Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I’m standing to one side in a tiny gymnasium, like a country
elementary school gymnasium, only it’s even smaller than that,
about a fourth of the size, as the professors and their wives
file past me. The wives are wearing their best furs and strap-
less satin gowns. The professors are in tuxedoes and smiling
as they look down at their feet, making sure they don’t step
on the edge of a dress. The women are all looking at each other
to see what everyone’s wearing.

I sit down in a folding chair next to the door. Gary Snyder
is meditating crosslegged in front of the miniscule stage, which
is only about 3 inches high, while to the side Ginsberg and
Peter and a strange woman fiddle with a piano that is pushed up
against the glass engineers's booth. No ones's inside the booth
but it’s obvious that Allen & Co are going to be doing music to-
night. Sitting on a chair in front of the engineer’s booth is
Philip Whalen.

After all the professors and their wives are packed into the
incredibly small bleachers, the reading starts with Allen & Co.
Allen and Peter both play the piano as the strange woman sings.
She’s obviously a protegee of Allen’s and she’s terrible. Peter
and Allen are having an argument at the piano as she screeches.
A third set of disembodied hands is trying to horn in on their
accompaniment. They argue about how to tell the hands to get
lost. The strange woman continues to screech soulfully in front
of them, ignoring their argument, and it becomes apparent that
the white dress she is wearing is really an over-sized hospital
smock and she’s an escaped mental patient.

Gary Snyder reads next. He reads several short poems about
logging. There is no response in the audience. Most of the
front row (all women in satin evening gowns) are leaning over
and smiling vacantly, as if they know they are supposed to
smile but really don’t know why.

Snyder gets pissed off. Dropping the deep controlled voice he's
been reading with, he starts complaining in a high Okie whine:
“What’s the matter, don’t any of you study ecology?”

There’s a silence and then Philip Whalen begins to read. As he
gets about halfway into a poem, a little old lady materializes
beside him and pushes a bunch of paper in his hand. She’s an
English teacher and she’s got some corrections for him on the
next poem he’s going to read. Philip stops his reading and
attends to the corrections.

No one can hear what’s being said but it’s obvious from her hand
gestures that she wants over half the next poem deleted. Philip
pretends to revise it on the spot and then returns to his read-
ing, rather cheerful after this massive censorship.

To smoothe things over and put the audience at ease after this
interruption, Philip starts to make a few off-hand remarks. He
sees me sitting there and he leans forward and nudges me (which
startles me since I was at least 10 feet away from him as he
started to lean). Then he says:

“Well, . . .we're still here, wheeee.
when you weren’t having lunch with me,
were you out talking to the tractor?”