The last time I saw him was when we were both reading for an event at The Bowery Poetry Club a few years ago. He looked much older, as I know I did to him, but he was as sharp tongued as ever. The years had softened me and I was just so happy to see he was still alive, as so many from those days and those scenes are long gone, and told him so and I could see it made him happy.
The years in between our first meeting and our last had made Rene more widely known, especially the film BASQUIAT in which one of the lead characters was supposed to be Rene (the actor playing him was so far from my experience of Rene, it was almost impossible to figure out where his portrayal came from), but on the downtown scene, it seemed like he'd always been known (partly due to his appearances in Warhol movies, and partly for his art criticism that helped discover new great artists like Basquiat for instance, but for me it was always his poetry, slight as his output was).
My favorite encounter with Rene was after I'd read at one of those New Year's Day marathon poetry readings at Saint Marks in the late 1970s or early '80s (I left the city in the summer of '82) at which I read two poems that were relatively new—"My Image" and "Fuck Me In The Heart Acceptance"—after which he told me the poems were so brilliant that I should be famous just for writing them. That was the sweetest he'd ever been to me. And I never forgot it.
Rene was one of a kind. You can check out the film BASQUIAT to see how he's portrayed there, or read his art criticism. But for me the best way to remember him is to read his poetry. Here's an example from his first collection, RENE RICARD 1979-1980 and the perfect epitaph:
"THE TIME OF DAY IN GIORGIONE
The sun is always setting in my heart
Like the time of day in Giorgione
The days drift beyond reach and...poof they are gone"
5 comments:
I'm glad to hear he wasn't as he was portrayed in BASQUIAT. I suppose the character was meant to represent all the grasping self-promoters in the art world, and every other world, but it was particulary ugly portrayal. My memory was that he looked physically oily and just plain dirty. And also a little too heavy-handed inthe portrayal.
You're so right, Michael. Rene was first and foremost a poet. Was. I'm absorbing that. I knew him in all the familiar places including John Wieners apartment in Boston and St.Mark's and all of Mickey Ruskin's places, especially at One U, which is where he and Gerard's feud blossomed into the end of their important friendship. Some jobs I got -- like working for Jean Stein and working for Ruth Kligman -- may have been thanks to him, or else to Gerard, and since he's gone I want to credit him for the possibility that he recommended me to those brassy dames. Most importantly, he came to me when he had to prepare his manuscript for the "Tiffany" book. It was our own "breakfast at Tiffany's" in my Mott Street with cigarettes and coffee and maybe even a little something to eat sort of mid-afternoon, morning for us. I'd type, he'd talk, we'd rustle through his papers -- some were scraps of paper or pages from books or journals where he'd written, figure out what should go where, polish up poems including rethinking things like line breaks. It was great working with him. And later, when I had the chance to maybe do a book with him for real, Brooke gave Rene an advance for a book we intended to co-publish (as we were doing with Yvonne and Jayne Anne and we were intending to do with Cookie Mueller and Nathan Joseph, only Cookie died too soon). Judy Rifka was going to be the artist. Only Rene took the money and ran off to Europe and by the time he showed up again Brooke had lost heart on the book (which may have been more complicated than that, only I didn't know Brooke so well then as I do now) and it never happened. Rene was also very messed up with drugs when he reappeared in New York so, too bad, I never got to publish a book of his -- before my semi-retirement/pregnancy/move to the hinterlands of upstate. He was a great friend and, yes, a great poet and, sure, not the best person to "do business with." I miss him.
Thanks for that Annabel, I didn't low much of that despite our being tight friends during much of it...I loved Cookie...and of course knew Judy and had met the rest one way or the other so great to hear so many we had in common tied together in another great personal account (my favorite form of education, tell me the story! so thanks kid...
whoops, didn't "high" it either...(obviously meant "know")...
and by "our" (in "being tight friends") I meant you and me Annabel...
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