Poetics and Ruminations

Birthday of THE BOOK OF FORMS

Fifty (50) years ago, on 19 April 1968, I wrote in my journal, "The Book of Forms has arrived! It has the most incredible art nouveau cover." The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, first edition, by Lewis Turco, New York, NY: E. P. Dutton, 1968. Paperback original.

The New Book of Forms, A Handbook of Poetics (second edition of The Book of Forms), Hanover: University Press of New England, 1986 (www.UPNE.com),  ISBN 0874513804, cloth; 0874513812, paper.

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Third Edition, Hanover: University Press of New England, 2000. ISBN 1584650419, cloth; ISBN 1584650222, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Literary Terms. “The Poet’s Bible."

The Book of Forms: A Handbook of Poetics, Including Odd and Invented Forms, Revised and Expanded Edition by Lewis Putnam Turco, Hanover, NH: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com) , 2012 • 384 pp. 3 illus. 5 x 7 1/2" Reference & Bibliography / Poetry 978-1-61168-035-5, paperback.

Companion volumes:

The Book of Literary Terms: The Genres of Fiction, Drama, Nonfiction, Literary Criticism, and Scholarship, Hanover: University Press of New England (www.UPNE.com), 1999. ISBN 0874519543, cloth; ISBN 0-874519-55-1, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Dialogue and The Book of Forms. A Choice  “Outstanding academic title” for 2000.

The Book of Dialogue: How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry by Lewis Turco, Hanover: University Press of New England, (www.UPNE.com), 2004. ISBN 1-584653-61-2, paper. A companion volume to The Book of Forms and The Book of Literary Terms.

Alfred Moskowitz, R.I.P.

Rhina Espaillat and her husband Alfred Moskowitz

 

NEWBURYPORT, MA: On the evening of February 27, 2016, in Newburyport, Mass., Alfred Moskowitz passed away in his home on Charron Drive, where he had lived since late 1990.

Born in the Bronx, N.Y., to Rumanian immigrants David and Mary Moskowitz, Alfred was educated in New York public schools, served as an infantryman on the European front during WW II, returned home in 1945 to attend NYU on the G.I. Bill, and went on to teach Industrial Arts in the NYC public schools for 30 years.

In 1952, he married Rhina P. Moskowitz, with whom he had two sons, and brought up a third. He took a highly active part in the formation of the United Federation of Teachers, and in demonstrations for civil rights, desegregation of the schools, and other liberal social causes. In 1990, the couple moved to Newburyport, Mass., from New York City. For many years Alfred Moskowitz was an active member of the Newburyport Art Association, and of the News & Views Club of Newburyport, among other organizations.

He is survived by his wife, son and daughter-in-law, Philip and Lauren of Georgetown; son and daughter-in-law, Warren and Lori of Ipswich; foster-son, Gaston and daughter-in-law, Colleen of New York; as well as grandchildren, Evan, Ilana, Ambrose, and Perry; brothers, Marvin and Howard; sister-in-law, Gayle; nephews, Gregg, Brad and Keith; and nieces, Janine and Diana.

FOR ALFRED MOSKOWITZ

When last I visited Alfred and his wife
We spent the evening talking about his art.
Sculpture was his passion, the largest part
Of his endeavor, his creative life.

Rhina is a writer. She and I
Became the best of friends. Her poetry
Shows readers how the heart and mind can fly
Through the Muses' ever-greening tree.

Now Alfred's mind and heart have taken wing
And she is left alone to write her songs --
She feeds them to the wind: it, too, can sing
Even when her heart breaks and belongs

To breezes in the needles and the limbs
Of brooding woodlands that can echo hymns.

-- Lewis Turco

The Forks in the Road, by John T. Sullivan, Jr.

With an Introduction

By Lewis Turco

        This is a book about neighbors written by a neighbor. John T. Sullivan, Jr., was born in 1947 in Oswego, New York. He graduated in 1964 from Bishop Cunningham high school; one year later my family and I moved to town where I began to teach at the State University of New York College at Oswego.

        John went on growing into his shoes while I began settling in at the College. After receiving his degrees at Syracuse University John married his wonderful wife, Charlotte, and began his family. When two of his three daughters were in high school our son, Christopher, dated the youngest, Julie, and John was elected Mayor of Oswego in 1988.

        This introduction is not the first time John has asked me to write something – the first time he did he asked me to write an inauguration poem, which I was happy to do. I recited it at his ceremony. The One-hundred signed copies printed on parchment paper were distributed as keepsakes of the Inaugural, “…which,” John wrote me, “still hopefully adorn the walls of many Oswegonians to this day (which at least mine is, and it is numbered 1)!”  The poem was also published on paper in a broadside that was circulated widely:

                                            OSWEGO

                                It lies in the curves of the lakeshore.

Across Ontario the last of the sun breathes light

           out of the horizon, turning the clouds shades

                         of red to the west. The water darkens,

                         splits over the stones where the spiders live,

                  where the gulls alight to conceive of evening.

                                Hardwoods rise on country roads, their  limbs

 

casting tall shadows into the silence deepening

           among the tumescent milkweed and the cattails.

                         A twist of goldenrod runs into fields,

                         to the apple orchard fence where ravens

                  give voice to the dark quality of waiting.

                                The cries of geese are incipient

out of the north, over the great water, the turning

 

           of another season. The thrust of wings, the high

                         call of flight before the changing wind, will

                         fall soon to Oswego's waters, send frog

                  and salmon deep, beyond ranges of color

that fades now as the light falls onto Ontario,

                         and a dream of summer settles along

                  the stone coast road like a fleet of waterbirds.

 

          Subsequently, Mayor Sullivan proclaimed me honorary Poet Laureate of the City of Oswego.   Needless to say, I was deeply honored to be asked to contribute in this way, but John soon followed up by asking me to do a harder job: correct and revise the City of Oswego Charter as Secretary of the city Charter Revision Commission. I won’t go into the particulars of all the grammatical, punctuational, and typographical errors one had to address, but they were legion.

         John Sullivan was by far the best and most active mayor the City of Oswego has had while I have been a resident. He was instrumental in cleaning up the Lake Ontario waterfront which was a shambles when my family moved into town. Wright’s Landing, the River Walk, the Town Hall center all were spruced up and turned into beautiful and livable environmental attractions.

         Not least of these innovations was Harborfest, one of Charlotte’s pet projects. It was not many seasons before this festival was attracting enormous crowds to town during the summer, and it is still doing so. But all great mayoralties must come to an end.

        John went on to become Executive Chairman of the State Democratic Party from 1995 to 1998; he was one of the founders of the Democratic Rural Conference. He served as Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Watertown office from 2003 to 2007, and then he accepted a position as Deputy Inspector General and counsel for legislative matters with the state Medicaid Inspector General’s office, relocating to the Albany area where he lived in Saratoga Springs.

        During all this time John Sullivan never lost touch with his Oswego roots. He visited town often, gave programs frequently (my wife Jean and I attended one at the town library in the spring of 2015). Just after the mayoral election in the fall of the same year John’s picture appeared in The Palladium Times with the new Republican mayor, twenty-five- year-old Billy Barlowe! (Sometimes one suspects that John might carry this being a good neighbor a bit too far.) (Just kidding.)

        John kept in touch also by writing essays and articles, including the profiles in this book for various and sundry periodicals in the Albany area and elsewhere, but particularly for Oswego’s daily newspaper, The Palladium-Times. I don’t need to say more because those who enter these pages, even if they are strangers, will soon feel as though they know the City of Oswego down to its roots and have themselves become neighbors of my dear friend, John T. Sullivan, Jr.

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I. The Moment Before

II. November 22, 1963

 

Weeping, I write this:  You are dead.  The dark

animal of the heart, the beast that bides

stilly in its web of flesh, has stolen

flight again out of the air.  What is there

to say?  That I wish we were gods?  That the

mind of man were equal to his lusts?  It

is not -- not yet.  You were a man, but more:

you were an idea dreamt in a sweet

hour while the spider slept.  We make our

web; its habitant makes greatness of its

prey.  We are ourselves victim and victor.

You were and are ourselves.  In killing you

we murder an emblem of what we strive

to be: not men, but Man.  In mourning you,

good Man, we grieve for what we are, not what

we may become.

                                  Sleep, John.  We will try

once more.  Sleep, sleep now.  We will try again.

 

 

III. Ode on St. Cecilia's Day 1964

 

1.  Of the Past

 

Some music, then, for this day.  Let it be

Suitable to the mood of fallen snow,

The veil of a virgin saint.  Quietly

Let it come now, out of the silence; now

While the birds inexplicably forsake

The elm, the oak, the seed in the lilac....

Instead, drumrolls muffled in an old year,

An echo of trumpets in the streets.  Clear

But muted, there is a ragged tattoo

Of hooves, image of a sable horse, wild-

Eyed, resisting the rein, skittish among

The twin rows of witness citizens who,

Their voices frozen, give up to the cold

Air of the marble city an old son.

 

2.  Of the Present

 

But it’s another year, Cecilia’s day

Again, another part of the land.  So,

Let the phantoms of those dead days lie

Under these new burdens of snow.  Allow

That chorus of stricken men to dim like

Shadows into blackening film, the dark

Merging with the riderless horse.  Feature

By feature, let the scene fade into near

Distance, into perspective, then shadow.

This is music for St. Cecilia.  Yield

To her the lyric due her.  Let us sing

For her patronage -- her martyrdom grew

Out of a summer heart: she is our shield

Against the winter.  She is always young.

 

 

3.  Of the Moment

 

Here beyond the window the campus lies.

The students pass in mufflers and coats, eyes

Almost hidden against the wind.  The sound

Of radio music settles around

The furniture, into the carpeting.

Choral voices: a requiem.  Distant

And urgent, the November church bells ring.

Outdoors a dog rags something.  An instant

Pause in his play -- he has caught a squirrel

Which tosses and tosses in the gray air.

The mongrel, in the midst of his quarrel

With life, is assaulted by three girls.  There,

At the base of a tree, the limp ruff falls

From insensate jaws, starts to inch up walls

Of oak bark toward some invisible

Sanctuary.  The dog begins to howl.

The girls watch the squirrel into the limbs.

Cecilia’s radio is done with hymns.

 

From  Fearful Pleasures: The Complete Poems of Lewis Turco 1959-2007, Scottsdale, AZ: www.StarCloudPress.com, 2007. ISBN 978-1-932842-19-7, cloth; ISBN 978-1-932842-20-3, paper. Also available in a Kindle edition.