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The Spring 2008 issue of The November 3rd Club is now online, featuring poetry, fiction, nonfiction, art and conversation by:

LIZ AHL, LEA ASSENMACHER, NORMAN BALL, SALLY BELLEROSE, TARA BETTS, RICHARD BEBAN, ANTOINETTE BRIM, TONY BROWN, BRIAN DAUTH, STEVE DE FRANCE, DEENA FISHER, SARAH GETTY, GUY LECHARLES GONZALEZ, DAPHNE GOTTLIEB, DEBORAH GRABIEN, JAMEY HECHT, BOB HOEPPNER, JANIS BUTLER HOLM, TRENT MARTIN KIRCHNER, DORIANNE LAUX, JOHN LIEBHARDT, LISA SUHAIR MAJAJ, JACK MCGUANE, MINDY NETTIFEE, JAMIE O’HALLORAN, ALICIA SUSKIN OSTRIKER, RICHARD PATRICK, WILLIE PERDOMO, ELIZABETH ROSS, MICHELLE SALVAIL, ELLEN RITSCHER SACKETT, MICHAEL SCHEIN, LARRY SMITH, MARC SOLOMON, JEREMY TUCKER, GENEVIEVE VAN CLEVE, KEVEN WALTMAN, TONY WILLIAMS and FLORENCE WEINBERGER.

(poem was here)

Palimpsest: the ice worker lives
[Poem comprised of lines from all the readers at the In the Grove Issue #16 release party]

the neighbors of noah are everywhere
pachuco children
pawn their hearts
wander the streets stricken
with solitude

aztlánian nights

the sentences have rippled too far
the mind underneath—beating
veil me

we can always replenish
never again
we will be cold

about brother
blood home from a war
my voice in dreams
converses with tangled roots and vines

i’ve come to thinking of the words
there is no more appropriate insult than
vindictive
even with the dead
who laugh with the last say

touch the single tree, the tendon
find a language
line up to receive an allotted portion of
bone, a thin impression of cloth

working to restore
still waters
shadows tempting you
perhaps this is foolish talk

worked in a factory for years
parted ways
ten years later, it still moves

one word
scream that word
whatever that word

darkness paints and blots
one learns
the rise and fall of night
blessed be the way

still an immediate presence
still having trouble writing that poem
pleased to make a beautiful thing
a fragile casket
hatched in a shallow dish

plucking the seeds
fruit
fermenting on the ground

call out the ice worker
and all of his songs
i’ll go now to the sun

hungry for the familiar
when in his dreams
his children take features
smell the greasy condemnation

demanding my attention
repent, the revolution
is at hand
i betrayed like judas
birthplace of my fathers
language—simple and undisturbed
olvidate

not enough whitman
i see you all here, I see whitman

see me victorious
my children, a cracked window

i am reminded of montoya
the steel scars
the shadows of warehouses

close your eyes for one minute
it’s not long
meat, forgotten
turning rancid
looking to mend the wound
suffering synonymous with joy

verse, outside of himself
love, i didn’t hear it the first time
again—love, again—love, again

what language do you give?
you know what he would say?

praise god

(poem was here)

New York is a hypertextualized city. By 6 a.m., our commuters have smudged more words off their papers than most cities read all day. How to even begin identifying a canon? While reading, I plotted candidates along two mystical axes: one of all-around literary merit, and the other of “New Yorkitude”—the degree to which a book allows itself to obsess over the city. Robert Caro’s The Power Broker just about maxes out both axes; others perseverate so memorably on smaller aspects of city life that they had to be included. There were, of course, regrettable omissions: Jimmy Breslin is a quintessential New York writer whose main strength is not books; Puzo’s Godfather was better as a movie. Below you’ll find the books that we think best embody the city’s most sacred pastime: paying deep attention, then translating it all into words.

Response: Good to see some poetry mixed in there with Grace Paley getting a mention. I would have included Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Café as a response to An Anthology of New York Poets since it celebrates the place, the local voices, and outside viewpoints of the City. But the point of a good “list” to have us challenge and add to the conversation. At least that’s how I look at it.

Some other highlights: The inclusion of Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx. This book is so good that I had to pass it on to my sister before I left New York. Now I’m thinking I should get myself another copy and try to write a more organized critical response to it.

2nd Response: In talking about The Bonfire of the Vanities— “And is a white guy who dresses entirely in white allowed to get away with this much racial ventriloquism?”
I haven’t read the book, but I would challenge Wolfe to say said things in the Bronx proper. Jus’ sayin’.

Inspiration: I’m also going to make an effort to look for Anne Winters’ The Displaced Capital the next time I’m in a used bookstore. The table of contents is giving me some good ideas for another round of City poems, which also gives me a chance to say that NaPoWriMo is going pretty well. I am a little behind on the game right now (6 poems over 8 days) but there is still a chance to catch up.