I had very close to a perfect day in New York yesterday. Lunch at Katz’ Delicatessen, a chance to visit the Downtown Music Gallery, a hole-in-the-wall venue at 342 Bowery that is, as best I can tell, the best CD store for contemporary jazz in the country, an interview with Amy King in the nearby Manahatta café that should be podcast on MiPOradio before too terribly long, a fabulous reading at the Bowery Poetry Club with David Shapiro – our readings fit perfectly together, one of the best “matches” I’ve ever had – followed by dinner with David, with James Sherry & two of David’s students at the Savoy. Driving home, I got to listen to some old-timey bluegrass on Oscar Brand’s Folksong Festival on WNYC before being able to pick up Jonny Meister & the Blues Show on XPN. At the reading, I met some old friends (Anne Tardos! Nick Piombino & Toni Simon!), saw many newer ones & put faces to names I’ve been reading for awhile for the very first time (Aaron McCollough, Katie Degentesh). Nada Gordon gave me the most extravagant introduction I think I’ve ever had. Lots of people gave me books & the inimitable Jim Behrle presented me with an oil portrait of me as an Easter peep that I treasure already! (I tried to explain what I described to my wife as “flarf painting” this morning, without notable success.)

Some folks told me that they were “surprised” at the combination of David & I. One person used the word “shocked.” I thought it made perfect sense &, having now heard us together, I’m sure I was right. It may seem that we’re from different generations & aesthetics – David from the New York School, me from langpo – but I’m actually one year older than him & in some ways, Shapiro is one of the New York School poets whose concerns clearly overlap with mine, at least as much as those of Bernadette Mayer & Clark Coolidge, two other poets with, how shall I put this, dual citizenship. In Shapiro’s case, the key is his ongoing political commitment – evident enough in that photo on yesterday’s blog, one of the iconic images of the 1960s (it originally ran as a two-page spread in Life magazine), but visible in his poetry throughout his career – but also Shapiro’s long association with the late art critic Meyer Schapiro predisposes David to be more comfortable with the theory side of langpo than many of his original coterie, Clark & Bernadette included.

When first I met David Melnick back in 1968, Melnick recruited me to help him with getting the poetry of David Shapiro – a friend of his from Paris – and other New Americans into the UC Berkeley literary magazine, Occident. I already knew Shapiro’s work from his first book, January, published by Holt, Rinehart & Winston in 1965, when he was all of 18 years old. It seems amazing that it has taken all these decades finally to meet & get to read with one another. Here’s hoping the next time doesn’t take so very long.