"Why is love so peculiarly the subject of lyric poetry? War and work are dealt with dramatically, not lyrically. You often get people writing poetry when they fall in love who are not moved by their other equally important experiences to do any writing about them. It isn't at all because love poetry has any practical value. NO ONE WAS EVER SEDUCED BY A BEAUTIFUL POEM, THOUGH A BAD ONE MAY BE EFFECTIVE ON OCCASION."

W. H. Auden, in a lecture on "Sonnets"
in LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE
recently "reconstructed and edited" by Arthur Kirsch and
published by Princeton Univ. Press

Caps added.

PLEASE NOTE: Auden is talking about the classic definition of "lyric poetry" (discussed in another thread on this forum). He is NOT talking about song lyrics.

Often, when someone has asked (on this forum) for a poem to honor a parent or teacher or whomever, I have suggested that anything written for the occasion -- no matter how hokey, no matter how silly -- will be more appreciated than a poem borrowed for the occasion. I'm taking this Auden quote as support for this position.

Marian, I agree with your premise:

>"Often, when someone has asked (on this forum) for a poem to honor a parent or teacher or whomever, I have suggested that anything written for the occasion-- no matter how hokey, no matter how silly -- will be more appreciated than a poem borrowed for the occasion".


The caveat is that not everyone can WRITE a poem that they feel is GOOD enough for the person for whom they're dedicating it. They'd much prefer something of professional quality.

And most of us who are busy have heard and USED the old saw:
"No need to reinvent the wheel, just borrow something someone else has already made."

Les

Marian-NYC wrote:

> NO ONE WAS EVER SEDUCED BY A BEAUTIFUL
> POEM, THOUGH A BAD ONE MAY BE EFFECTIVE ON OCCASION."

I think Hugh would agree! Now combining poetry with backrubs is guaranteed effective.

pam

No one was ever seduced by a beautiful poem? Well, what other excuse have I for dating that worthless slug back then when I was so naive and nothing else matter but that he wrote poetry? (and was old enough to buy whiskey to go along with the poetry)

I was so impressed by it
my clothing i tore off
it sounded so seductive
til the whiskey it wore off

Please see "How to Pick Up Chicks" in the user-submitted area

(remember, I'n fun crazy not creepy crazy)

"Candy is dandy
but liquor is quicker"

Money is helpful
but poetry's slicker.

Candy is Dandy
but Liquor gets you Drunk !

"what other excuse have I for dating that .....but that he wrote poetry"

So were you seduced by one of his poems? If so, tell us about it! (He must have been good!)

Or was it more general: you were seduced by the fact that he was a "poet"?

What is the charm of someone "being" a poet? Is there anyone here writing poetry to be able to say "I'm a poet" instead of just liking to fool around with words? Which one of you says in daily life "I'm a poet". And which famous poets did and which ones didn't?

Desi, great question!

I saw a documentary film about the poet JAMES DICKEY, who was also a novelist, a Southerner and a game hunter--among other things. The cameras followed him onto a plane for a trip to a college that had invited him to speak. The guy sitting next to him was a salesman of some kind. He asked Dickey, "What line are you in?" To my eye, Dickey looked EMBARASSED as he said, "Well... actually, I'm a poet!" Maybe he was embarassed, or maybe he was just making an embarassed-looking joke of it to save the other guy the trouble of making an embarassed joke of it. But he did SAY, "I'm a poet."

I am acquainted with the poet RAPHAEL RUDNIK (author and translator of several published volumes of poetry, and the first-ever recipient of the Delmore Schwartz award). If asked for his occupation, he says, "I am a poet." And in everyday life he spends about half his work time "working on my poem" (an epic in progress) and the other half earning money by scouting manuscripts for European book publishers.

So there's two examples PRO.

I can't think of any poets who declare themselves to be of other professions. Possibly Wm. Carlos Williams would have said, "I'm a doctor." I don't know.

But I DO know some people who say, "I am a poet" but aren't.

I just did a mini-search on line for ["I am a poet"] and more than half of the hits said "I am NOT a poet."

But I just remembered poor Cinna in Shakespeare's JULIUS CAESAR, who is attacked by a mob -- they have confused him with a conspirator also named Cinna -- and is carried off screaming: "I am Cinna the poet! I am Cinna the poet!" But they "tear him" anyway.

Ginsberg used to say he was

Auden: "NO ONE WAS EVER SEDUCED BY A BEAUTIFUL POEM"

Not counting his Platonic Blow, I assume.

I've never been seduced by a poem, but I was teased by a few.

Les

If he wrote a fantastic poem, I don't remember it. I think I was seduced by his "having written poetry" and his reading my poetry. He also liked the Blues and introduced me to Ferlinghetti, Brautigan, and Ginsberg. Other than that he had nothing going for him. Gimme a break--I was 15.

In her novel "The Bell Jar", which is fairly autobiographical, Sylvia Plath is an intern at a woman's magazine in NYC, and before leaving, they take her picture and ask her what she wants to be (as in a career). She tells them that she wants to "be a poet". (as in she is striving for that, and has not ye attained it). That was the cover picture of the novel--she is holding a red rose in the photo to symbolize that.

Hugh, do you mean Auden or Ginsberg?

Talia, I can sort of relate.....in my late teens, I was fortunate enough to be involved in a band with connections, I was able to meet people that I was in awe of just a few years before that.......It was certainly an eye-opener !

Having a talent does NOT guarantee that the person will be a good person AT ALL !

Like any other group of people, artists/musicians/poets have their good ones and their assholes.

MarianNYC: Embarrass is spelled with two Rs. You should be careful about these things, especially on a public forum where young (or merely childish) minds are under your influence. --MarianNYC

Marian, if you're under the influence it doesn't matter how you spell it.

Les

>Hugh, do you mean Auden or Ginsberg?

Auden:

[andrejkoymasky.com]

Warning! Not for the squeamish.

MarianNYC - I am sure no one noticed. Well, Les, mebbe, sure.

Thanks for that link. I will add Auden to my list along with ee cummings.

And I just want you all to know for the record, the man that I married does not write poetry, nor does he even read poetry. He drives a big truck too.

There once was a poet named Tess,
Whose words could make one undress.
Said the men staring at her one day:
That raw language barely holds sway,
Still her syntax is sure to impress.

Les



Post Edited (07-09-04 11:32)

Loosen up the thighs girl and lose that scowl
in watermelon sugar I will make you howl

Before watermelon sugar I was innocent!

have you now been proven guilty?

Do 'pass' and 'arse' really rhyme?

pam

Only if "parse" and "ass" do !

In well-spoken English, spoken in England, they do.
Lets me out, then.



Stephen

"Gimme a break--I was 15."
Yeah, the most horrible age ever! Very happy it is over, and I'll never have to go through it again! :-)


"And I just want you all to know for the record, the man that I married does not write poetry, nor does he even read poetry. He drives a big truck too."

Big trucks can also be impressive ;-)

Have you tried to make him listen to poetry? You can make tapes where you are reciting things for him to listen to when he's driving.
(although, if he is not interested in poetry it would probably be a waste of time).

But, no one here goes around in daily life, saying "I'm a poet"?
Think that is a strange lack on a world famous poetry forum!

Well, then. You have made a point, Desi. What is required of one before the title can be bestowed?

I don't think a "title" needs to be bestowed by anyone.

You are what you do. If you write poetry, (no matter the quality) you ARE a poet.

I can't imagine anyone saying that Billy Collins, Whitman, Keats, Dickinson, were anything but poets, no matter what other "jobs" they may have had.

Les

I don't understand why Auden's assuming that a beautiful poem is a love poem. People are seduced by beautiful poetry, but often it's beautifully sad poetry. I think it's easier to be seduced by a sad poem, when it's well written than a love poem because sad poems give the impression, true or not, of vunerability, which is very seductive.

very deductive
regarding seductive

Hugh,

Thanks....checked out the Auden...I recalled Ginsberg saying something about platonic conversationalists, and Whitman saying plutonic rocks

must be a guy thing

see also this thread which goes pretty well but never quite achieves a geological conclusion

[www.emule.com]

"If you write poetry, (no matter the quality) you ARE a poet."

Hmm, I don't agree with this.

If you drive a truck (even though you never learnt how to do it), can you call yourself a truck driver? Or do you think you should first get either
- a truck driver's licence
- so much experience that no one can tell you don't have a licence

Of course, you don't have a diploma for writing poetry. Which is pretty strange, since for painting for example you do. But I think that if you write five lines in rhyme, without any metre, and really think it is poetry even though the rest of the world thinks the quality is horrible and not worth calling a poem, I do not believe that you ARE a poet. So for me, quality is definately an issue.

But then the problem, how do you measure quality? The most obvious one is recognition by "professionals" (publishers) and readers (your poetry is actually read).

It's a difficult question. But I do know that if someone tells me "I'm a poet" I tend to be extremely sceptical. More so, than when someone says "I'm a baker, and in my free time I write poetry". I think I'm just horribly prejudiced against "poets". ;-)

We work hard to not achieve conclusions!

pam

There's always this poem by Dorianne Laux- great for seduction.

[www.emule.com]

pam

Indeed.

Pam, thanks for the link. There's some good stuff there.


Desi, here's how I see writing poetry and defining the term "poet".
I see it as an absolute. People ARE what they do.

There are many people who have NEVER written a poem outside of the classroom. These people are NOT poets.

There are some people who HAVE written a poem outside the classroom. WE are poets.

What others think of our poetry is irrelevant. WE remain poets.


Les



Post Edited (07-12-04 17:28)

Unless those people who write poetry outside the classroom do so only to impress and not because they themselves want to out of the joy of writing.

Is it just me, or have we gotten to the point where a TRIP TO THE DICTIONARY is in order?


According to one website, "POET = ONE WHO DELIGHTS IN THE BEAUTY OF WORDS." (So you CAN be a poet and you don't even know it!)

According to another:

poet - c.1300, from O.Fr. poete (12c.), from L. poeta "poet, author," from Gk. poetes "maker, author, poet," from poein "to make or compose," from PIE *kwoiwo- "making," from base *qwei- "to make" (cf. Skt. cinoti "heaping up, piling up," O.C.S. cinu "act, deed, order"). Replaced O.E. scop (which survives in scoff). Used in 14c., as in classical langs., for all sorts of writers or composers of works of literature.

The inclusion of [cinoti "heaping up, piling up,"] puts the emphasis on quantity, not quality.


IRREGARDINGLY, we've turned off the highway of art onto the side road of syntax. Which is interesting since we usually turn onto the side road of sex at this point in a long thread.

Is there a Sin Tax on Sex now?

I wouldn't put it past Mayor Bloomingidiotberg!

>IRREGARDINGLY

Oh, my. And after I blind-eyed embarass, too.

However, speaking about sex,

Some funeral parlors are whoring
Cadavers, and money is pouring
To their coffers from crowds
Who like women with shrouds,
But to me, necrophilia's dead boring.

Plus which, I enjoyed Irregardingly from Fun Marian

Someone should open a Queequeg's across from Starbucks
(except that there's already a Starbucks across from every Starbucks)

Marian-NYC wrote:

> Which is interesting since we usually turn onto the side road of sex at >this point in a long thread.

Of course, this thread started out being about sex, so our side road had to go somewhere else.

pam

Pam is correct.......it wasn't a side road...it was a 6-lane highway !

Seduction, leading toward, "making" a lover, making the poet a lover...I certainly can't tell when what I write is a poem or better called writing--always edgey, a gamble, -- calling myself, yourself, a poet, calling yourself a lover, risks self-conscious egotism. Still, seduction and poetry are always edgey, a throw of the dice.

Can a strong poem make you more attractive, at least? If you write a poem about the difficulty of loving your partner, has she been seduced if she still keeps it on her wall ten years after she divorces you?

How pursuasive are words, how striking does love have to be (look up the little AngloSaxon devil in your American Heritage Dictionary). Also, seriously I think quality counts for something, even if you are artificial in your seduction. You have to play to be in play, so I'm not so sure that poetry with amour aforethought can be so effective taken as either seduction or as poetry. What? Don't you, maybe, write poetry because you have to? Isn't love something that happens? I don't even know the difference between seduction and love, the difference between poetry and writing, but they are certainly full of tricks.

Try them as breathing exercises. Ask if seduction and poetry are merely premeditated?

Sorry for the blah blah blah.

Isn't everything "certainly full of tricks?"

Can a strong poem make you more attractive, at least? If you write a poem about the difficulty of loving your partner, has she been seduced if she still keeps it on her wall ten years after she divorces you?


Aboslutely! A good poet is absolutely more attractive because of it. But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder....so that is my perception.

What? Don't you, maybe, write poetry because you have to? Isn't love something that happens? I don't even know the difference between seduction and love, the difference between poetry and writing, but they are certainly full of tricks.

Yes. I often write poetry because I "have to". And no, I don't think love is something that "just happens". I'm slightly more pessiistic than that.

One of the problems with seduction seems to be that we want to take control something that should follow its own course, something that is free in its subject and free from restaint, ec-static. One trap we can get into with poetry is to try to tame it to our purpose ... practicality. religion, politics ...in spite of its say more than we mean to say. Why can readers sometimes "get" more from a poem than the poet? To try to seduce with poetry, then seems to want to tame two human precesses we might do better to give ourselves to their freedoms. I'll can never figure out why great men and women sometimes same thing I can't convince myself are right. But then, we are all sometimes off on love.

Seduction shouldn't mean taking control of someone. It shouldn't mean "not taking no for an answer." (That's rape.)

It should be helping someone get from MAYBE to YES.

Maybe we need to remember, Wallace Stevens said "all poetry is experiment"--and experiment is always open rather than merely a servant of premeditated conclusions. Perhaps here is one of the things that makes seduction and poetry somewhat incompatible, as Auden suggestions.

Try this on being a poet. See attachment on Bung.

Do enjoy, though, being put in my place when I'm not quite on the mark. No, I don't mean love control, like rape, since I don't think rape has much to do with love, but is compulsive as I get from the few sad rapists I've talked to. Still, I think there is something of pursuading a lover against her/hiw inclination or manipulation to beseen in seduction to be contrasted with the milder 'seduction" on friendly persuation. I suspect that I might know more about poetry than seduction.

Finally, nore to your point, is maniput\lation control? Is persuasion?
Is getting your lover to change her/his mind through deception? Is seduction inherently deceptive?

The issue of the "uses of poetry" run all through the history of poetics, as Auden knows. But the poet is the the poem as the lover is to love, and neither can be reduced to mere utilitarian principles. Are there poets among the Positivists? Even though it seems that there is a poetry aimed at re-making the world, seducing lovers, convert apostate religionists or politicals, from the other side, what the artist says and does through writing a poem has an awful lot to do with changing himself, even if "we all wan to change the world." My point is not that poetry can't be used (to manipulate or seduce), but, like people, reducing it to its use changes us and it.

We could get into a semantic tangle and end up defining "seduction" as whatever we use it to mean.

I've always considered it a GOOD THING, something to look forward to for BOTH partners. Comparable to the encouragement and assistance you give a child who's just learning to walk. A little "You can do it!" and a little "I'll catch you" and a little "You did it!"

Certainly if I were using the word seduce/seduction in a poem [please note, I am bringing this around to poetry again] it would be a positive thing. If someone felt he/she had been manipulated or tricked into being alone with a pursuer, and then felt nagged or even shamed into having sex, I would NOT use the word seduce.

I like your generosity more than my semantic nitpicking, because it fits so well with the quote from Auden. It also fits more closely with the way I understand poetry, as opening doors and minds, making people more accessible. Yet, probably not to Auden's surprise, the last time tried to get a women closer to me with a poem, she closed the window. Serves to warn against generalization over particulars.

Well, of course, it isn't poetry PER SE that makes someone warm to you. It's the PARTICULAR poem, and the person bringing it, and the mood, and what kind of a day you've had.

Remember in THE POSTMAN (and I mean "Il Postino," not that Kevin Costner thing), Neruda teaches the postman about METAPHOR, how to compare his beloved to beautiful things to express his feelings for her. When someone later asks her, "How did he succeed where I didn't?" she replies: "He wooed me--with metaphors!" However, we are free to assume that if some other guy had used metaphors, it might NOT have worked.

Poetry -- like candy, flowers, humor, etc. -- can grease the skids but the connection has to be made between people. It is and always has been a mystery and (to quote a college professor of mine) when you solve that mystery, you can go to Stockholm and collect your Nobel Prize.

I'd probably get Stockholm Syndrome (the Swedish Two-step)

And what if you wrote someone a gorgeous poem, very personal but full of great themes and wonderful metaphors, with a touch of humor to temper the bursting passion...

And what if the person it was for not only didn't LIKE the poem, but didn't even GET it? And what if that switched off your feelings for the person, instantly and forever?

You could be stuck with a brilliant expression of a defunct emotion.

Yes, it's a throw of the dice, it's the poet not the poem, as Sir Mick used to croon.

If they didn't like it, that would be okay. If they don't get it, then we're probably not able to communicate. Of course, if that person was really, really good at backrubs, we might be able to work something out.

pam

The feelings of intensity
without the reciprocity

yes. but reciprocity his hard to find under any equation of the sexual equation.

Fot Love of H,D., college affair, in three parts

Williams courted her.
She turned him down.

Pound proposed to her,
She turned him down.

The Imagist 1 poet Richard Aldington proposed to her,
She married him.

1 Nota Bene: Pound made up the word "Imagism" to disdribe her poems. Pound applied it to Aldington in a piece in which he tried to distinguish Imagism to Amygism, the poems of Amy Lowell.

MAYBE HE HAD A NICER PEN

[www.wordiq.com]

You such a schoolar od the net. It,s good to have someon like you around, directing taraffic, if you will, for those us who don't know our way from here there. Nice site/cite. I think Johnny SansCulo is starting to get to me again-- ah, the dangersof influence.

Hope I'm getting to you in a good way!

.-.-.-.-.-
Hough, I mean that nice site, citation.

My last note to on your refernce work for us all makes it look like I'm typing with boxing gloves on. --or, I'm just a babbling idiot. Or both. Or neither and both.

Seduction by poetry not � W.H. A.
what a fruitful start Marian-NYC--are your really from that town just south of Binghamton?

--I'm an amateur poet,
a lover of language,
a retired philosopher.

A practicing Sophist
------who will chance
an aleatory
"throw of the dice"
like
mallarme
--an errant, divergent, mumbling typo=graphical, "run" I said," ""childhood,"
back word tracing of "childhood"
tracing--I apologize for never having looked at the screen, as I must have been "sleep typing again."

I just sent you text full of unproofread typos not meant to parody or pun.
ampersandenbeeesspea
&nsbp;

&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
Childhood*

*after mallarme,

The somber sleepers
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
of the first world
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
guard their
&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbp;&nsbpold; light.
You know it . . .
Yes, it is for me,
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
&nsbp;
for me
. . . deserted!

For (1966) Henry Weiner, the best poetI ever knew, who gave me Artoud,, Satie, the I Ching, a friendship because I was the only person he'd ever seen who wents around with a book of poetry sticking out of his back pocket and a lifetime of lost thought, publishing my first poem, really, independent college magazine, from letters I sent to him, creatively violating my privacy.


Peter

-.-.-.-.-.

Unh huh, like a bas night out on the low, I get to remember how good it was, reading you discombobualeted under twenty five words of lessism (see, learned to read from cereal box contest an linkingly reading thru the libary' encycopedia's and Mothe West Wind's...that animals cold talk, at eleven years old. Forgive me if I write in another ph(r)ase of an unintentional auto-bio-graph=ical sacnsionak glyth.

glyth? whatsa glyth? can it have wing, like a griff?

The grifters stole my hieroglyth
so now i think its just a myth
but griff is just as good as guile
and myth is just as good as mile

Did anyone come up with a poem that encapsulates the seductive power of a woman?

Doe, Doe!
I shall dever see her bore!
Dever bore our feet shall rove
The beadows as of yore!
Dever bore with byrtle boughs
Her tresses shall I twide -
Dever bore her bellow voice
Bake bellody with bide!
Dever shall we lidger bore,
Abid the flow'rs at dood,
Dever shall we gaze at dight
Upon the tedtder bood!
Ho, doe, doe!
Those berry tibes have flowd,
Ad I shall dever see her bore,
By beautiful! by owd!
Ho, doe, doe!
I shall dever see her bore,
She will forget be id a bonth,
(Bost probably before) -
She will forget the byrtle boughs,
The flow'rs we plucked at dood,
Our beetigs by the tedtder stars.
Our gazigs at the bood.
Ad I shall dever see agaid
The Lily and the Rose;
The dabask cheek! the sdowy brow!
The perfect bouth ad dose!
Ho, doe, doe!
Those berry tibes have flowd -
Ad I shall dever see her bore,
By beautiful! by owd ! !
-- H. Cholmondeley-Pennell (1837-1915)

Peternsz asked if I am "really from that town just south of Binghamton."

That depends on what you mean by "from." I was born in Mary Esther, Florida; grew up mostly in Albuquerque, New Mexico; lived briefly in Mexico and Canada; went to highschool in Palo Alto, California; went to college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; lmoved back to Albuquerque.... and lived for eleven years in Seattle before moving to what David Letterman once called "one of the most exciting cities in the Tri-State Area."

I have never felt that was FROM anywhere. But I have always felt like an ethnic New Yorker, raised in the diaspora. Does that help?

================

Hoopla asked for "a poem that encapsulates the seductive power of a woman."

I'd like to nominate Byron's "She walks in beauty..." -- though it encapulates the attraction of "a heart whose love is innocent" -- which may or may not be "seductive" depending on your parameters.

Thinking about the question, I realized that a lot of the best and best-known love poetry is GENERIC. I mean, it doesn't itemize the the seductive attributes of a PARTICULAR woman, but instead describes the feeilng of being head-over-heels in love. Consider Shakespeare's "My mistress's eyes..." -- which praises the beloved with only humorous references to her eyes, hair, voice, etc. Or the Sylvia reverie in MUCH ADO--talks about what life is like with and without Sylvia, but doesn't distinguish her from any other female.

I guess a poem that described a particular woman would have to be excellent indeed to transcend the moment of being in love with that particular woman and find favor with other people in love with other women in other times and places.

Love�s Questions

If I give you my heart,
will you take up the scalpel
and make carving on yonder table?

If you take my soul,
will the devil entreat you
to fork over his due?

If a full flowing of my humours
fills up your cup,
will you pour out libation to the god?

Or if the game starts right here
in the nape of my neck,
will you risk sanity itself

To win your self back a gain?

I agree with Marian-NYC that Byron's poem 'She Walks In Beauty' isn't about the poet being in love. It isn't passionate. It's mode is dispassionately descriptive. Leaving aside the fact that 'she walks ... like the night' seems worthy of inclusion in Hugh's list of great poets' silly similes, the problem I have with it, as an example of a poem encapsulating the seductive power of a woman, is that it describes someone too perfect. (Was he really writing about some real woman he knew, or just showing off his poetic skills with a generic exercise?). Men are more likely to be intimidated than seduced by perfection. Luckily for women it isn't necessary to be perfect to be seductive.

Contrast this one by Australian poet, Kenneth Slessor (1901-1971):

POLARITIES

Sometimes she is like sherry, like the sun through a vessel of glass,
Like light through an oriel window in a room of yellow wood,
Sometimes she is the colour of lions, of sand in the fire of noon,
Sometimes as bruised with shadows as the afternoon.

Sometimes she moves like rivers, sometimes like trees,
Or tranced and fixed like South Pole silences;
Sometimes she is beauty, sometimes fury, sometimes neither,
Sometimes nothing, drained of meaning, null as water.

Sometimes, when she makes pea-soup or plays me Schumann,
I love her one way; sometimes I love her another
More disturbing way when she opens her mouth in the dark;
Sometimes I like her with camellias, sometimes with a parsley-stalk,
Sometimes I like her swimming in a mirror on the wall;
Sometimes I don't like her at all.

The man I had just met read me poetry. Was it because I was attracted to him anyway, or was it his deep, delicious voice and refined accent Or was it Myfanwy, and false security by Betjamin that I fell in love with. I suppose I'll never know but I do know that he doesn't read me poetry any more and I long for it. Perhaps he feels he doesn't need to now he has me!!!

Marian....most interesting.....truly NO connection with New York until you moved there???

Were your parents from NY? I ask because you seem so very much as one thats from here.

I never lived IN New York City, except briefly in 1983, when I was 23, but have always felt part of it since my parents are both from there.

One of our union shops is a factory in Rverhead, approx 90 miles east of NYC....one of the business agents, a black fellow, told me once "there's none of OUR people out there"

I teasingly told him that I'd seen some of HIS people out there....he explained...asked where my parents were from, I said Queens, he said Brooklyn for him. The point he was making was that the only people out that way had no connection with the urban experience, the blacks moved directly from the south to out east, bypassing NYC, as did the Latinos and Poles..and a lot of the whites had never even been to NYC