As of recent, I’ve been pondering the concept of Legacy. A close friend asked me once, “How do we build our legacy?” I told him we build our legacy by taking a hammer to the impossible and shattering perspective; one poem, one song, one film at a time…
I reflect back on my time at The New School University. I took a class called “Make It New” with Paul Violi. Later, he became my thesis advisor. Paul is sort of a reserved man, until you get him talking poetry. Then he’d break out of his shell with a short laughter, and dash you with an extraordinary amount of knowledge. He is so well versed that you could discuss nature in Walt Whitman’s leaves of grass or the style of Kenneth Koch with such diversity. Paul wrote more than 11 books and was honored many times over for his work. He recently passed away and will be missed.
I refer to Paul Violi in the present, because if anyone deserves the title of legacy, he does. He built an empire with his creative work and will continue to live on in those who read him. You can breathe his words with every turn of the page. It’s the ones who leave nothing behind that become a faint whisper of the past.
Paul Violi was born in New York in 1944 and grew up in Greenlawn, Long Island. Paul received a a B.A. in English and a minor in Art History from Boston University. After being involved in the Peace Corps and upon his arrival back to New York, he spent time working for WCBS-TV and other various newspapers and magazines. Paul then became the managing editor of The Architectural Forum from 1972-1974. As chairman of the Associate Council Poetry Committee, Violi organized a series of readings at the Museum of Modern Art from 1974-1983. Paul also co-founded Swollen Magpie Press.
Paul’s books of poetry and prose include: Waterworks (Toothpaste Press, Iowa City, Iowa, 1972), In Baltic Circles (Kulchur Foundation Press, New York , 1973), Some Poems (Swollen Magpie Press, New York, 1976), Harmatan (Sun Press, New York, 1977), American Express (Joe Soap’s Canoe Publications, U.K. , 1981), Splurge (Sun Press, New York 1982), Likewise (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1988), The Curious Builder (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1993), The Anamorphoses (Pataphysics Series, Australia, 1995), Fracas (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 1998), Breakers: Selected Longer Poems (Coffee House Press, Minnesota, 2000), Selected Accidents, Pointless Anecdotes (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 2002) Overnight (Hanging Loose Press, New York, 2007)
****
Appeal to the Grammarians
by Paul Violi
We, the naturally hopeful,
Need a simple sign
For the myriad ways we’re capsized.
We who love precise language
Need a finer way to convey
Disappointment and perplexity.
For speechlessness and all its inflections,
For up-ended expectations,
For every time we’re ambushed
By trivial or stupefying irony,
For pure incredulity, we need
The inverted exclamation point.
For the dropped smile, the limp handshake,
For whoever has just unwrapped a dumb gift
Or taken the first sip of a flat beer,
Or felt love or pond ice
Give way underfoot, we deserve it.
We need it for the air pocket, the scratch shot,
The child whose ball doesn’t bounce back,
The flat tire at journey’s outset,
The odyssey that ends up in Weehawken.
But mainly because I need it—here and now
As I sit outside the Caffe Reggio
Staring at my espresso and cannoli
After this middle-aged couple
Came strolling by and he suddenly
Veered and sneezed all over my table
And she said to him, “See, that’s why
I don’t like to eat outside.”
****
The New School Writing Program is establishing a Paul Violi Poetry Prize to be awarded annually to a poetry student in the program. It will be funded by contributions from individual donors. Make checks out to “New School Writing Program,” with the words “In honor of Paul Violi” in the memo line. Checks should be sent to Office of Development, The New School, 79 Fifth Avenue, 17th Floor, New York, New York 10003, attention Mr. Francisco Tezen, Senior Director. If donors want to make a gift by credit card, The New School has a credit card form that can by found at the website http://www.newschool.edu/giving/
Melody Gardot (born February 2, 1985 in New Jersey) is an American jazz singer, writer and musician in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
the brain’s two cortexes which control perception and higher mental function and made Gardot (in her own words) “a bit of a vegetable.”
She has been influenced by such blues and jazz artists as Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and George Gershwin as well as Latin music artists such as Stan Getz and Caetano Veloso.
Recent Comments