LATE NIGHT APPRECIATION RANTLE

My old friend, the late Hubert Selby Jr., used to say: "You can't have right without left or up without down, Michael"...meaning, implying, sometimes pointing out, that if I held the judgement or concept of "success" it had to include the judgement or concept of "failure" or it would be meaningless, and the same goes for "good" and "bad" etc.....

I've been thinking about that lately because a lot of the news has been "bad" and life's challenges have been "hard" and etc. but in the midst of it all there have been all kinds of "good" happenings and "easy" challenges...like two poetry readings I attended in downtown Manhattan, one in the West Village at the Cornelia Street Cafe, an old and venerated, at least by some of us, venue for music and spoken word etc. that I've had the good fortune to have read (and played) at...

That event featured three poets who all proved their poetry cred, but the main reason I went was to see my friend Burt Kimmelman read from his latest collection, ABANDONED ANGEL, and was glad I did. The other was further downtown on the Lower East Side on Delancey Street in a bar called Delancey, if I remember correctly, and featured several poets, all of whom were younger than the poets at the other reading but equally capable...

Again, I was there to hear a friend I've known since childhood, his that is, John Reed, read from his newest book FREEBOAT, and prove his reputation for a unique brilliance. More later on both books. On another evening I attended an opening of an exhibit of my friend Robert Zuckerman's photographs, in an office complex high above the city, where a short documentary on Robert was screened. And then on Friday evening I had the honor of taking part in a memorial for the late great poet and my beloved friend Ted Greenwald at Saint Mark's, the Poetry Project venue.

Each event was special in its own way, and each was a celebration of individual creativity, and served to confirm my belief that individual and group creativity can not only counter the negative forces in the world (well, some creativity can contribute to the negativity) but it can also transcend it in a way that makes me grateful and proud to have known all those who made those events more than worth the time and effort it took to attend them.