335: She said Yankee Stadium (the original) “is very sensual.” I cautioned her to use sensuous—appealing to the senses—rather than sensual, or people would think she is sexually aroused by Yankee Stadium. She replied, “I know the difference.”
336: In the Lake Tahoe Airport (or maybe it was Reno), 1979 (or perhaps 1980), the only other person in the waiting area looks like Freddy Cannon, whom I last saw singing Chuck Barris’s “Palisades Park” at one of Alan Freed’s Brooklyn Paramount shows. A vaguely familiar man enters, stops short, then spews out (the gist, based on fuzzy recollection): I work with Andy Kaufman, who is right behind me, and this could be awkward because Andy asked to meet you backstage but was turned away and Andy was crushed because he assumed you were mad at him because you thought Andy has been making fun of you in his act but he really and truly loves your music. Freddy replies (more fuzzy gist): Oh no, I didn’t know it was him, I would never turn away another performer, professional courtesy and all. And in walks Andy Kaufman, who (and this is not fuzzy) stops and stares in surprised awe like he can't believe his own twinkling eyes.
I left them getting along famously. In 1981 Andy hosted The Midnight Special and called Freddy “one of the most creative forces in 1950’s Rock & Roll,” before accompanying him on “Tallahassee Lassie.”
337: When I tell students about Ezra Pound reciting Browning’s “Sordello” to Yeats at Stone Cottage, I can feel them thinking, “Wow he’s smart.” When I tell them about the time Allen Ginsberg read “Wales Visitation” to me in Schenectady, I can feel them thinking, “Wow he’s old!”
338: I once had a phone number that could be dialed by spelling out either Doc Kiss or Doc Lips.
339: In a dream I get on the bus marked “Dream Bus.” After a while I ask the driver, “Where does this bus stop?” and he replies, “It doesn’t.” “So, how do we get anywhere?” “We don’t.”
340: My confession to my father after he came home and smelled the embers of a trash fire: “I lit a match.” Case closed.
341: Ah to go back—for ten minutes—to Winter 1970, changing buses at White River Junction, browsing vending machines and, with my only quarter, foregoing the candy bars of my childhood and, for the only time in my life, selecting a black plastic comb, climbing into the Plainfield bus delighted with my purchase.
342: I am done but I am far from finished.
Dream Bus. . .book me for a ride. -- DL
Posted by: The Best American Poetry | November 09, 2019 at 08:10 AM