me shouting "On Dancer, On Prancer!'" Santa tosses a big box of condoms onto the lady's coverlet, leaves a boxed assortment of state-of-the art sex-toys at the foot of the bed and--back at the fireplace--hangs up a pair of black nylon stockings for her to use as next year's Christmas-stockings. He then says good-bye--leaving by jumping out of the window while pulling on the pants of his red zoot suit and zipping his fly back up. The lonely lady jumps up, runs through her shattered bedroom doorway, and throws up the sash of her kitchen window --apparently looking forward at least, to the pleasure of seeing Santa and his reindeer team rushing over the crest of the new-fallen-snow and then rising picturesquely into the night. In the night, an outcry: "Oh Santa, dear Santa, my kitchen closet's open--where's my family silverware? "Ho Ho Ho ho ho..."--and Santa and his reindeer team vanish into the darkness, after nearly colliding with a descending jet.
Well, even in dreams, I guess that's just the way it is for some of us, on this fourth Christmas eve after the end of the mean old 20th Century. Too many wars have bent our perceptions of Good Will into pretzels! Personal Injustices and Abandonments we've all suffered threaten to twist our conceptions of generosity into silly putty! As for me, all I can say today about the new toys I still long for and feel I richly deserve, is that as a child what I wanted most for Christmas was for all my friends to be just a little bit nicer and kinder to one another--and maybe even to me; but these days, what I want--and fully expect--from Santa, is nothing less than Peace On Earth for all Humankind And Also Throughout The Entire Universe For The Next Two Hundred Thousand Years. Ho Ho Ho, ho ho ho ho, Ho!
"New Toys" is from yet another Benedikt mss.-in-progress-- a collection of prose poems called Universe. An earlier version of "New Toys" was published in Works: Edson, Benedikt, & Ackerson , ed. by Duane Ackerson (Dragonfly Press, l972), © Michael Benedikt l972. Thanks to Duane Ackerson for © transfer to author, l997. Based on revisions of mss. of Universe completed in Boston in 1980, this Webversion © Michael Benedikt, l999. (Xmas Eve reference, updated in '04 to '04). (Note: Animated image below first appeared Xmas '00, in initial edition of this webpage. We like it so much that we're keeping it-- pending of course discovery of an animated .gif with a bouncing numeral for the current year).
NEW YEAR'S RESOLUTIONS
New Year's eve had been great fun, what with all its partying, silliness and celebrating; but then, next thing we all knew, the clock struck midnight! Time for still more partying, silliness and celebrating! But also--if one is normally of an at least moderately serious and punctilious turn-of-mind, as of course I consider myself to be--time to begin effecting at the very start of the New Year, resolutions made towards the end of the old year! Throw all those champagne-glasses into the fireplace, throw those champagne-bottles into the recycling-bin, and let's get started! The first thing I thought I'd do, since the prior year had been a year of really extraordinary change for me--as, come to think of it, periods as long as an entire year are for most people--is to resolve once again, just as most people do around the turn of the New Year--to "Take Stock Of Oneself." Yes, it was due time for that! Past due time for that, in fact! "Just who do you think you are, anyway, Mr. B.? " I asked myself gravely, from the place on the rug where I and several other guests had fallen together, after jumping up and down while the T.V. Times Square ball fell. (An answer to that ongoing question at last? Wow!--I could hardly wait to hear it!). But then I heard a stubborn, cantankerous little voice within myself reply: "Sorry, Mr. B: even after all these years, I'm really sorry to say I'm not sure who you are yet...--or rather, come to think of it, even after all these years, I'm really happy to say that I'm not sure yet! After all, even after quite a few decades of living, that's not the kind of question anyone can answer off the top of his or her head or by trying to force the issue, is it?" "But," I heard that little inner voice continue, "just in case I do happen to find out once and for all just exactly who you are Mr. B., or who anybody else is as a matter of fact--either on this particular day or on any other day during the course of the forthcoming year--here's a New Year's Resolution I will not only make, but actually keep: I promise you that when it comes to hearing the answer to that particular question, at least you won't be among the very last to know."
"New Year's Resolutions" is also from Universe. Webversion © Michael Benedikt l998.
Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems
The Christmas Angel New Toys New Year's Resolutions
Other Benedikt Links
Alice in NYC as cover-girl for book, Night Cries (prose poems, l976). Please click (top of) Image for Site Contents Table
FORTHCOMING TO THIS SITE'S PARENT SITE POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE --A NARRATIVE POEM ABOUT ALICE'S PRE-POSTHUMOUS LIFE & TIMES
ALSO A BOSTON PHOTO-ALBUM PAGE WITH PIX IN ADDITION TO THOSE ALREADY AT POEMS FROM BOSTON & CAMBRIDGE
ALL TO BE ADDED IN 2002 2003 2004 2005
Quick-Link to Guest Poem by Laura Boss re--of all things!--a year-round Allergy to Cats. Other Boss poems now there, too. Back button to return to this site. ('Return-Link' at Guest page connects to this site's parent site, 'Poems from Boston & Cambridge').
OTHER BENEDIKT LINKS
Notes by The Benedikt Team
A B O U T
'The Compleat Michael Benedikt: Poet Laureate of the Net' Feature article on Benedikt & websites & on his publications in print media. Posted by About.com 4/99
Academy of American Poets: Michael Benedikt With detailed Bio. & a poem from 4 of Benedikt's 5 published poetry books. Posted by Academy 5/99
BENEDIKT'S 'SITES FOR ALL SEASONS'
Music to look at link-list at Xmas-tide by TWO OTHER MUCH-BOOKMARKED POETRY PAGES RE OTHER HOLIDAYS 'The 4th of July: NY & NJ & Laura & Me' Re the word "Independence" in term "Independence Day." Subtopic: Uneasy relationship between Public Events & Private Events in our times. Spooky Poems for Halloween Part of a multi-paged site with Selected Poems from The Body and Sky, Benedikt's lst two, generally haunting poetry books. Other pages include a page with Notes & Commentary on those 2 books by The Benedikt Team: a Thematic Index focusing on the multi-media background of the poems. With visual arts-related photos from Benedikt's 1960's Archive. Modern poetry teaching aid may be useful to students writing poetry term-papers. Site even has a Home Page. Sky -page. PROSE POEMS If you had fun with the prose poems at this site, you might also enjoy these two sites with other Fact & Fantasy-fusing prose poems from Benedikt's book Night Cries Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose, droll (?) prose poems about domestic life from section of Night Cries called "Household Hallucinations." Site also has interview from Poetry Society of American Newsletter answering such questions as "just what is a prose poem, anyway?" & "when did prose poetry start?" Also at site: essay on "Future of American Prose Poem." Prose Poems & Microfictions, other prose poems from Night Cries--about the same size & shape as "New Toys." With book review from London Times Literary Supplement. Also w. info on Benedikt's landmark 600-page antho. of global prose poetry: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology. PROSE POEMS & OTHER Theater, Film & TV Poems, miscellany including 2 Showbiz-related prose poems from Benedikt's book Mole Notes. About Mole Notes, reviewer for Modern Poetry Studies wrote: "As far as I can tell, the volume has no precedent in US Literature, although certainly it belongs to the tradition of our modern epics beginning with Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Also poem re 1960's pop-star lookalikes Ringo Starr & Brit. film actress Rita Tushingham, & other later verse. With info on Benedikt's 3 anthologies of 20th-Century European drama--"Black Humor" from France, Germany, & Spain. Many plays in French collection are Surrealism-based & translated by Benedikt. If you enjoyed reading poems with music, you might also enjoy the Bertrand prose poem site just below Aloysius Bertrand: Fantasies by First French Prose Poet. Selected Prose Poems by a 19th-Century 'original.' Fantasies on dark side from masterwork, Gaspard de la Nuit. Music based on 3 Bertrand poems by Ravel of Bolero fame. SHOWBIZ--RELATED MINI-SITES 'Of Orson Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The Worlds' Poem-in-progress re early radio program that shook the nation. Closing stanzas still to be added. With notes on the poem's conclusion. Subtopic: State Censorship of Airwaves in times of crisis. 'Of The Colorful Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' Re a daring, free-spirited theater co. which still plays in Moscow's Taganka district today. Also about eternal, year-round human need for more bliss in life. Subtopic: State Censorship of Arts 'Runixie' Site with song lyric about flying faerie whose sole limit is limitless stars. Image by Canadian artist Marina Badani. With info about stratospheric sprite-sightings by NASA. Subtopics: Freedom. Links among Arts & Sciences. AND THEN THERE'S 3 Poems Praising Peace With Intro re Peaceful Individuals being a prerequisite for World Peace. At Xmastide et seq. Peace site is part of a larger site with many other selections from Benedikt's recent poetry: The Thesaurus & Other New Verse The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Sequence of comical love poems. (After Xmas & New Year's Day, can Valentine's Day be far behind?) AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET Cat Fanciers - http://www.fanciers.com Queen Midnight of CLAW (Visitors' Center) - http://www.claw.org (includes Claw Theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' & a 'Poetry In Motion' page for cats who write poetry) More Modern American Xmas Literature at: Poems by Cambridge poet Peter Payack--incl. the ecology-minded "Santa & The Ho Ho Ho Zone" - http://www.peterpayack.com Virtual Fireplace with Hearth & Yule Log With crackling hearth for Yuletide, Xmas Eve, & Cold Wintry Nights In '03--a jubilant version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' (Note: Boston's 59 Bay State Rd. has a chimney. And, last we looked, fireplaces too). Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge Top of Holiday Season Prose Poems Top of 'Other Benedikt Links' 'Sussex Carol' (traditional) arr. by Ralph Vaughan-Williams Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! ! Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. Top Yule Log
TWO OTHER MUCH-BOOKMARKED POETRY PAGES RE OTHER HOLIDAYS
'The 4th of July: NY & NJ & Laura & Me' Re the word "Independence" in term "Independence Day." Subtopic: Uneasy relationship between Public Events & Private Events in our times.
Spooky Poems for Halloween Part of a multi-paged site with Selected Poems from The Body and Sky, Benedikt's lst two, generally haunting poetry books. Other pages include a page with Notes & Commentary on those 2 books by The Benedikt Team: a Thematic Index focusing on the multi-media background of the poems. With visual arts-related photos from Benedikt's 1960's Archive. Modern poetry teaching aid may be useful to students writing poetry term-papers. Site even has a Home Page. Sky -page.
PROSE POEMS
If you had fun with the prose poems at this site, you might also enjoy these two sites with other Fact & Fantasy-fusing prose poems from Benedikt's book Night Cries
Brief Prose Poems & Critical Prose, droll (?) prose poems about domestic life from section of Night Cries called "Household Hallucinations." Site also has interview from Poetry Society of American Newsletter answering such questions as "just what is a prose poem, anyway?" & "when did prose poetry start?" Also at site: essay on "Future of American Prose Poem."
Prose Poems & Microfictions, other prose poems from Night Cries--about the same size & shape as "New Toys." With book review from London Times Literary Supplement. Also w. info on Benedikt's landmark 600-page antho. of global prose poetry: The Prose Poem: An International Anthology.
PROSE POEMS & OTHER
Theater, Film & TV Poems, miscellany including 2 Showbiz-related prose poems from Benedikt's book Mole Notes. About Mole Notes, reviewer for Modern Poetry Studies wrote: "As far as I can tell, the volume has no precedent in US Literature, although certainly it belongs to the tradition of our modern epics beginning with Whitman's Leaves of Grass." Also poem re 1960's pop-star lookalikes Ringo Starr & Brit. film actress Rita Tushingham, & other later verse. With info on Benedikt's 3 anthologies of 20th-Century European drama--"Black Humor" from France, Germany, & Spain. Many plays in French collection are Surrealism-based & translated by Benedikt.
If you enjoyed reading poems with music, you might also enjoy the Bertrand prose poem site just below Aloysius Bertrand: Fantasies by First French Prose Poet. Selected Prose Poems by a 19th-Century 'original.' Fantasies on dark side from masterwork, Gaspard de la Nuit. Music based on 3 Bertrand poems by Ravel of Bolero fame.
SHOWBIZ--RELATED MINI-SITES
'Of Orson Welles' Remarkable l938 Radio Program 'The War Of The Worlds' Poem-in-progress re early radio program that shook the nation. Closing stanzas still to be added. With notes on the poem's conclusion. Subtopic: State Censorship of Airwaves in times of crisis.
'Of The Colorful Taganka Troupe in Soviet Russia, l957' Re a daring, free-spirited theater co. which still plays in Moscow's Taganka district today. Also about eternal, year-round human need for more bliss in life. Subtopic: State Censorship of Arts
'Runixie' Site with song lyric about flying faerie whose sole limit is limitless stars. Image by Canadian artist Marina Badani. With info about stratospheric sprite-sightings by NASA. Subtopics: Freedom. Links among Arts & Sciences.
AND THEN THERE'S
3 Poems Praising Peace With Intro re Peaceful Individuals being a prerequisite for World Peace. At Xmastide et seq. Peace site is part of a larger site with many other selections from Benedikt's recent poetry: The Thesaurus & Other New Verse
The Badminton at Great Barrington; Or, Gustave Mahler & The Chattanooga Choo-Choo Sequence of comical love poems. (After Xmas & New Year's Day, can Valentine's Day be far behind?)
AND PLEASE DON'T FORGET
Cat Fanciers - http://www.fanciers.com Queen Midnight of CLAW (Visitors' Center) - http://www.claw.org (includes Claw Theatre production of 'Alice in Wonderland.' & a 'Poetry In Motion' page for cats who write poetry) More Modern American Xmas Literature at: Poems by Cambridge poet Peter Payack--incl. the ecology-minded "Santa & The Ho Ho Ho Zone" - http://www.peterpayack.com
Virtual Fireplace with Hearth & Yule Log With crackling hearth for Yuletide, Xmas Eve, & Cold Wintry Nights In '03--a jubilant version of 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' (Note: Boston's 59 Bay State Rd. has a chimney. And, last we looked, fireplaces too).
Top of 'Xmas On Bay State Road' & Other Poems from Boston & Cambridge
Top of 'Other Benedikt Links'
'Sussex Carol' (traditional) arr. by Ralph Vaughan-Williams Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! ! Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane. Top Yule Log
Merrie Christmas to You & to Yours ! !
Additional Music Credits: Digitizations: Britten, Don Robinson; Erik Satie, Dave Cooke; Vaughan-Williams, George Pollen. 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Xmas' composed by Hugh Martin & Ralph Blane.
Top Yule Log
Other revisions here &
there.