TED GREENWALD R.I.P.

(photo by Charles Bernstein)

"love returns what you sent"  —Ted Greenwald (from The Life)

Ted Greenwald was my beloved friend since the first time we met in New York in the early 1970s. He was a much more consistent friend than I was, as he was consistent in every way. He had the same unpretentious haircut and casual clothes style the entire time I knew him (with the later addition of glasses the only concession to time passing that I ever saw).

He was also a consistently original poet and writer and thinker and conversationalist and observer and minimalist (despite also being one of the most prolific poets ever, including writing book length poems, but always in his minimalist style, as his takes on his life and his surroundings were succinct in detail and rendering, even when they did go on...if that makes any sense, and I hope it would to him)...and the author of not only a unique poetic style but of one of the most original approaches to an autobiography (CLEARVIEW/LIE) in existence...

His sister, the filmmaker Maggie Greenwald summarized him best in these lines: "He was brilliant, infuriating, prolific, erudite, tough, all NYer all the time, a badass till the end. He loved a good conversation most of all...I adored him."

And here, from a 1977 book NATIVE LAND is his poem (and an example of his skill and originality):

AIRY RUSHES PUNCH

Airy rushes punch my shirt

Through a window of sunset dirt

And send me reeling like a lure

Through the water nerves of America

Once on the other side of somewhere

I relax and become someone else

Not that I behave different

Just behave less often

The sky offers me solace and office space

And stars I keep in drawers

Wear nothing

But a little mist and halo

I will imagine myself

A sympathetic headlight

Knocking on the door of the night

To borrow a cup of sugar

From the beautiful neighbor

Who's moved in

Without even the clothes on her back

"Would it be possible

To borrow a cup of sugar"

"Sure     Sit down

Make yourself comfortable"

I ease down in the big dipper