Cheerios

Last Wednesday Peter forwarded an email about a poetry festival in the nearby tiny town of Sharon Springs.  The first event, Thursday evening, was a welcoming dinner for the poets and a fundraiser for the festival. I was delighted to find that tickets were still available.  Peter agreed to join us, and probably got one of the last tickets before it sold out.  Unfortunately, my poetry loving sister Aviva was in New Jersey for a reading of her own book, and missed an event she would have loved.

The dinner was held at the American Hotel, which, along with Sharon Springs, has a wonderful history.  The mineral springs had been used for healing by the local native people, mostly Algonquins, for a long, long time before European settlers arrived. The settlers (invaders) established a town there in the 19th century, and the springs became a tourist destination. The history books do not recount how the Algonquins reacted to this particular loss, but much of the history of this region is scarred by the losses the native people endured. The American Hotel was built ca 1842. In 1863 a race course was opened in nearby Saratoga Springs, and the more upscale hotels there gradually eclipsed Sharon Springs.  But tonier Saratoga Springs didn’t welcome Jews, so they became the primary guests in Sharon Springs, with Yiddish spoken on the streets and in the hotel dining rooms. Later, there were kuchalines and also a Satmar settlement.

In an odd turn of fate, the hotel business, which had languished somewhat, was revived after WWll when the West German government sent selected victims of the camps there for recuperation. But in the 50s, the tourist business fell off as Jews had other alternatives, and the town’s economy sank with it. The empty buildings suffered the decay harsh winters bring. A couple of guys from the city found the old hotel in 1996, and despite its decrepit condition they fell in love with it.  I saw pictures of it from that era, and I would have called in the bulldozers.  But in five years they completed an amazing restoration, just as other shops and restaurants were being revived in town. Although Sharon Springs is still tiny, with a population under 550, it’s now thriving, with arts and crafts, restaurants, hotels, spas, and… poetry.

The Irish poet, Paul Muldoon, lives in Sharon Springs and got the idea for a festival. He teaches at Princeton with the current poet laureate, Tracy K. Smith (author of the Pulitzer winning collection, “Life on Mars”, which I love). Between them, they convinced former poet laureate (and a favorite of mine), Billy Collins, and Anne Waldman to join them for an awesome foursome. The events included readings, workshops, and readings by local poets.  Tere were special events to engage high school kids.

For the opening dinner about 60 of us filled the warm dining room of the hotel. Peter and Jay and I were seated with four others, including a woman visiting from Berkeley. Muldoon welcomed us and introduced the evening. After soup was served, Anne Waldman read a very funny poem about marriage which set the tone for the evening. After salad, it was Muldoon reading a funny mash up of old sayings: “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t keep his nose to the grindstone,” and so on. After the chicken was served, Tracy K. Smith read her beautiful poem, Hill Country, which imagines God as an old back woodsman out exploring the countryside in his jeep. It closes:

“… A pair of dragonflies
Mate in flight. Tiny flowers throw frantic color
At his feet. If he tries—if he holds his mind
In place and wills it—he can almost believe
In something larger than himself rearranging
The air. He squints at the jeep glaring
In bright sun. Stares a while at patterns
The tall branches cast onto the undersides
Of leaves. Then God climbs back into the cab,
Returning to everywhere.”

For dessert, along with delicious pie, we had Billy Collins.  He read a very funny little poem imagining a mouse sneaking off with a wooden match and accidentally burning the house down.  And he ended the evening’s readings with one of my favorites, The Revenant, which begins:

“I am the dog you put to sleep,
as you like to call the needle of oblivion,
come back to tell you this simple thing:
I never liked you.

When I licked your face,
I thought of biting off your nose.”

It goes downhill from there, a wonderful imagining of the ways we misinterpret our pets. The evening closed with a thanks from one of the owners (and restorers) of the hotel. Jay told him later that if the hotel business didn’t work out he could have a great second career as a stand up comic. He was hilarious.

In the tiny town of Sharon Springs I had one of the most memorable cultural evenings of my life. Everything was great: the food, the building and its history, the company, the intimacy and sense of community, and the poetry. There’s not much to do around here, but what there is is so often worth doing, and so accessible. On most evenings there are not dozens of alternatives. But when there is something, it stands out, and we’re more likely to go. The prices are modest, there’s no traffic, and no parking hassle, and the venues are on a human scale.

We would have gone to more of the festival, but we had company all weekend.  Tamar and Ryder came up for belated celebrations of my 70th birthday and her 66th. Our childhood friend, Mado, joined us.  Aviva brought THIRTY cupcakes, and after the birthday song she read a Billy Collins poem I didn’t know.  It was written when he read that Cheerios had turned 70 in the same year that he did and he discovered that he was older than Cheerios. I am not.