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I heard from the vicar at St. Clements that Rissa was living in a hospice.  He had been going to visit her.  I went with a notebook of my poems to read to her.

 

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Yossel der Wassertraeger was a poor man who was rewarded in heaven.

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Mary Grace Bookhart introduced the Scribblers on Sunday evenings at the basement coffee house.  Rissa came on stage to tell stories. Mary and Suzie Kaufman played their auto harps.

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Rascal watched as Rissa held court at the Goddard-Riverside Community Center, and performed at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew.  She was a maternal spirit to the young poets.

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At poetry readings and cafes,  Rissa could soothe the anxious poet/readers by rubbing their backs.  Her massages were like the poet's words.

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Rascal visited the apartment building off of Broadway.  It was in walking distance from the brownstone townhouse on West 85th Street just east of Columbus Avenue.  He came alone at her invitation.  How did poetry connect them?  He was often hungry.

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Rascal had written, "Torn from the/hanging gardens of/Babylon, tendrils/tell of love's last thrills."

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Rissa introduced Rascal to the NYC poetry community with readings on the Upper West Side and Greenwich Village;  with poets like Barbara Holland, Emilie Glenn, Ree Dragonette, Richard Davidson, Fritz Hamilton, and Brett Rutherford at Poet's Press.

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Rissa entertained Rascal in her small kitchen.  He sat at the table while she prepared a hot drink at her stove.  Then she sat down beside him, sharing her pictures and speaking of her personal history and her attachment to the Jewish people, even though she had converted to the bahai faith.

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She called it Poets Chamber Theatre.  In the Village she had been poetry coordinator for Cafe Cino on Cornelia Street.

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Rascal would listen to the grandmotherly bohemian talk of the Village in the 1940's & 50's.

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Rissa returned from Chicago to live on the Upper West Side.  She read of the poetry reading in Wisdom's Child and joined the Scribblers at Goghi Lee's 3 flight walk up.

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Rascal and Rissa sat in her kitchen looking at old postcards.

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She was about breaking down boundaries.

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Rascal visited Rissa, who asserted herself into the Scribblers in 1974.   Her apartment was just east of Broadway in the 90's.

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That's what happens, Rascal, when you write your poems on white sheets of lighting.

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Along West 85th Street

From Central Park West toward Columbus Avenue, Rascal walked in a vale lined by brownstone rowhouses.  He entered number 66, unlocked the front door, and walked up to the fourth floor apartment where he found Goghi Lee rehearsing a scene for her acting class.

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Passing West 77th Street

The bus drove up Central Park West, Rascal watched out his window for the Museum of Natural History.

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Upon the white page of lightning Rascal wrote a poem.

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When the Itinerant Poets played the Rat Racers the score was nil to null.

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Late at night, only a handful of passengers on the bus to Harlem. Rascal listened to echos of Miles Davis in the trumpet played by a passenger.

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Rascal took the M-10 up Central Park West to be with Goghi Lee.

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Birdless? Rascal, what were you thinking? -- Wer, wenn ich schriee, hörte mich denn aus der Engel Ordnungen?

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Taking elements from Eliot's Fire Sermon in The Waste Land and Lazarus's New Colossus.

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Fears, trembling and love:

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"you hungry thief" -- Artema said the dancer's career in the arts has a short life span. She told Rascal that the poets don't take care of their bodies the way that dancers do.

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At W. 85th Street, during the spring and over the summer of 1975, Rascal had listened to Goghi Lee rehearse her part in Godspell.

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In a SoHo loft, Artema choreographed her dances while Rascal played with words, considering the cost of art in the diverse city.

Rascal

In 1975 Rascal moved his nest from the Upper West Side to Greenwich Village.

He could no longer live with the actress while dating the modern dancer.  He had rented a studio apartment on West Tenth Street.

Artema was a dancer and choreographer.