NYSP :: IOU – David Beaudouin with Phyllis Rosenzweig
NYSP :: IOU is a series devoted to exploring a single question: How has the New York School of Poetry (NYSP)—its aesthetics and shenanigans—influenced contemporary poetics?
Doug Lang and Phyllis Rosenzweig at Kramer Books in DC, photo by Terence Winch. ca. 2015
This month, we are having a chat with poet Phyllis Rosenzweig, whose life experiences have led her from New York City to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a key curator at the then-new Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, while being a central participant of the now-celebrated Dupont Circle poetry scene. As she wrote in an early poem, “…because we all advance from scene to scene/ not by any inner sense of direction/ but because each of us/ at a particular time/ finds himself at a loss/ for what to do next…”
DB: Over the years, I’ve known you primarily as a poet. Was that always the case?
PR: No. My background was in studio art as a painting major, before I switched to art history in graduate school. I have no academic background in literature or writing. It's really funny looking all the way back. I was born and grew up in Brooklyn. My dad was a Sunday painter, and my older sister used to draw a lot, so I certainly wanted to copy her
I moved to Manhattan and was working at the Museum of Modern Art bookstore to support myself, while taking graduate classes as a part-time student at the Institute of Fine Arts, part of NYU. . For a brief time, probably around 1964, I worked in one of MoMA’s curatorial departments as a secretary. I was typing people's letters, and one of those people was Frank O'Hara, whose office was just down the hall. I remember being told, that's Frank O'Hara, he's a poet. But it meant nothing to me at that point. A wasted opportunity!
DB: Once you graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts, where did you go then?
PR: Well, I didn’t graduate from the Institute of Fine Arts then and didn’t finish my degree until later. I basically dropped out around 1970. Before that, I was trying to write a seminar paper, and I just couldn't get it done. You know, I was like frozen, and I picked up the Village Voice, and I saw a notice about a writing workshop at St. Mark's Church, not far from where I was living on East 10th Street. And I thought, oh, well, maybe that's what I need, a writing workshop. So I went, and it turned out to be a poetry workshop run by Peter Schjeldahl!
The minute I got there, I was like, Oh, I'm home. You mean, it’s really okay to write like this? A whole world opened up to me, a world I just felt immediately that I wanted to be in. The writers in the workshop were the people I hung out with. We would all go out after the workshop and go to a bar or something–it was just so friendly and congenial and fun. It became my entire life.
After Peter's workshop, I took another workshop with Tony Towle. Then after that, I went to lots and lots of readings. And you'd bump into people on the street and have coffee or whatever. It was a real community because almost everybody lived in this little section of the East Village.
I became good friends with the poet Paul Violi and was friendly with writers like Rebecca Wright, John Godfrey, and Dick Gallup. And of course, Maureen Owen was there then, a big connector between all of the poets. She's the first person who ever published me in her then-mimeo magazine, Telephone. I'm very grateful to her.
Our gods were John Ashbery and Frank O'Hara. But, you know, I just thought of them as writers and all of us as writers, as poets. I never even heard the term ‘New York School’ until much later.
DB: So, how did you decide to get involved with this new museum called the Hirshhorn in Washington, D.C.?
PR: When I was still in grad school, I saw a job posting on the bulletin board there, saying, “Hirshhorn Museum hiring research assistant.” The only thing I knew about the Hirshhorn’s collection at that time was that it included some paintings by Arshile Gorky, an artist I was very interested in. I applied for the job, and then I didn't hear from them until about a year later, when they called me back and hired me.
At that time, the collection had already been purchased by the Smithsonian. The works of art were in a warehouse on the west side of New York City, while on the other side of town, our little team, all technically Smithsonian employees, worked in a small office doing very basic research on the collection, organizing information about where and when different works were purchased, had they been published, all basic archival stuff.
One of the big reasons the job appealed to me was that I knew it was temporary, as things would eventually move down to D.C. I was in my 20s, kind of commitment-shy, so I thought, okay, I'll do this for just a couple of years, perfect!
When the time finally came that the Hirshhorn’s operations in New York were closing down, the Smithsonian offered all of us a choice: receive severance pay, or else relocate to D.C. at the government’s expense. I had started job hunting in New York at that point and couldn't find anything except bookstore jobs. Since I felt like I was more of a professional at that point, I decided I'd move down to D.C. for a year.
That first year of 1974 was sort of great, because you're in at the beginning of something, helping to form a new museum. But it was also hell. I hated being in Washington; I missed New York. I was basically homesick–I kept coming back to New York every couple of weekends to visit people and to go to readings at St. Mark's. I was horribly miserable until I met Doug Lang and started attending the poetry readings he organized at Folio Books at Dupont Circle, along with informal workshops in his home.
Before I left New York, Bill Zavatsky told me to look up the poet Terence Winch in D.C. So, I did. Terence must have introduced me to Michael Lally, who in turn published my first chapbook, 17 Poems. I then met Doug Lang when I bought a book at Folio, and he recognized my name on the check from 17 Poems! Doug then introduced me to Lynne Dreyer, Pete Inman, Tina Darragh, Diane Ward, Bernard Welt, and the other poets who became my new family. That changed my life in D.C. completely.
Some Dupont Circle poets & artists, ca. 1980. Front–Becky Levenson, Diane Ward, Bernard Welt, Susan Campbell; back–Tad Wanveer, Terence Winch, Phyllis Rosenzweig, Doug Lang, in Terence Winch’s apartment at the Chateau Thierry
DB: Did you find the work of the Dupont Circle poets vastly different from what you had experienced in New York?
PR: I felt like there was an affinity, you know–the people I knew were very attuned to the New York School. There were a lot of different poets who came through Folio, but a lot of New York people read there, too, so there was a real continuity.
At the same time, I think that my knowledge and my sensibility regarding poetry expanded after I arrived in D.C. A lot of this again was through Doug, who introduced us to a whole broader range of writing, like the emerging West Coast and New York Language poets. It was like a meteor shower bombarding me. I guess that's one of the things I wonder–if I had stayed in New York, would I have even learned about these poets until much later?
Flyer for a reading by Paul Violi and Phyllis Rosenzweig at the Folio Bookstore, Washington, D.C., October 29, 1976. (via From a Secret Location)
DB: Let’s talk for a bit about your own publishing efforts. Did you and Diane Ward start Primary Writing Books together?
PR: We did, but not originally. Diane moved to New York in the early '90s, and in the meantime, I had the idea that I wanted to start a publication of my own. I wanted to publish longer works by some people I knew. So I started something called Primary Writing (The title came from Diane), and I published three issues over several years in a Xeroxed, stapled format. The first one was a work by Jane DeLynn, my friend from New York, followed by a second by Tina Darragh and a third by Doug.
Then, Diane moved from New York to California, and we really wanted to stay in touch. I think it was Diane who had the idea that the best way for us to stay connected would be to collaborate on a magazine together. Starting in 1995, we published the new iteration of Primary Writing approximately four times a year for 13 years, until 2008. Edric Mesmer, the editor of Among the Neighbors, a series that documents little magazines and small presses, is publishing a history of Primary Writing in a forthcoming issue.
Phyllis Rosensweig and Diane Ward
DB: So, when did you decide to resurrect Primary Writing as a chapbook series again?
PR: In 2011. I just thought there's a lot of terrific writing in and around D.C. that should be published! In some ways, it's parallel to a kind of curatorial impulse– seeing an artist’s work and thinking that's really good, I'd like others to know about it. I have to confess I am a little embarrassed that the first one I did was my own work, as a trial to see what producing a book would be like. I collaborated with the artist Susan Campbell on this first book, and since then with the designer Bob Allen in Baltimore.
DB: How many publications have you done since Primary Writing Books restarted?
PR: Doug Lang, Cathy Eisenhower, Ken Jacobs, Lynne Dreyer, Lorraine Graham, Dan Gutstein, Chris Mason, and Diane Ward, so that's nine.
DB: Looking back and even forward, do the New York School poets still figure in your own aesthetic, or have you moved on?
PR: I went through a period of thinking, after I learned there was such a thing as a New York School, okay, well, that's kind of old-fashioned, and I don't write like that anymore. But I've recently, in the last year or two, been going back to it, and finding so much of it wonderful. I'm reading a lot of Ron Padgett, and again, James Schuyler, also Alice Notley, and I'm finding it so, so rich. You know, it makes me feel like I was part of something at a very special time.
I think there's a newer generation of poets who are maybe doing something different. But here in D.C., people like Rod Smith, Cathy Eisenhower, Lorraine Graham, and others whom I now consider my cohort, even though they're younger, all have a sense of a history that we collectively come out of. I mean, we didn't just spring out of nowhere!
Frank O’Hara Ode (for Lynne Dreyer)
O
Flourescent spectroscope for complex biomolecules
O
All the branches of economy that are involved with corrupt income
O
The political history of art
I’m sitting here and the sky is that soft winter gray with a glimmer
of orange
It’s so beautiful
which as you know I have been into that topic lately
it’s a balancing posture
on one leg
with this freezing
weather and that sunlight they have pouring in
it’s not that much more …
I hope you are feeling better…not down
these things are versus instead of
…trying…
and
I just wanted to let you know that you help me feel not alone, and I am
grateful for that
– Phyllis Rosenzweig
_______
Phyllis Rosenzweig was a curator for many years at the Hirshhorn Museum, where she authored several important catalogs, including Larry Rivers and The Fifties: Aspects of Painting in New York, and organized many exhibits of contemporary artists. Her poetry has appeared in magazines, journals, and the chapbooks Seventeen Poems (O Press, 1975), Dogs (Edge Books, 1996), Reasonable Accommodation (Potes and Poets Press, 1997), and Girls (Primary Writing Books, 2011). From 1995 to 2008, she and Diane Ward co-published the poetry journal Primary Writing. She currently edits Primary Writing Books. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her husband, the art historian Alan Wallach.