The review (finally as promised)... And pics!
We set out from Toronto Friday evening and stole through the Niagara wine region under cover of darkness, hoping to cross the Lewiston-Queenston bridge and make good time towards Syracuse. We arrived at the border at about 9:30 and it took a full three hours to cross it—in these post-9/11 days that’s considered good time! With Katie riding shotgun on dear watch we made up lost time on the way to Syracuse, passing through at a little past midnight. We’d hoped to find a hotel and crash about halfway to New York, but plans changed as we couldn’t find a hotel anywhere along 81, finally convincing a desk clerk at a Ramada in Scranton to let us crash in a suite that lacked a bed but boasted two couches. At 5:30 in the morning and facing a night of napping in the car, we grabbed the keys and caught a few zzzz’s before waking to the excited tones of Fox News—the only channel our TV seemed to pick up. We skipped breakfast and headed out in order to make up some time just to be stymied by the New Jersey turnpike and New Jersey in general.
I love the way New York just happens, skyscrapers unfolding as if from a pop-up book when you emerge from the Lincoln tunnel. One minute you are in New Jersey and the next you are on 34th Street, weaving your way through the yellow cabs with Macy’s on your left and the Empire State building on your right. As we were meeting Jesse in Queens, Katie and I made our way to the midtown tunnel and were soon driving through Brooklyn-Queens.
Later that night we found ourselves back in Manhattan to do a little shopping and grab a little food. We walked up and down the avenues window shopping and watching the hustle and flow of the city.
Sunday morning we picked up Jesse from JFK and headed to the Bowery to meet up with Jerry and Diane Rothenberg. We bumped into them outside of a café and decided to grab some sandwiches and coffee, where I finally presented Jerry with a copy of China Notes—the first time he had seen it bound. At the same time, Jesse handed me a copy of Jim Daniels’ Now Showing—a project which he had overseen in Tokyo.
Ahadada Books is so diverse and so spread out—stretching out as it does between Toronto and Tokyo, that the moments when these distances collapse are sacred. There have been a few defining moments in the history of Ahadada Books: First meeting up with Jesse in Tokyo in Christmas 2001, vacationing with Maya and the kids last Christmas in Los Angeles, meeting up with formative Ahadada authors like John Byrum, Richard Peabody and Paolo Javier for our reading at Boog City—it quickly became clear that we were in the midst of another one here, sipping coffee on a New York sidewalk on an unseasonably warm October day. Reunited once again with Jesse and Jerry, I was disappointed when we had to ask for the bill—the reading was only ten minutes off. It was time to grab our books and head to the BPC to listen to Jerry read from China Notes.
Jerome Rothenberg’s a great reader. His careful attention to the way his poems appear on the page play out and come to life when he reads—he uses his voice as an instrument variously interpreting and riffing on the syncopations in his very own lines that lend a freshness to these poems, though I had heard them before, though I had spent many a late night working on his book—it was Jazz. And I got it on video and will post here soon.
All in all the trip was wonderful. I’d like to thank Jerry and Diane for their company, even if only for an afternoon—I wish it would have been more. I’d like to thank Katie for her patience with me when I found myself hopelessly lost again and again over the weekend (stupid maps), and I’d like to thank Jesse, who by way of Japan, traveled halfway around the world and in doing so played a part in turning a reading on a Sunday afternoon into another Ahadada Event.
And of course I’d like to thank Jerome Rothenberg for sharing these poems with us by way of China Notes—it’s a beautiful book that provided a reminder that being a formative part of Ahadada Books is truly a wonderful—and I mean that in the truest sense of the word—thing.
From:
Ahadada BlogAnd a few pics:
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