THE BEAT
Frank Lima: Poet Back from the Edge
by Seth Rogovoy(WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Oct. 31, 1996) -- Had it not been for a stint in a drug rehab clinic in a New York City hospital in his early- '20s -- one of many such stints for the young man up to that point -- Frank Lima might never have set pencil to paper and become one of the most highly regarded poets of his generation.
"I was in Riverside Hospital, on an island off the Bronx, from where I could see Rikers Island [prison], where I was headed anyhow," said Lima in a recent phone interview from his New York apartment. "I was talking to a teacher I had become friendly with and he said, `Why don't you write?' I said, `I don't know anything about the English language,' and he said, `Why don't you write like you talk?'
"So I wrote something, a love poem for a girl I wanted to impress, and he said he thought it was really good, and took it with him to show it to some friends who he said were poets too. Then he came back with some books, and said one of his friends sent one of his books for me to read, and his name was Robert Lowell. I had no idea who Lowell was. The other was Frank O'Hara. Another by Allen Ginsberg. I didn't know who they were. I thought they were teachers or something, like him."
Lima would soon learn who these other poets were -- and they would soon learn about him. Some, like O'Hara and Kenneth Koch and David Shapiro, would soon become friends, when by the mid-1960s, Lima's poems were appearing alongside theirs and other poets of the New York School, including John Ashbery and James Schuyler, in prestigious poetry magazines like the Evergreen Review.
Lima -- the Rimbaud of postwar Spanish Harlem -- will read from his poetry this Saturday at 4 at Caffe Pomo D'Oro, 6 Depot St., West Stockbridge, as part of the Lingo Magazine Reading Series, sponsored by Hard Press of West Stockbridge, publisher of Lingo: A Journal of the Arts. There is a $4 per person minimum at table; for reservations call 232-4616.
Jonathan Gams, the editor/publisher of Lingo, which has published Lima's work in Lingo 5 and its latest issue, Lingo 6, said that Lima's "focus on the tender side of street culture -- the humanity resident in the hipster angel thug -- predicts accurately the popularity street culture has gained recently."
For Lima, whose poems are strewn with the gruesome realities and the hard-won triumphs of life in the urban American ghetto, it is pretty much just writing about what he knows. "It's all true, not even exaggerated," said Lima about "Scattered Vignettes," the prose-poem which leads off the new Lingo 6, dedicated to "Fringe Narrative."
The piece chronicles Lima's roots and upbringing, beginning with the scandalous pairing of his Mexican grandparents, through tales of growing up in Spanish Harlem with an alcoholic father and as a victim of abuse at the hands of parents, religious authorities -- seemingly everyone around in whom children ordinarily place their trust.
"My life was rehabs,/Arrests and jails/Crabs/
Syphilis/Hepatitis/And finally/The mad houses," writes Lima."I remember one guy reviewing my first book of poems said I should go back in the garbage can, which I thought was kind of cute," said Lima, laughing good-naturedly at the memory. "Why write about that subject? I think I had no choice.
"At some level I think all poetry is autobiographical. Even if you're writing about ancient myths, you're somehow in search of your own experiences, something that relates to what you're writing about. Even my fairy tales are autobiographical."
In conversation, Lima, 57, is friendly, cheerful and betrays no trace of bitterness over the degradations to which he was subjected as a child or to which he subjected himself to in years of substance abuse as an adult. "These things happen in the best of families," he jokes, only half-facetiously.
Lima is married and has two children from a previous marriage. Concurrent with his life as a poet and outlaw, he has been a master chef. Apprenticed while still a teen, he was cooking in top New York restaurants in his early 20s, including the Essex House and with the late Pierre Franey, and he is now a chef/professor at the N.Y. Restaurant School.
Hard Press will be publishing a collection of new and old poems by Lima next year called "Inventory," and Lima will be on the cover of the prestigious American Poetry Review in January, which will feature eight of his poems inside.
"I've been submitting my stuff to them for twenty years. That's the way it goes," he said.
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The Cedar
The shadow of the twentieth century
by Frank Lima
lives on in my liver with all the dead poets
and artists who drank at the Cedar Bar.Who said they died for chamber music
and blanquette de veau?
Who said they found one another pounding
glasses of booze against the broken afternoon?Every night they talked of art and ate museums.
They were the bones of whiskey and the gods of color.
They frightened space with their eyes and apologized to their
brushes because the world could not see them paint.The critics were stars imitating Rome.
The artists were silent and became New York.They treated love like relics in a bed
and gave life away for free.
Their hearts bled fresh blood
becoming accidents on white streets
that would hang in museums.When they spoke about life,
their words became waves of suicide.
Proof that life imitates life.
(from Lingo 5: Spring 1996)
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Spotlight: Lucy Kaplansky
By day she labors as a New York City psychotherapist, plumbing the depths of her patient's disturbed psyches. By night she transforms into a folk-pop singer/songwriter, plumbing the depths of her own visions and fantasies, as heard on "Flesh and Bone" (Red House), her just-released CD. A former duet partner of Shawn Colvin's and a backup singer heard on recordings by Nanci Griffith, John Gorka and Dar Williams, her clean, sharp vocals betray a matter-of-fact sensuality, and her original compositions suggest Kaplansky deserves a place at the new-folk table alongside Suzanne Vega and The Story. Catch Kaplansky at the Iron Horse in Northampton on a co-bill with Garnet Rogers on Friday, Nov. 1, at 7.---------------
Backstage bits
Now that The Studio has had a successful first outing -- last week's trial-by-fire courtesy of Black 47, Carl (Not Chris) Bowlby and an errant pizza oven belonging to the Brewery -- promoter Mort Cooperman is looking at a few dates in late November to attract college students returning home around the Thanksgiving holiday to the new venue. And as soon as Levon Helm -- movie star and drummer/singer for The Band -- comes off the set of the latest Steven Seagal action-adventure flick, Cooperman hopes to snare Helm's group -- the unofficial "house band" for the Night Shift Cafe and Cooperman's Lone Star Cafe in New York before that -- to put its indelible mark on his latest nightspot. Look for a show by those Woodstock veterans in early-to-mid December...."You've got a nice place here. Come see us in New York when we play at Macy's." -- Larry Kirwan, leader of Black 47, commenting on the ambiance of The Studio, located in the former England Bros. department store on North Street in Pittsfield....
This ain't no TV: Now that Pittsfield has its very own, big- league entertainment space, natives are going to need a crash- course in nightclub protocol. Shows like last Saturday's Black 47 gig at The Studio are not concerts in the traditional sense, where the audience is supposed to stay seated in neat, parallel rows. Plenty of seating is available for those needing to rest their weary dogs -- bleachers in the rear and folding chairs spread around the room -- but these chairs aren't intended to be laid out in rows, as happened spontaneously before the show last week, making for a few tense moments at the beginning when some seated patrons objected to fans standing in front of the stage and dancing. The majority quickly caught on, and the dance floor was soon packed with people who came to participate and not merely observe, as was meant to happen....
[This column originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Oct. 31, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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