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Love Is Like Park Avenue, by Alvin Levin
Collected Writings; Preface by John Ashbery
In Love Is Like Park Avenue, Alvin Levin reveals that part of New York society that lived in the Bronx but longed to be in the shadow of skyscrapers — with the dance bands, celebrities, and socialites; his characters create a mirror world of love and sex. This fascinating compendium of Levin’s writings offers a look at the career of an “outsider artist” who was never able to finish a long novel, yet whose fragments are of heartbreaking intensity and amazing social scope.
Edited by James Reidel (the biographer of the vanished poet Weldon Kees), Love Is Like Park Avenue contains stories, an unfinished novel, and sketches, all of which either appeared in premier literary magazines, with avant-garde small presses, or were discovered unpublished in boxes. Also contained is correspondence with encouraging publishers, offering the portrait of a brilliant writer who never quite found success despite publication in some of the era’s most prestigious magazines. Levin wrote these unforgettable fictional accounts of life in Depression-era New York, capturing the rhythms and tone of his time with intensity, wit, and probing genius.
“Scabrous scenes of family feuding in the Bronx and crowded Coney Island Beaches come at you with the leering verve of Reginald Marsh’s drawings and Paul Cadmus’ quasi-pornographic paintings.” —John Ashbery, From The Preface
“The stuff by Alvin Levin has brilliant patches.” —Tennessee Williams
...
Kaddish Part I
Strange now to think of you, gone without corsets & eyes, while I walk on
the sunny pavement of Greenwich Village.
downtown Manhattan, clear winter noon, and I've been up all night, talking,
talking, reading the Kaddish aloud, listening to Ray Charles blues
shout blind on the phonograph
the rhythm the rhythm--and your memory in my head three years after--
And read Adonais' last triumphant stanzas aloud--wept, realizing
how we suffer--
And how Death is that remedy all singers dream of, sing, remember,
prophesy as in the Hebrew Anthem, or the Buddhist Book of An-
swers--and my own imagination of a withered leaf--at dawn--
Dreaming back thru life, Your time--and mine accelerating toward Apoca-
lypse,
the final moment--the flower burning in the Day--and what comes after,
looking back on the mind itself that saw an American city
a flash away, and the great dream of Me or China, or you and a phantom
Russia, or a crumpled bed that never existed--
like a poem in the dark--escaped back to Oblivion--
No more to say, and nothing to weep for but the Beings in the Dream,
trapped in its disappearance,
sighing, screaming with it, buying and selling pieces of phantom, worship-
ping each other,
worshipping the God included in it all--longing or inevitability?--while it
lasts, a Vision--anything more?
It leaps about me, as I go out and walk the street, look back over my shoulder,
Seventh Avenue, the battlements of window office buildings shoul-
dering each other high, under a cloud, tall as the sky an instant--and
the sky above--an old blue place.
or down the Avenue to the south, to--as I walk toward the Lower East Side
--where you walked 50 years ago, little girl--from Russia, eating the
first poisonous tomatoes of America frightened on the dock
then struggling in the crowds of Orchard Street toward what?--toward
Newark--
toward candy store, first home-made sodas of the century, hand-churned ice
cream in backroom on musty brownfloor boards--
Toward education marriage nervous breakdown, operation, teaching school,
and learning to be mad, in a dream--what is this life?
Toward the Key in the window--and the great Key lays its head of light
on top of Manhattan, and over the floor, and lays down on the
sidewalk--in a single vast beam, moving, as I walk down First toward
the Yiddish Theater--and the place of poverty
you knew, and I know, but without caring now--Strange to have moved
thru Paterson, and the West, and Europe and here again,
with the cries of Spaniards now in the doorstops doors and dark boys on
the street, fire escapes old as you
--Tho you're not old now, that's left here with me--
Myself, anyhow, maybe as old as the universe--and I guess that dies with
us--enough to cancel all that comes--What came is gone forever
every time--
That's good! That leaves it open for no regret--no fear radiators, lacklove,
torture even toothache in the end--
Though while it comes it is a lion that eats the soul--and the lamb, the soul,
in us, alas, offering itself in sacrifice to change's fierce hunger--hair
and teeth--and the roar of bonepain, skull bare, break rib, rot-skin,
braintricked Implacability.
Ai! ai! we do worse! We are in a fix! And you're out, Death let you out,
Death had the Mercy, you're done with your century, done with
God, done with the path thru it--Done with yourself at last--Pure
--Back to the Babe dark before your Father, before us all--before the
world--
There, rest. No more suffering for you. I know where you've gone, it's good.
No more flowers in the summer fields of New York, no joy now, no more
fear of Louis,
and no more of his sweetness and glasses, his high school decades, debts,
loves, frightened telephone calls, conception beds, relatives, hands--
No more of sister Elanor,--she gone before you--we kept it secret you
killed her--or she killed herself to bear with you--an arthritic heart
--But Death's killed you both--No matter--
Nor your memory of your mother, 1915 tears in silent movies weeks and
weeks--forgetting, agrieve watching Marie Dressler address human-
ity, Chaplin dance in youth,
or Boris Godunov, Chaliapin's at the Met, halling his voice of a weeping Czar
--by standing room with Elanor & Max--watching also the Capital
ists take seats in Orchestra, white furs, diamonds,
with the YPSL's hitch-hiking thru Pennsylvania, in black baggy gym skirts
pants, photograph of 4 girls holding each other round the waste, and
laughing eye, too coy, virginal solitude of 1920
all girls grown old, or dead now, and that long hair in the grave--lucky to
have husbands later--
You made it--I came too--Eugene my brother before (still grieving now and
will gream on to his last stiff hand, as he goes thru his cancer--or kill
--later perhaps--soon he will think--)
And it's the last moment I remember, which I see them all, thru myself, now
--tho not you
I didn't foresee what you felt--what more hideous gape of bad mouth came
first--to you--and were you prepared?
To go where? In that Dark--that--in that God? a radiance? A Lord in the
Void? Like an eye in the black cloud in a dream? Adonoi at last, with
you?
Beyond my remembrance! Incapable to guess! Not merely the yellow skull
in the grave, or a box of worm dust, and a stained ribbon--Deaths-
head with Halo? can you believe it?
Is it only the sun that shines once for the mind, only the flash of existence,
than none ever was?
Nothing beyond what we have--what you had--that so pitiful--yet Tri-
umph,
to have been here, and changed, like a tree, broken, or flower--fed to the
ground--but made, with its petals, colored, thinking Great Universe,
shaken, cut in the head, leaf stript, hid in an egg crate hospital, cloth
wrapped, sore--freaked in the moon brain, Naughtless.
No flower like that flower, which knew itself in the garden, and fought the
knife--lost
Cut down by an idiot Snowman's icy--even in the Spring--strange ghost
thought some--Death--Sharp icicle in his hand--crowned with old
roses--a dog for his eyes--cock of a sweatshop--heart of electric
irons.
All the accumulations of life, that wear us out--clocks, bodies, consciousness,
shoes, breasts--begotten sons--your Communism--'Paranoia' into
hospitals.
You once kicked Elanor in the leg, she died of heart failure later. You of
stroke. Asleep? within a year, the two of you, sisters in death. Is
Elanor happy?
Max grieves alive in an office on Lower Broadway, lone large mustache over
midnight Accountings, not sure. His life passes--as he sees--and
what does he doubt now? Still dream of making money, or that might
have made money, hired nurse, had children, found even your Im-
mortality, Naomi?
I'll see him soon. Now I've got to cut through to talk to you as I didn't
when you had a mouth.
Forever. And we're bound for that, Forever like Emily Dickinson's horses
--headed to the End.
They know the way--These Steeds--run faster than we think--it's our own
life they cross--and take with them.
Magnificent, mourned no more, marred of heart, mind behind, mar-
ried dreamed, mortal changed--Ass and face done with murder.
In the world, given, flower maddened, made no Utopia, shut under
pine, almed in Earth, blamed in Lone, Jehovah, accept.
Nameless, One Faced, Forever beyond me, beginningless, endless,
Father in death. Tho I am not there for this Prophecy, I am unmarried, I'm
hymnless, I'm Heavenless, headless in blisshood I would still adore
Thee, Heaven, after Death, only One blessed in Nothingness, not
light or darkness, Dayless Eternity--
Take this, this Psalm, from me, burst from my hand in a day, some
of my Time, now given to Nothing--to praise Thee--But Death
This is the end, the redemption from Wilderness, way for the Won-
derer, House sought for All, black handkerchief washed clean by weeping
--page beyond Psalm--Last change of mine and Naomi--to God's perfect
Darkness--Death, stay thy phantoms!
II
Over and over--refrain--of the Hospitals--still haven't written your
history--leave it abstract--a few images
run thru the mind--like the saxophone chorus of houses and years--
remembrance of electrical shocks.
By long nites as a child in Paterson apartment, watching over your
nervousness--you were fat--your next move--
By that afternoon I stayed home from school to take care of you--
once and for all--when I vowed forever that once man disagreed with my
opinion of the cosmos, I was lost--
By my later burden--vow to illuminate mankind--this is release of
particulars--(mad as you)--(sanity a trick of agreement)--
But you stared out the window on the Broadway Church corner, and
spied a mystical assassin from Newark,
So phoned the Doctor--'OK go way for a rest'--so I put on my coat
and walked you downstreet--On the way a grammarschool boy screamed,
unaccountably--'Where you goin Lady to Death'? I shuddered--
and you covered your nose with motheaten fur collar, gas mask
against poison sneaked into downtown atmosphere, sprayed by Grandma--
And was the driver of the cheesebox Public Service bus a member of
the gang? You shuddered at his face, I could hardly get you on--to New
York, very Times Square, to grab another Greyhound--
Parable of the Old Men
and the Young
So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
And builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretch\ed forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.
But the old man would not so, but slew his son. . . .
It darkens brother
and your crutch tip grinds
the gravel the deer stepped delicately along
one breakfast, you were a kid.
Mother says after thirty
decades clip by
“and then you have the sum”
or spent it.
What was it like when the car
swerved on the ice,
what did you think of,
how long did you wait
in the wreck with the pain?
I see the sumacs by the turning space
turn their lank leaves,
the railway moves to us
and the willows below us
and think of you turning nineteen,
of the deer, the sumac, trains, a wreck.
...
Hymn to Life & Other Poems
1. Hymn to Life (34:00): MP3 , RealAudio
2. Unlike Joubert (1:35)
3. Now and Then (for Kenward Elmslie) (8:35)
4. Freely Espousing (1:44)
5. Mood Indigo (for David Trinidad) (1:39)
6. The Crystal Lithium (10:44)
All selections were recorded at the Chelsea Hotel, New York City,
on November 9, 1986. Special thanks to Barbara Guest.
Mysterious barricades, a headrest (of sorts),
boarded the train at Shinjuku junction
to the palpable consternation of
certain other rubberneckers already installed
in the observation car of their dreams. ‘It’s so peaceful
on my pallet. I could just live here.’
In a second the deadbeat returned with lunch tokens.
It had been meant to be sublime, but hell was
what it more specifically resembled. Remember
to hold the course and take two of everything. That way
if we make journey’s end before the tracks expire
we’ll have been found living in it – the deep magenta
sunset I mean.
There is nothing like putting off a journey
until the next convenient interruption swamps
onlookers and ticketholders alike. We all more or less
resembled one another, until that fatal day in 1861
when the walkways fell off the mountains and the spruces
spruced down. I mean it was unimaginable in a way.
You’ll have to install a park with chairs and restrooms
for the weary and a simple but firm visitors’ code
for it to be given out in your name and become a boon
to limp multitudes who thought you were somebody else
or didn’t know what it was you did. But we’ll stay clean,
by God, and when the tide of misinformation reaches
the first terrace, we’ll know what to do: yell our heads off
and admit to no mistakes.
The land stretched away like jelly into a confused cleft.
All was yapping, the race having ended
before we arrived, with mixed results.
Nobody knew what they owed or how much credit
had been advanced, being incapable of niceties like buzzing
and herding fleas till the next shipment of analgesics arrived.
It was like forming signals out of loam when you were young
and too discouraged to care very much
about aftershocks or where the die ended up.
It was too smoky in the little kitchen garden or potager
to pay much mind to the rabbits and their plankton
dispensary. Something had been launched. We knew that.
The bad news is the ship hasn’t arrived;
the good news is it hasn’t left yet.
It is still being loaded by natives with cone-shaped
hats on their heads. Here come the transistors,
bananas, durian (a fruit said to have a noxious smell),
baby bottles, photocopiers and souvenirs,
such glorious ones! Nothing useful except key-chains,
lockets to be furnished, a ball to stuff with life.
Yet it’s hard not to imagine the loss.
I think, though I can’t be sure,
that all this is being added to my bill.
Woe betide us! We shall never pay,
though, not in a million years.
Everything is promise.
Too late we acted outside the rhymes required,
honest, God-fearing, ass-wearing blokes
eager to accept the hand that fate had dealt us
and play with it. Now, brown sorrow is the correct
livery for when we go out. It’s important to
find a copy of the reproduction and send
or sell it back to them, ‘and with milk’.
That was the nicest thing about them, happy birthday.
For it you got a mandate?
Because I like it better, here, near the core.
You are sitting on the sofa.
Have a glass of something.
You will hear a city.
Whisper me a cigarette, fat arms. Tell all over thirty I’m "ugly all over" like tragedy calls.
A quarter-step spent explaining other half-hobble sips. Ply
When Paris was a dream on fire smile gently as a dusk.
Papa filled balloon with erection; primitive, but expansive astrology; 16 acre extinction.
Become addicted to bleeding from the head like water conservation in itself.
Tradition
They say:
In Kandinsky we find
The shapeless mind
Van Gouh: The spitefull soul
Durher was purer
Than Michaelangelo’s Rose
Inaugurating Sheila’s windows
Rewind
Yet, art is unrelatedly treadmill as a dream:
There’s scientific inquisition into dream - probably an offshoot of personal or professional qualitativeness rung from drenched fortitudes of nature - like observing, getting to know, and understanding all extras from 1940s and 50s films: barring they allow it, the dialect, facial expressions, home life, day to day responsibilities, and inherent motivation unto which they perceive necessary for the part, should be learned.
- - - -
Perhaps begin with staring at the floor. Notice the graininess of the carpet or tile or planks. Touch it, but move to the walls. Is anything happening? What color is the light reflected? How are shadows reflected cast? Are they true to what’s expected? Now add people or animals. Does the man without the feathers remind you of yourself? Maybe something noticed earlier? Give him a name. Now ask him his name. What is it?
The dream is routine squadcar highjacking
Alert the criminals: The authorities have escaped
Black helicopter seizure, mishap, also routine
An evening news coverage necessary
Pimp the force
But sometimes biting off the other
Part of the tongue through bars helps
The wise liked it when the lie was an ad
When hyperlinking was the lie
Like when it isn’t a hyperlink at all
When failure isn’t a belief
Like when want isn’t a belief
Like when lying isn’t a hyperlink
Daughter scream at mother
“Now that you have this proliferation of eco-criticism, which is the one I like least. Eco-criticism just makes me what to go back to some of the good old things we used to have... I just think it is so peripheral, it’s not very literary in a way...”
With an understanding
That our ideal state
The daily live bummed cubic
Comfort in our environment
Maybe because of ordinary
Heading in direction
Ourselves towards
A gulp of the
But we are brave & smart
And now because of the
Just as
As the rest of us
