18 -- Stranger at the gate? Sept. 24, 2002

 


 

Seeing the man again at the gate to this year's Dodge Poetry Festival startled me, partly because I had not seen him since we drove him home from the last festival two years ago, and partly because he looked so thin.

Whereas I had reviewed his poetry as part of my newspaper coverage, his appearance had always defied the stereotype of poet. He did not have the feminine features so commonly painted over poets by the general public. Indeed, he looked more like what the public might think of as a truck driver with a rugged face that would have made the U.S. Marines proud -- features overly emphasized in September 2002 by his loss of weight.

Like most poets I reviewed, he didn't always agree with my interpretations of his work. But he told me often my opinions made him think.

Until our last encounter at the 2000 Dodge, we had remained professional acquaintances, each of us nodding as we passed each other on the streets of Hoboken or Jersey City.

Then, we found him wandering the muddy paths of Waterloo Village the last day of the 2000 Dodge. He was searching for an editor friend of his who had promised him a ride back to the city. When his plight became clear to us, we agreed to give him a ride home -- since we lived then only a few blocks from the apartment he rented.

Perhaps inspired by the weekend of poetry, we found ourselves talking literature the whole ride back -- with brief bios as to where we had grown up, and from what past we derived our inspiration. In watching him wander away from our car after dropping him off in the city, I felt a connection with him that I described as spiritual.

He must have felt as much because seeing us two years later, he greeted us as old friends. When I asked if he would be reading at the Dodge this year, he shook his head.

"No," he mumbled, "I'm only working here this year. But it feels good to get out, even if it makes me weak. I have to sit down a lot."

He told us he had moved out of the city and to his hometown in central New Jersey, an unbearably peaceful place he had struggled most of his life to escape.

"The town is a mile square," he said. "It has lots of Victorian houses, and the houses are full of families. You can't see a yuppie anywhere."

He said he had moved back home to recuperated and that even as he stood at this year's Dodge, he had just recovered from a bout of pneumonia.

"I miss the city," he said. "I miss being about to go out in the middle of the night for a cup of expresso. I mist the noise you hear all night."

Then, overcome with weariness, he had to sit and fell back into a chair someone had provided for him as others took up his duties collecting tickets.

"I miss the people," he said, and predicted a time when he would feel up to returning to our part of the world. "I'm getting stronger every day. You wouldn't know it to look at me, but I've gained weight. I was down to 90 pounds for a while. And I've been below detection for seven months."

We wished him well and then moved onto the grounds. Yet I could not stop thinking of him or that long ride home two years earlier when we had shared our artistic visions, and whether or not we would see him again at the next Dodge, or would we have to stir him up out of the ashes of his poetry?

 

 


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