Workman's Lunch [by Dean Smith]

The poem “Cardboard Note” stopped me in my tracks as I walked through New Orleans one summer in the mid-90s. I carried it in my head as a meditation for more than twenty years. I never wrote it down until recently. I read the sign out loud for the sound of it and lingered there in the doorway vestibule staring at the haphazard brown square affixed to the middle of a glass door.

Cardboard Note

The Polk Street Diner
is closed today
due to the passing
of Miss Annie Mae.

The bottom of the cardboard was torn with a ragged corrugated edge and the black letters were both upper and lower case within the words. The door frame wore several layers of brown paint. The diner was empty and old school with a Formica and chrome luncheonette counter. There were tables as well. This was a place for workers to feast on steaming collards or rice and beans, fried oyster poboys and low-brow muffalettas.

It wasn’t William Carlos Williams but my mother, Dona Carol Bartoli, who first introduced me to the concept of found poetry. Years after she dropped me off at the University of Virginia in 1981, she showed me a poem that she had written on the way back to Chicago from that trip.

It was called “Eye of the Needle” and contained a sequence of Native American words and tribal names on highway signs. She maintained a spiritual connection to the Indigenous Americans throughout her life and her classic Neapolitan features—long and curly jet black hair, high cheekbones, a dark complexion and an aquiline nose gave her a native presence. The poem begins, “Chickahoming/Lightfoot/Toano.”

I’ll never forget that when she dropped me off at UVA, she started crying. And years later, when she gave me the poem, she confessed, “I wasn’t crying because I was going to miss you. I was jealous that I wasn’t going to that school.” The last two lines of “Eye of the Needle” are my favorite and read: “Indian Head
Highway/No Exit.”

She passed away last year. I found numerous poems on Johns Hopkins University Medical School stationery from the early 1960s in her Italian villa. She had worked as a secretary for a Hopkins ophthalmologist named Dr. Knox. After she found out that she was pregnant with me, she couldn’t type letters to patients for three weeks. She kept making mistakes and throwing crinkled balls into the trashcan. I knew as early as I can remember that she had sacrificed much bigger dreams to become a mother at the age of twenty-one.

My second found poem appeared in the form of a sign in the meatpacking district in Lower Manhattan in 1987. I was living in Chelsea and was walking with my Columbia roommate Paul. It was a bitter cold Sunday afternoon in January, light fading across the Hudson. These were the post-Kojak years—when the neighborhoods around the Manhattan Port Authority building were still seedy and bleak. I memorized it exactly as it was portrayed on the sign with the headline, “The Finest Natural Veal.”

Legs, hinds, loins, racks,
shoulders, breasts, necks,
cutlets, clods, t-bone steaks
sliced roast trimmings, filet
tongues, hearts, livers, brains,
sweetbread.

Those last five words still remind me of what it means to be a poet: the process, the work, the endless cutting into bone.

In 1992, Poetry East published a poem of mine entitled “Obsession.” In that issue, Number Thirty-three, I discovered the poem “Aunt Mary Catherine Bids the World Adieu” by George Swaney. It’s a simple two-line poem, “If you want me I’ll be/ in the garage.” I would quote these lines and this poem for decades. It prepared me for being able to see the meaning in “Cardboard Note.” I had an Aunt Mary Margaret on my father’s side and would substitute her name for the title. For years, I thought about the details that were missing. Did she wear a housecoat? What was in the garage? 

Found poems like this one present the punchline but not the backstory—leaving all possibility

to the imagination. Swaney’s poem influenced my embrace of “Cardboard Note.” I’ve also thought about why it took so long to write “Cardboard Note” down. 

My mother died in Montecatini Alto in January of 2019. She didn’t know that she had terminal cancer. I spent the final days with her. A few months before she died, I’d sent her some new work. She told me that it was some of the best she’d seen from me.

On the day she died, we finally received the definitive news of her condition shortly before lunch. We said nothing to her about it—but could see that she was near the end. My brother, stepfather, and I went to my parent’s favorite lunch spot called La Tavola to regroup. The restaurant offers tre piatti for only ten euro. You can get Tortellini en Brodo, Bistecca Fiorentina, Panna Cotta, and a Coca-Cola Light—a meal for a reasonable fee that is molto buono. The Montecatini city workers were finishing up their lunch break, hunkering down with their Tiramasu and espresso. My stepfather started to choke up when Bruno the owner asked where my mother was.

Death Notice, Dona Carol Bartoli

Back at the hospital, Dona was dying quickly. We got the call and frantically drove to say one final goodbye. We missed her last breath by minutes. She was lying in state in the chapel by nightfall. A one-thousand year old Italian lawn required the casket to be open for twenty-four hours. She looked beautiful in her coffin, at peace, like a warrior after a long battle.

I finally wrote down the message on the sign in the New Orleans café window last summer. My journey into mourning the loss of my mother led me back down Canal Street into that doorway. I’ve thought for years about Miss Annie Mae. So much inside that door depended on her presence that the restaurant closed for her passing. Did it ever reopen? I didn’t find any trace of its existence. I knew that she must have been someone who smiled and engaged the customers. Like my mother, she is an important figure in the invisible history of the world. I felt the need to honor her life.

It wasn't William Carlos Williams, but Dona Carol Bartoli, pictured here in her prime, who first introduced the author to the concept of found poetry

This essay appears in the May issue of  issue of Poetry East.

Dean Smith is Director of Duke University Press. Before joining Duke, Dean was the director of Cornell University Press—the first university press in America—overseeing a program that publishes 150 new books a year and features 3,400 e-books. He is an author, poet, and freelance journalist. His book of poetry, American Boy (2000), is openly accessible. He published Never Easy, Never Pretty: A Fan, A City, A Championship Season (2013) with Temple University Press. He is an adjunct professor of publishing in the Masters in Professional Studies program at George Washington University. One of his all-time favorite moments was doing a public talk with John Cleese.  

Comments

[Carolyn c. Wake]

Oh Dean, this old lady would love to give you a big hug! We so appreciate your sharing this with us! Memories oh such wonderful memories. Our love, Carolyn

[C. David Burak]

Hey Dean,

Nice "memory mining" work. Your Mom was clearly an iconic individual. She would've been welcome at our poetry crew get together this afternoon. Roald, Roger & I had a fascinating session on the patio of the C-Tn Bagel Shop. David LehmaN sent a poem re: being obliged to maintain self-separation at home, though, on occasion, he does get out to walk his dog in a nearby park w/waterfalls. In any case, after today's session, Roald & I talked re: the prospects of asking you what U think about the idea of Duke Press & Cornell Press teaming up to publish a volume of stories, poems & such. So, what do you think.

Best,
David