Harry Newman

February 5, 2022

“Primitives” by Harry NewmanPosted by

Harry Newman

PRIMITIVES

the night we saw the mouse
in our apartment
you wouldn’t take your feet
off the couch for an hour

staring at the space beneath
the dresser where it ran
and when you did finally
you stamped through the room

stamped and made noises
lifting your arms into the air
as in some tribal ritual
for scaring away the dead

I grabbed a broom to hunt it
I’ve killed a few I tell you
inching towards the corner
crouched and poised to strike

in slippers and underwear
a parody of early man
my cave with mice instead
of mastodons on the walls

how primitive we seemed
then primitive and hopeless
lost against the wild things
the ancient fears returning

—from Rattle #25, Summer 2006

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Harry Newman: “For me, poems usually start as a whisper. When I least expect it a word, an image, a feeling turns my mind. Or lines appear suddenly after pages of writing. I like the mystery of this, not knowing where a poem came from or where it’s going. If I had to say why I write, it’s to return to this state of not-knowing, to become less afraid of it, to leave the false familiarity of the known until it starts to seem strange as well.” (web)

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August 11, 2015

“Offering” by Harry NewmanPosted by

Harry Newman

OFFERING

it used to be one mendicant
monk now there are three
bowls to their sides walking
single file in the direction
of the station everyone rushing
by them on the way to work
briefcases brushing their robes
heels perilously close to bare feet

they move together without
interrupting the flow around them
their even steps more like gliding
as if the world truly were illusion
or they were or both two dreams
blurring through each other
to a dream larger still and

I find myself thinking about
spiritual commuting the empty
offices they’d go to no furniture
phones carpeting bare except perhaps
a framed koan or two on the walls
above motivation or would they wait
every morning on the platform
instead for a train that never comes

I remember the mornings then
well before sunrise alone
in the street walking the dog
I’d see the oldest one coming
out of the darkness toward me
as if he’d been crossing the city
endlessly taking the measure
of the night are we more blessed

by three now or more in need
I wonder as two Thai girls near
the corner the only ones who notice
bow before them hands together
in gassho one kneeling almost
to the ground then rising to give
their offerings a quart of soup and rice 

the monks stop and whisper to them
back in the world for a moment
a street in Queens cars honking
planes overhead the restaurant beside
them selling platanos while the rest
of us continue in the stream having
only ourselves left to offer the day
the city this illusion of our lives

—from Rattle #48, Summer 2015
Tribute to New Yorkers

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Harry Newman: “Living in New York is like living at the base of any great mountain range. It slowly invades your consciousness without your being aware of it. There’s the press of its gravity, the press of scale, its dominating quality, of always being dwarfed by it. It occupies all horizons. And this inevitably comes out in one’s writing. Very few of my poems relate directly to life in the city, but I think its imprint is often there in a sense of isolation, a yearning for places far away, for the horizon that’s always obscured, in the feeling of being apart from others and the world (the natural world). The way I’ve found to live and write in relation to this is to look for the moments of humanity, the possibilities of connection to the people and other creatures living here, as well as to the large, more fragile aspects of spirit, imagination, and hope, which too often get lost against the concrete rock faces far from the summit.” (website)

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August 18, 2011

“Early Snow” by Harry NewmanPosted by

Harry Newman

EARLY SNOW

I put on my gloves, the ones
whose seams have burst that
you think I should get rid of.
But I like them, the brown
cracked leather and fur lining
coming out in a few places.
It’s snowing and I want to see it:
the first snow and an early one.
I am a child still when it comes
to snow, having grown up in Miami,
and it can still bring back, if only
for a while, a sense of trust
and wonder, a child’s infinite
expectation from the world.
I put on my parka, the coat
I got when I moved up north,
nearly thirty years old,
that I tell you will end up
one day in the Smithsonian.
It’s been snowing all morning,
but I’ve been working inside,
and know there’s little point
in looking out the windows
of our basement apartment.
Four inches already, at just past
noon, according to the radio,
and I think of that time it snowed
in Miami, how excited we were,
the first snow ever, they told us
over the P.A., then let us into
the schoolyard to see it: small
glints of ice, maybe the size
of grains of sand, dropping
through the sky towards us—
all looking up, our mouths open,
even though we were teenagers—
but never reaching the ground.
Outside the world is blanketed,
nothing shoveled yet or plowed.
The dog is with me and runs
up the stairs to the sidewalk.
We’re the first to break the scene,
our legs sinking with every step.
I watch him spinning and jumping,
snow falling slowly onto his coat.
It falls on me, too, and makes me
want to look up again, mouth open,
waiting for the snow to reach me
this time, and forget, if only for
a while, the clothes I could never
afford, the house we may never have,
the life I had wanted to give you by now.

—from Rattle #34, Winter 2010

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Harry Newman: “Most of my poems are about yearning, and ‘Early Snow’ is one of the most direct and autobiographical expressions of that. I recall the day so clearly, the snow falling, walking up the steps from our basement apartment, that earlier memory the poem helped me excavate. In many ways, I remain that boy with his mouth held open, waiting for the world’s Communion that has never come.”

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