I had this e-mail exchange with Bill Berkson, April 21-22, 2016, regarding a "a fact check for [his] portrait of Kenneth [Koch] in a book of memoirs [he was] putting together and that Coffee House promises to publish in 2017."
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 5:24 PM, Bill Berkson <[email protected]> wrote:
Dear David
I’m trying to track down some hard facts about the poetry-and-jazz events that Kenneth Koch, Larry Rivers and other did at the Five Spot.
In your LAST AVANT-GARDE you write that Billie Holiday’s appearance (the one at which she called Kenneth’s poetry “weird,” occurred on [a] Monday night. I have understood that those events happened on successive afternoons.
Do you recall your source for that event taking place on a Monday night?
Thanks for any help you can provide.
As ever,
Bill
On Apr 21, 2016, at 3:49 PM, David Lehman wrote:
Dear Bill,
Kenneth told me the Billie Holiday (“weird, man") anecdote during one of the lengthy interviews with him I did in 1994. I understood him to be referring to a date in fall 1958.
But I am not certain where I got the idea that the readings with Larry Rivers took place on Monday evenings. I knew that Monday was Thelonious Monk's night off. (Monk performed with a quartet that included Johnny Griffin on tenor sax and Roy Haynes on drums.) Now did I just assume that poetry and jazz was a nighttime activity since nighttime was the right time for Monk and his crew -- and presumably for the patrons of the place? Or was there a definite reference to Monday evenings in my interviews with Larry and with Kenneth? To answer I'd need access to those papers, which I do not have at the moment.
Are you writing something? I'd be very interested in what you find out.
Just last night I was talking to a group of students and FOH's poetry came up -- "The eager note on my door," but also, less expectedly, "Pearl Harbor" and "On Rachmaninoff's Birthday."
Thank you for writing. I hope you are in good health.
David
On Thu, Apr 21, 2016 at 7:42 PM, bill berkson <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks, David.
I’ve wanted for long time to get the Five Spot poetry/jazz story straight, but this is just a fact check for my portrait of Kenneth in a book of memoirs I’m putting together and that Coffee House promises to publish in 2017.
I’ll use the "Monday night” version for now. If I find out differently I’ll surely let you know.
Funny that you got Kenneth saying that Billie said “Man, your poetry is weird,” which what I heard from him too, but later he said she spoke differently. His revisionist account sounded off pitch to me, and I wondered why he was so inclined to spoil a good story.
Yes, good health with few annoyances here. (Just had a successful skin graft operation to replace cancerous scalp.)
I hope you’re well, as well.
Bill
On Apr 22, 2016, at 11:21 AM, David Lehman wrote:
<<
Funny that you got Kenneth saying that Billie said “Man, you’re poetry is weird,” which [is] what I heard from him too, but later he said she spoke differently. His revisionist account sounded off pitch to me, and I wondered why he was so inclined to spoil a good story.
>>
He did that more than once under the spirit of revisionism. In "serious" conversations we had, especially around the time of "The Last Avant-Garde," I felt that he deprecated the "comic" as a trait of his poetry -- as if the critics were right all along to denigrate the elements of humor, joy, laughter, surprise, and jest in his work and in poetry generally.
I am still recovering from the chemotherapy and then the radical surgery that I had to endure in 2015. There are aches and pains and then some, but I feel a little better every week.
David
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: bill berkson <[email protected]>
Date: Fri, Apr 22, 2016 at 7:49 PM
Subject: Re: Five Spot Monday night
To: david lehman <[email protected]>
Dear David,
Kenneth’s humor never left him. He became gentler once he realized, with all his bouts with cancer, how his friends cared for, loved him. The poetry deepened over time, too. Poems like Paradiso and the whole of New Addresses, so wonderful to have. There should be more attention to his work, of course, more appreciation of its range and accomplishment.
Sorry to hear of your health trouble and aches and pains (alla Luke Appling, you will recall).
Here’s hoping the chemo does the trick, and whatever else the good doctors devise to keep David being David.
Cheers,
Bill
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Please note my new email address is [email protected]. I am no longer checking the pacbell email address.
Here is William Grimes's obituary in the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/22/arts/bill-berkson-poet-and-art-critic-of-60s-manhattan-in-crowd-dies-at-76.html?_r=0
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