Terry Murcko Celebrates Youngstown's Literary Legacy

Those who attended Lit Youngstown's 10 year anniversary celebration were moved by poet Terry Murcko's talk on the richness of Youngstown's literary legacy. We asked Terry if we could publish his talk, and we thank him for his monumental contribution to our lit history.

FOUR HUNDRED SECOND TUESDAYS

A place needs poetry / poetry needs a place. For more than four hundred Second Tuesdays, a hearth-fire is lit by a confluence of nomad kin who bring what they’ve wrestled from the air to share with alert, aware, trusting, trusted listeners. From Jim Villani’s Palais Puce to Rose Sayre’s attic, to Ohio St. Gallery, to Brass Lion, to Cedars, they gather in what George Peffer mocks and lauds as “a little church comprised entirely of saints.” This flame passes to Karen and Lit Youngstown. We celebrate acolytes; some I’ve only time to name:

          …Joe Allgren, Kelly Bancroft, Josh Cohen, Pam Cook …

1970, YSU, a skinny, wizard-caped, Groucho-brow-and-mustached Jim Villani, reads “Apoplexy,” puts us at the dinner table with little Jimmy witnessing his grandpa’s stroke, and the stunned family as he laughs “at the funny old man vomiting beef and corn.” I join Jim with the Penguin Review that day and continue with PigIron in ’73.  PigIron brings bold words with bold design, but when Miriam Patchen sends our departed hero Kenneth’s unpublished poems, we’re blessed to find Still Another Pelican Left in the Bread-box. Through four decades Jim publishes such vital work, (like Larry Smith’s Steel Valley Postcards and Letters), instigates happenings, activism, a food co-op, out-reach to students, patients, convicts, an all-poet softball team, even a building downtown with a bookstore and space for all; but Jim’s best gift is Second Tuesdays. At one this Natural Moment(s):

    From my sleep my wish steals honestly

    to the edge of my last dream 

    the soft wheels of her palms desire me. (Natural Moments PigIron Press, 2015)

                … Jim Connolly, Louis Constant, Merrill Evans … 

Frank Polite (more frank than polite) mentor to many I name tonight. Sublime or hilarious, the masterful work he presents at Second Tuesdays communicates a tacit expectation. We bring our best, in part because Frank brings his. A workshop, Fallen City Writers, grows around him and is nurtured, in his absence, first by George Peffer, then Dorothea Polite. Poet-pirate-sage, Frank holds fierce opinions. He champions Dickinson in a dispute with Whitman fan, Chuck Toskas. The Emily vs. Walt bout must be stopped in the first round (Second Tuesdays!) but Hyde, Flamingo, Letters of Transit…unstoppable! My favorite lends mortal portent to mythic “Black Butterflies”  forever flitting around the goddess, Isis:

     Nightly crisis after crisis cracks across our skies like lightning.

     The thought of death entices us with mythic ways of dying,

     With Egypt and with Isis, those black wings forever flying

     In Her private paradise, compelled like fleeting minutes flickering,

     No rest on any perch unless, when moved to love, Her nakedness[…]

     Here’s a death to envy, blessed, pressed between goddess and lover…

        (Letters of Transit, City Miner Bppks, 1979)

        …Doug Fowler, Juanita Hall, Natalie Hayes…

Jeanne Mahon: most urgent reason not to miss a reading. Her shy voice and humble bearing belie the sure, lucid power of her verse. Hold your breath, lean forward; don’t miss a syllable. A Fallen City poet, Jeanne helps George and Dorothea keep that society alive. She also founds Shenango River Books (publisher of this fine anthology). Frank praises the title poem, The Wolf in the Wood, as “one of the great poems in our literature.” When he’s right, he’s right. With wood-carver hands, we feel what the wood wants. If our work is true, Nature comes through. Here’s a taste; Lean in and learn:

     We look upon a forest log / think it may hold a duck.

     At home the wood dries, veiny, warm. A webbed foot is stuck.

     We open where the foot is caught; a wind howls through a pass

     In the Tatra Mountains, rattles window glass,

     Enters with the cold through the cracks in the door,

     Stirs the curled shavings around our kitchen floor[…]

     Whittle and smooth…a wolf comes through;

     While our work carves the wood, it carves us too.

        (The Wolf in the Wood, Pangborn Books, 1996)

             … Don Feigert, Victoria Hoyt, Jim Jordan… (not the congressman)

George Peffer, of PigIron, Fallen City, and Shenango River Books. Behind his dry wit and patrician persona, the courage to face hard truths with a steadfast love-and-distrust of the words it takes to face them. Our friendship, from Penguin Review through the decades of Second Tuesdays, makes me a better poet. My favorite from Personal Effects, “Nomad II,” starts with a quip about going mad saying “No,” then launches an heroically fussy rant declaring No to a catalogue of maddening indignities, culminating with… “and no to my essence in a drool cup…” But it turns in this haunting finish:

     […] But what of the real nomads, desert inhabitants,

     whose world, even when gentlest, whispers “no.”

     Then to say no, softly, is like a prayer. To stay would be madness.

     so nomads move towards that thin, uncoiled, band of burning steel

     that is the horizon, through the emptiness that is all they know.

    They follow a trail of stars, long dead, just like you and me, 

     just to lie down somewhere and say, “Yes.” (The Bacchae Press, 1993)

             … Nate Leslie, Nancy Krygowski, Cy Mattis…

Nancy Bizzarri, artist, rocker, Fallen City writer, takes the reins of 2nd Tuesdays for years of prance and gallop, even cabaret shows. For one of these, I build out Cedar’s stage and lighting to accommodate “Poets on Parade” which, along with music and poetry, features Cookie Pesce’s modern dance troupe. At rehearsal, I watch the dancers, each wearing the face of a Romance poet. I can’t take my eyes off Percy Shelley. During a break, Shelley sits by me at the bar, doffs her mask, “Hi.” Linda and me, 35 years. 2nd Tuesdays marriage!…Back to Nancy: Patti Smith in a First Communion dress storms the sexist Bastille in “Marie Antoinette”:

     …Antoinette, no Aqua Net will save your head today.

     He says, “The floor needs waxed some more.”

     I say L’amour lives here no more. Burn La Maison! 

     Burn La Maison! Burn La Maison dans le ground, Baby!

                   …Tom Pesce, Leo Rude, Rose Sayre…

E.G. Hallaman lets listeners mistake his fine poetry for stand-up comedy but won’t let us take our parochial selves too seriously. E’s voice is still heard at West Side Bowl, at least until our friend Tony wears out his copy of Dr. Zhivago on Belmont Ave. Without E’s monthly visits, we wouldn’t know that the readings will require urine testing to prevent anyone’s taking unfair advantage; or that the atheists eat breakfast at Denny’s; or that all of Youngstown’s troubles can be traced to two Japanese submariners, “Samuri fanatics” hiding in Lake Newport refusing to accept that the war is over; and…

   “Why Traffic Doesn’t Move as Fast as it Would Otherwise”:

     Unloved, we make long mental lists at red lights […]

     offering to the world at large

     reasons why we should be loved […]

     [or] lists questioning why we are loved,

     […] singled out from a million others […]

     Honk if you think / you love me.

     (excerpt from Doctor Zhivago on Belmont Ave., Shenango River Books, 1995) 

… Rick Stein, Doug Weisen, Marybeth Witt…

E passes his torch to Fallen City’s Bill Koch, who gently tickles our provincial soul to giggle us free from our pretenses. Bill comes home from a trip to New Orleans with an unpaid parking fine. Each month he shares his latest  Y-town epistle to the Big Easy Parking Violations Bureau, always enclosing one more dollar. This goes on for $60 on a $15 fine. NOLA acknowledges receipt but rebuffs each elegant offer of friendship, once with a “selfy” from the Hinckley Buzzard Festival. When Bill’s vulture pic flies back unloved, he feels like 8th grade when “no one would dance with [him] but the monitor.”  Here’s some of his poem for E. The title’s in its last line:

     The Vindicator confirms it:

     Not one cemetery in the entire city

     The only graveless site in the nation […]

     Philosophers have debated since language began

     But on one thing they can agree—

     “No one is buried in Struthers.”   (Fallen City Writers, Shenango River Books, 2014)

    …Susan Wojnar, Laura Woodward…and representing all listeners:

          Chuck Toskas and the booming music of his laugh…

One more: Neno Perrotta, Penguin Review, Fallen City, PigIron clean-up hitter, my buddy. In his poems, songs, and little stories we find lesbian sweet corn, crows, anguished by Easter bells and hiding under his pillow, dead guys under the snow on the hood of his car (their breath still warm)… Poetry from places no one ever looks, leaves us gasping with laughter or heartache or both. In “The Lifeguard on Wednesdays” (from Not One Thing About Science), a spider writes this in Neno’s window steam:

     I love the rain because / When she falls / she never gets hurt / 

     But winds up in the river / Where I can float for days on her belly, /

     Or she sinks into the dirt / and comes up / Smelling like a rose.

          (Shenango River Books, 2004)

Neno with Youngstown writers Dani and Dom Leone, form the band Ed’s Redeeming Qualities. Here’s a bit of their song, “Spoken Word,” a fitting anthem for all poetry readings, writers, readers, and listeners:

     Oh, such responsibilities.

     So nice to have so many people trusting me.

     I believe in the power of the spoken word,

     Everything that I have ever heard makes sense to me

     So if you’ve got a better way, then sit me down and tell me what to do,

     And I’ll believe you too.

              (©Ed’ Redeeming Qualities, Buck Tempo Music, 1980)

Thank you, Terry!