Poetry at the Oct Fest on Newark Street in Hoboken revelled in the super hip this week with rear projection painted a paper-covered window with multi-colored images. Even the left-over paintings from the previous day’s art exhibit had the proper surreal appearance. Largely missing from the senecio was poetry.
A whole three people huddled inside the small square room when I arrived. The flyers still flapping on the front door announced the starting time as 5:30 p.m. It was 5:40. No one was reading poetry.
The man behind the knee high desk in the corner flipped through the polished pages of some commercial magazine, squinting at the pictures. He looked bored, and glanced up only when I asked if this was the right place.
“Poetry? Oh sure. Only we’re running a little late,” he said. “We should have things together by six o’clock.”
None of the others in the thin crowd of two remarked on the tardiness so I opted to come back. Too stuffy in the room that had recently gone through several metamorphosis, first Clinton-Gore Headquarters, then pseudo-art gallery, now poetry platform, and soon-to-be headquarters for the Frank Marciano mayoral candidacy.
“Six?” I said, a little confused. Most poetry readings garnered their time like gold, weighing it out in ten-minute bundles to long-winded poets who demanded more. It seemed an extravagance and some of this showed on my face.
“Oh don’t worry,” the man said. “We’ll definitely stop at ten.” His eyes brightened for the first time as if he sudden interested.
I learned later the whole kick and caboodle was scheduled to move across the street to the bar at ten for the second grand bash in three days, all part of this put-on party of art.
I wandered down the train station to wait, and the flapping water at the pier where a boat flying a Hoboken flag marked the greatest poem the city could offer: a vision of the river. In it, the warblely face of New York glistened. Towers of light! I have expected Walt Whitman to climb up out of the water quoting one of his poems of tribute.
Oh Manhattan! Oh Great City!
This place where I stood had a history in poetry as rich as Thames. The Clam Broth House a half block up the street had been a place for gathering beat poets in the 1940s. Kerouac. Ginsburg. Casedy. Silverman.
None of them would have been late in reading their poems, pressing the minutes for their full worth of poems. But the era had changed. Poets didn’t read poems at the drop of a hat, the way Bob Dylan did. Or Ginsburg. Some didn’t even talk about writing poems any more.
I went back at 5:55 and found a few more people, but no poetry. The man at the desk had almost finished thumbing through his magazine. He offered no words of encouragement, or created any sense that he intended to move any time soon. Outside I found someone wheeling a hand truck loaded with beer boxes across the street from the direction of the bar.
“Go right in,” the man said. “I’m just bringing the refreshments.” The beer boxes overflowed with styrophone coffee cups, sugar packets and containers of cream, as if the man had a party planned before the party later.
“We came for the poetry reading,” I said. “Your sign said 5:30.” “Yeah, I know, we’re a little late,” the man said, bearing a sloppy grin. “Actually we probably won’t get started until seven. But go in, have some coffee.”
An hour? I had supper defrosting on the kitchen counter at home. And I was hungry. I just wanted to hear some poetry, talk with some poets and then go home.
“Maybe I’ll come back,” I said.
The man looked disappointed, as if I had violated some specific ritual of poetry unique to Hoboken, one which required a certain amount of wasted time before getting down to business.
“Well, okay,” the man said. “But you’re missing half the fun.”
I came back at 7:15, figuring I missed the opening poet. The crowd was thicker, the small square room filled with costumed creatures that resembled poets of a half dozen eras. Black berets seemed in vogue. But I saw no poets. At least there was no one in the familiar pose, reading from a manuscript. The man in the corner with the magazine was gone. So was his small desk. The man with the beer boxes had taken his place, and a larger table filled with cups and coffee and cakes filled that half of the room. He grinned when he saw us.
“We’re late again,” he said. “Any time now.”
People wandered from corner to corner staring at the dark art work, or talking to each other in nasally voices about stock options, Mia Farrow or how far they’d had to walk from where they’d parked their cars.
Poets? Maybe. But the kind of poets Edgar Allen Poe had mocked as social poets without poems or sense of purpose. I waited five minutes and when no one made a move to produce a poem, I went home.
If I was lucky I could still catch the second half of Star Trek on television.