"Take the No Out of Now": Rozanne Gold in conversation with poet/multi-media artist Gerd Stern

Gerd Stern in front of Contact Is The Only Love, first shown at the San Francisco Museum of Art in 1963

Politics excepted, death and dying have become the meat of current discourse. As an end-of-life doula (with an MFA in poetry), trained to do “life reviews” that explore the vicissitudes of aging, I was excited to interview Gerd Stern, a renowned psychedelic artist and one of the world’s original Beat poets. Soon to be 93, Gerd eagerly awaits the 2022 publication of his fifth book of poetry, “Take the No Out of Now.” A colleague of Timothy Leary at Harvard, Gerd was Maya Angelou’s lover and manager, living together on a houseboat in Sausalito.

Gerd is a multi-media artist as well as a poet, and an emissary of the Beats. His book, First Poems and Others, was published in 1952. A second, Afterimage, appeared in 1965, followed years later by Fragmeants (2002), and WhenThen (2018). Stern was a founder of USCO, a group of pioneering artists, engineers and poets creating multimedia performances and environments that redefined art in the 1960’s. Their multimedia discotheque, named The World, was featured on the cover of Life magazine.  USCO’s work has been exhibited at the Walker Art Center, the Berkeley Art Museum, the Whitney, the Pompidou, the Tate Liverpool and museums in Vienna and Munich.   

Over the past decade, Gerd has been an artist-in-residence in Italy, Germany and the U.S. He has given talks and poetry readings on the Lower East Side, Woodstock, San Francisco’s Beat Museum (which celebrated his 90^th birthday), the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art, Utah State University, the National Gallery in Washington and the Fri Art Kunstalle in Switzerland. 

Until recently, Gerd lived in an 18^th-century house in Cresskill, New Jersey, and had a home in Jamaica (in the Caribbean) known as “POETREEF.”  He now lives in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, near Judith Sokoloff, his partner for fourteen years.  

At 93, Gerd still looks like the hippie he was, forever cool, and open to “what is.”  A father, great-grandfather, and artist-in-residence, Gerd joined me in a frank discussion about this sacred time of life. We called it end-of-life poetics, which, surprisingly, led him to forecast “possibility” and an optimistic view of the future.   

Gerd Stern (right) with Jim Kempner at Jim Kempner Fine Art during a show of Stern's multimedia work, February 2020.

RG: When were you first aware of death?

GS: It might have been my maternal grandmother’s. Her son, a doctor, inadvertently killed her. She had very bad asthma and they put radium pellets into her nose – they left a piece in her nose and that did her in. That affected me profoundly. I was a teenager mid-teens or late teens, I can’t remember. She was a piano teacher – a concert pianist in Europe. She was my first cultural contact in life – she would take me to the Metropolitan Opera. Her name was Oma Levinson and she was in her late 70s. My mother died when I was four, when we lived in Saarbrucken, Germany. I did not get to say goodbye.  

RG: Have you ever had an intimate experience with someone who was dying?

GS: I was with my father the minute he died in a hospital bed. He was in pain but also on morphine – it was a rather decent death. I witnessed a level of acceptance and I am comforted by that. On the other hand, my stepmother was angry that he died without her being there. And she died an angry woman. My father was 95 and my stepmother was 99. 

RG: How would you like to die?

GS: I’d like to die peacefully and somewhere where I’m loved. I’d like to die at home or I wouldn’t mind dying when I’m traveling (I spend a lot of time traveling – Venice, Germany, California). But home feels right – not a bad place. 

RG: Who is there with you?  What’s around you?

GS: Judith, my kids, my closest friends. I love all kinds of music, especially jazz since I was quite young, but there is nothing I would specify for that moment. I listen to music quite a lot but not as much as I used to. I prefer to be doing and thinking and working on papers. I am surrounded by piles of them – and they are important to me. But I have too many and can’t manage them like as I’d like  That’s part of end-of-life – I’m past the point of organization and can’t control it like I used to. I feel the pressure of facing up to some issues -- IRS stuff and raising money for the church building (the home of USCO) in Garnerville, New York, to become part of its local historical society. I’d like to turn it into an artist-in-residency venue. 

RG: Which poets feel meaningful, or inspiring, to you?    

GS: Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Ted Roethke, Dylan Thomas. Sylvia Plath, Rachel Hadas, T.S. Eliot.  And my erstwhile lover, Maya Angelou, but I actually preferred her prose. Also meaningful were my friendships – with Lenny Bruce, Chet Baker, Huey Newton, Philip Lamantia, as well as Dylan Thomas.

RG: Edward Said in “On Late Style” posited, “Late works constitute a form of exile.” Although perspectives vary greatly – from Sontag’s war-like posture to defeat death, to Freud’s willingness to go quietly but be in total control, and Dylan Thomas’s self-destructive, ignominious path -- what seems universal is their commitment to creating art until the very end, but in a manner quite distinct from their previous output. What do you think of this idea of late works in general?

GS: I think of “late works” in a strange way – as a time for me to recognize when a poem is mine because it sings and becomes attuned to my own being and knowing. (I’ve grappled with this from my late teens until my early forties, and seem to be grappling with it again). And so at this age my late works are not unlike the waves of the ocean. Each poem, or piece of art, distinct from any previous output.  This is not exile but the nature of things. Late works, then, is each poem, or piece of art, distinct from any previous output, but part of the flow.

(L to R): Vern Bennett, Ann London (Gerd's wife) Gerd Stern, Allen Ginsberg, Mimi London. In the front is Madge Bennett. Standing rear: Percy Heath of the Modern Jazz Quartet. Photograph was taken at Gerd’s barge in Waldo Point, Sausalito in the 1950s. © Gordon Onslow-Ford.

RG:One of Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’s patients said, “I want to live through my dying.” I’ll paraphrase this as “I want to live through my aging.”  I know you are not dying but how might your poetry differ at the end-of-life?

GS: I think this is where I might now be in my writing because I believe that everything in the coming years will be end-of-life poems. In my 40s, I began recognizing who I was as a poet and what poems mean to be Gerd Stern poems. Ever since, I identify myself as the poet who wrote or writes those poems. Before that I was struggling to claim who I was. My titles tell their own story in a way: “My First Poems and Others;” “Afterimage,” and my most recent “WhenThen” -- wow, that really sounds like end-of life poetics! I’ve been obsessed with time in my poetry since I started writing. I try to place my poems in some particular time -- so that the inspiration is definite, defined – not just all over the place. The idea of possible futures keeps me laughing, while the consideration of them keeps me creating and very alive.  This may be the best way I can “live through my aging.”

RG: Since getting my MFA I have explored the work of artists and poets at the end of life and noticed great similarities: A pervasive awareness of diminution (shrinking or fading away), stylistic changes (including fragments of texts, weightier lines, erasures, Haiku). Does any of this apply to you or your work?

GS: My late works in collage may be the best example of a stylistic change. A collage in itself is a great metaphor for a life review – where fragments, layers, and the interstices of thought, ideas and memory – overlap, collide, become resemblances of my own cadences and rhythms – essential elements to who I am, and add what is needed now. 

RG: Tell me about your relationship with Maya Angelou.

GS: Maya lived with me on my houseboat in Sausalito for three years -- before she was a poet. Tosh Angelos was her first husband – he was Greek, and Maya changed her name to what it became. Maya’s mother was bisexual and she was a good, good Southern cook  -- who later lived with a dyke who ran The HotDog on Fillmore. Maya’s brother was in jail for murder. Maya’s mother also shot someone.  Maya started writing poetry after she had been a dancer and singer. I was her manager and lover, and I also managed the Limelighters and was involved with the Kingston Trio. Maya sang for a long time at the Purple Onion. She would wear a very simple gown. She was fuckin’ beautiful. She was gorgeous. At that time, when Maya met a man she would say about me, “He’s my manager, my man.”  When Maya met a woman she would say… “He’s my man, and my manager.” We had a very loving relationship – but we had troubles. We used to stay out most of the night in San Francisco – jazz, clubs, drugs. Once, missing my head, she cracked a bottle of hair gel on the side of the bed. 

I have twelve pages of letters from Maya from the 1950s. She would write to “My own true love” and sign her letters Marguerite. Our relationship was real positive, yet she would never have any idea of who I was. She was too into who she was. We shared a lot of history. I talked to Maya two weeks before she died.  

RG: Are you afraid to die?  Who are you in the face of death? 

GS: I’ve been thinking for awhile that I am ready to do that – to think about it and not be worried about it.  I think I may die within the next 10 or 15 years – probably realistic. (We laugh because he is 92!)  I am not concerned about the actual when – I know I will keep writing and doing art until that happens because I’m not into stopping. Anything. 

RG: Your poetry speaks to truth, even when it’s tragic, a poet’s siren call. And like many of the Beats, yours is a distinctive voice of insurgence and play, devotion and its undoing. It reveals your spiritual mind in motion, grappling with your psychedelic (he)art. What do you think?

 (We laugh). GS:  I like this description. Thanks.

RG: What metaphor best conveys death, or the process of death, for you?

GS: I’m not heavily into metaphors. I’m more into meta-threes. (We laugh). And with even that, I prefer twos. 

RG: What do you imagine happens after you die?    

GS: I don’t. I am open to whatever will be. Reb Zalman (Schachter-Shalomi) was my mentor. He’s there up there. I have no need to know. I just know how much we loved each other…that’s plenty. I’ll be Ready, like Freddy (the Jamaicans say). 

I’m not as religious as I used to be, because Zalman isn’t around; I am Lubavitch in spirit but am not into orthodoxy or practice. Roshi Baker is a very good friend – but I’m not into Zen practice except when I’m around him. I don’t think religion will play a big part when the time comes around. I am fond of the Hebrew language but don’t know it well. It’s possible I might bring it forth at the time  But it’s not as important to me as no, ow, now. I made that!  It came out of my head. My triumphs?  Having written those words and a life well-lived – that of an adventurous bona fide “creative.”  In my teens, I was into biology and zoology, and I went to Bronx High School of Science. I collected tropical fish. I collected snakes in the Pine Barrens of New Jersey, and sold them – copperheads and rattlesnakes. We used to catch them hibernating. We would collect them in canvas bags and hitchhike to the Bronx Zoo and we got $7 for each.

RG: What is your own legacy as a poet?

GS: I have no bigs ideas about what will happen. I want to take care of everything before I go – sell my art, put the church into operation as an art venue and studio for artists, produce my opera about LSD (created with Ed Rosenfeld and Anne LeBaron). My extensive archives are at Stanford and my oral history was published by the University of California Brancroft Library, Berkeley. But I am not as known in the poetry world as I’d like and it kind of bothers me; I am much better known in the art world. Whereas I call myself a poet – the world calls me an artist. I don’t qualify the word “artist” either but my art is mostly about poetry…words. My art is word-oriented. And I keep doing it.

I was a hippy, a beatnik, a psychedelic artist. I was even President of the American Cheese Society, and a writer for Playboy. Poetry, all. A recent show in Newark featured my work – done with my long-time USCO collaborator Michael Callahan. I keep thinking of things when opportunity knocks – that’s how I function. And I often do the knocking myself. I’m a networker, a connector, a collaborator, all my life. 

RG: What poem might you think of near the time of your death?  

GS: If I think about it, I might say the Sh’ma (Sh’ma Yisrael, Adon’ai Eloheinu, Adon’ai Echad.)  Or I might take the No out of Now (laugh). That poem is my mantra and I’d say it over and over. (Why do you love it? I asked.) Either you understand it or you don’t. English is the only language where then means the past and the future. I wrote this poem in the ‘60s. The most successful short lines I have ever written or might ever write. “Take the No Out of Now:”

Take the no out of now
Then take the ow out of now
And then take the then out of now

My favorite poem is by Wallace Stevens:  “The Idea of Order at Key West.” Hey, it’s so rich and so smart and so well said and it rings with rhythm and contemporary speech. It reads aloud so well. Just an incredible poem. And I wouldn’t mind if someone read it to me at the right time.

RG: Aside from Maya’s love letters, what of her legacy remains with you now.

That  she called me Pretty Papa.

_______________________________________________________

The take-away:  Several days later, I called Gerd and asked: 

RG: Did anything change for you since our talk?  A feeling or something else?

GS: Oh yes, I felt like we discussed something essential and I felt very positive about where I got in the conversation. And I found the poem I was looking for DEAD OR ALIVE that I wrote about 20 years ago (it was in one of my piles). I will send it to you along with a copy of two letters written to Allen Ginsberg about the publishing of Howl which kind of intimates that Carl fucked his own mother. (Carl and Allen were friends and Allen was in love with Carl). I knew Carl’s mother well and that poem was not going to make her happy. In short, our conversation contributed to what I must do in the next year or so. It was positive. (His voice echoed this feeling. He also mentioned an article a friend sent from Paris about aging – which he agreed with greatly). 

RG: What did you think of the young poet in the yellow coat at the inauguration?

GS: Of course I immediately thought about Maya, whom the young poet referenced. Maya was into "black" before that was such an omnipresent gottabe. And I liked the way Ms. Gorman ended with the two lines reflecting the "brave" of our anthem. I'd like to send her my book, but how to get her email?   

Given the Choice 
            by Gerd Stern (from WhenThen)

would you trade more knowledge
for less under-standing

or more understanding
for less
knowledge
fact no hype
in fact awesome
backupable
indeed mea culpable

you have a problem
closing anything
jars, tubes, even doors
and turning things off
lights, music, people
targets of opportunity
raising experience stakes
making love to expectations
evolving consequence

am as in nesia
k’armic loopholes

summing hard discologies
dumping operating systems subroutinely
gently
down the stream  

Rozanne Gold, a trailblazer in the food world, is an award-winning chef, author, food writer, and philanthropist known for her storied career. At 24, she was first chef to New York Mayor Ed Koch, and became consulting chef to the legendary Rainbow Room and Windows on the World. A four-time recipient of the prestigious James Beard Award, Ms. Gold is the author of thirteen acclaimed cookbooks, 600 articles about food and cooking, and was the entertaining columnist for Bon Appetit for five years. She has written and produced stories for the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Gourmet Magazine, and Huffington Post, among others. A graduate of Tufts University with an MFA in poetry from the New School, she is a Board Director of “Brooklyn Poets,”and a finalist for the 2020 Sappho Poetry Prize. Find out more about Rozanne Gold here.

Comments

[Gerd Stern]

Thank you so much for making this interview and history by Rozanne Gold of myself Gerd Stern available to your amazing public. I appreciate the amount of oersonal and anecdotal information contained in these pages and at this ninety three years of age
am surprised both to be so honored and to have such details available along with my
published poems and exhibited works of art. To all of you involved ny positive gratitude and please let mer know personally if I can be in touch. very best re gerd s

[Maria]

So much death in Gerd’s story, yet his active life is visceral and except for less organizing he buzzes. The interview crisp, quick & affable. The poem Given the Choice speaks cryptically about a kind of sex that he understands and double meaning makes it about facts to give us understanding. Love the lines about closing & shutting off because they are so insightful beyond poem & entire lines are deceptively alert.

[michael whiteman]

So full of warmth and insights. Thanks to Rozanne Gold for telling us about this great under-appreciated poet and his madcap life as artist-composer-psychedelist and cheese maven. Leary, Ginsberg, Ferlinghetti, Angelou -- what a cast of characters! The "beat" goes on.

[Evan]

Such an intimate and important interview. A poignant peek inside the mind of Gerd Stern and a meaningful exchange on life, love and death. I am now inspired to read more of Gerd's work and like a great film or book, this piece has given me much to think about now and in the future. Bravo, Rozanne!