Robert Hershon Presents a Poem by Tony Towle

This poem by Tony Towle first appeared in Hanging Loose 82 (Fall, 2002) and also appears in his latest collection, Winter Journey.

THE DINNER PARTY

Ah, life is a reassuring dream that is vivid but comfortably mundane,
said the shmuck aloud to himself as he sat down next to the shlemiel
and indulged in an expansive gesture of certitude that sent the latter’s soup
into the lap of the adjacent shlimazel.  The shmendrick apologized,
to no one in particular, and the shmegeggy accepted; while the shlep
shuffled off to the kitchen to get another bowl, and at the front door the shnorrer
pushed past the shlumps to talk his way in.  It was the putz, of course,
that had arranged the seating, a decorous mélange of shmoes
crowded in next to the radiator, sweating and uncomfortable
but grateful to have been invited.  I have no idea where I’m supposed to sit,
so I leave and go sit in the park, where I hear an avian voice: “Hey,
you don’t recognize me?  I’m the pigeon that craps on your windowsill.
Why are you down here on a cold bench when you could be upstairs
eating a free meal?  What are you, some kind of shnook?”

Lenny Bruce said that everybody who lives in New York is Jewish and everybody who lives outside of New York is not Jewish.

In support of that thesis, I offer you Tony Towle, a sandy-haired shagetz who long-ago fled his native Queens and established himself as one of those residents of lower Manhattan to whom anywhere north of 14^th Street is the Adirondacks.   Tony has the true New Yorker’s command of the essential Yiddish vocabulary combined with a poet’s ear and sensitivity to nuance.  The fact that he lives with a nice Jewish girl probably doesn’t hurt either.

When Tony reads this poem aloud, he keeps it flat and reportorial, a bit the way a Swedish sociologist might present it, say.  I had the pleasure of reading it at the recent 70th birthday celebration for Tony at The Poetry Project.  I didn’t go into full shtetl mode, but I could feel the spirit of my late Uncle Louis trying to assert itself.

My favorite reading of the poem took place a couple of years ago.  CLMP had invited Hanging Loose to present some recently published poems in a reading at the main New York Public Library.  We sent Marie Carter, our associate editor and one-time editor of the University of Edinburgh’s literary magazine.  One of the poems Marie chose was The Dinner Party and her Scottish accent revealed whole new layers of universality in the poem.  The bonny lass did need a little coaching on the pronunciation of “shlamazel.”

-- Robert Hershon