By: joe weil

joe weil — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:43:33 +0000

I’ve never thought of myself as a poet so much as a person who enjoyed reading, was known in my working class neigborhood as a weird kid great at “talking shit” and who was intellectually formed by a bunch of frequently drunken Cuban friends who came over in 1967 and exposed me to the crazy Idea that I might be an artist. We hung out over a florist shop on Elizabeth Avenue, ate empinadas and chili dogs, drank gallons of wine, listened to Charlie Parker, Rubin Blades, Thelonious Monk, while papering the walls with Mondrian, Braque, Kandinski, thirties depression art as well as Goya, Diego, Gorky, Pollock, Jasper Johns. We read Rilke and Ceasar Vallejo, and wept. I was the only musician, (they were painters, sculptors, or philosophers) and they’d come by my house and listen to me play tunes on a crummy old upright piano. My first exposure to the arts was primarily Latin American because my hometown was over half Latino. I feel as strange up here sometimes Metta as you did, and I’m so white the old Cuban grandmothers in my neighborhood called me “El Blanco,” They liked me, and would rub my red hair for luck (now I’m bald). I miss Ruben Blades. I miss weeping over Vallejo. When Monk died, we went to his funeral, and my friend Marco almost spilled coffee on Miles Davis. Marco: “Man, I’m sorry Miles.” Miles: “Don’t be sorry kid; be careful.” The Poetry Society of American doesn’t have to be careful. That’s their problem. And they ain’t sorry, either. They’re smug, and, to tell you the truth, I have a hard time caring about them. They don’t care about me. Not one of them has ever made out with me, or offered me a ride, or loaned me money, or given me an empinada. Someone ought to kidnap them all and take them to a florist shop, and get them drunk on cheap wine, and recite Machado, and Vallejo, and make them listen to Monk until they falll down from their boring pantheon, and weep over Goya’s Maja, and eat chile dogs with empinadas and make out with me! (most of them don’t look so hot though—too skinny, too grim, and I’m afraid to see their children’s pictures). I think we should make them do a swim suit issue. Oh well… They aren’t careful, and they aren’t sorry, and I miss those empinadas. I want some snow cake, too. I’m going to check out the reading list. Thanks.

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By: joe weil