king 10

Sardi said Zarra met Suzanne at one of Paterson's most historic homecomings when poet Arthur Guttenberg returned to help celebrate the rebirth of art in Paterson.

"It was an amazing moment for us," Sardi recalled. "Outside of Williams Carlos Williams, Guttenberg was the most famous poet the City of Paterson ever produced. He had stayed away for years because of a silly threat by the mayor -- he was a councilman back then -- to have him arrested because Author once admitted he had smoked marijuana near the Great Falls. But Arthur knew how much his return would mean to my small poetry effort here, and if we were to get our program off the ground, we needed someone like him to headline our festival."

Perhaps Guttenberg felt a bit homesick for the old city, enough for him to overcome his fears. Our records did indeed showed an arrest warrant for him, but his return proved as glorious as Sardi wished, and no officer made a move to enforce the warrant, despite the huffing and puffing of the councilman.

Both the Paterson Evening News and The Hearld News played up the visit on their front pages, each treating it as a triumphant home coming.

EXPELLED POET COMES HOME

Despite repeated threats by Councilman Frank X. Graves Jr. to have him arrested, Beat Generation poet, Arthur Guttenberg returned to Paterson where he was raised, heading the city's first poetry festival.

The indigent Graves called it "outrageous," claiming Guttenberg was a criminal not a hero.

"The man should not get such attention," Graves said. "This is a man who has flaunted authority all of his life and bragged about his drug use."

Guttenberg, a significant figure in the 1950s as part of the Beat Generation, also made significant contributions to the radical Sixties, appearing in places like San Francisco and New York. He was part of the infamous Chicago Seven Trial, during which he chanted and was carried out by court officers.

Guttenberg has also been acknowledged in literary circles as the generations most prestigious and well-known poets, and his return to Paterson to head the revival here, gives the local arts effort the boost it desperately needed.

"I think art and poetry are more important than my fear of the police," Guttenberg said. "If they wish to arrest, then they can arrest me. But I intend to take my place at the festival's poetry event."

Legal advisors for the Paterson Community College claimed the warrant issued based on a 1968 event  is not valid, and that if police arrest Guttenberg, the college will seek to have all charges dropped.

In the week before the event, even papers like the Bergen Record, The Newark Star Ledger and The New York Times picked up on the theme, feeding the frenzy and guaranteeing the festival would be successful.

While the police made no move to arrest Guttenberg, they were forced to deal with several conservative groups, who apparently objected not only to Guttenberg's symbolic stature as a sixties icon, but also to his open gay life style. Our records later showed fifteen men arrested during Guttenberg's appearance, two of them armed.

Sardi said Zarra attended the event, read briefly at one of the open readings, sang a song at one of the side shows, but generally kept out of trouble until later in the day. She remembered seeing him in the crowd as Guttenberg read, and remembered seeing him later in the company of Suzzane Martin.

"I remember how disturbed I was by the fact that they were together," Sardi said. "I could not bear the idea that he would have anything to do with her. She was unspoiled. And I knew he would do his best to change that. I saw him flirting with her in the crowd. She was floating ahead of him a little, her hair glowing among the darker faces like a yellow flower."

Zarra apparently followed Suzzanne into the audience area preparing at that moment for Guttenberg's second reading. Zarra elbowed his way through the crowd to take a seat beside her. Few people but Sardi seemed to notice their chattering at each other and staring at the stage in anticipation of Guttenberg.

"Who are you?" Zarra asked, bending close to Suzzane's ear. "And what are you?"

"What do you mean?" Suzzane asked, giggling at the oddity of the question.

"I mean everybody here is something, poet, writer, actor, musician, which one are you?"

Her green eyes sparkled deviously. "Do I need to be any of them at all?" she asked.

"No," Zarra admitted. "But one thing I've noticed about our little scene, very few come here who aren't artists of some sort." 

"Is that bad?"

"It is if anyone expects this thing to go anywhere. It's fine and good to have all this talent in one place, but not if we're just talking to ourselves."

"Us? You mean you're something, too?"

Zarra blushed as he shifted uneasily in his chair, glancing around at the crowded room, at the girders above and the wooden floors underfoot, marking a distinct change from the disaster of the formerly ruined locomotive factory.

Part of the City's effort to build up the historic section had been the restoration of the Rodger's factory, a center piece around which the city fathers hoped they could restore the rest of the mills. Some of the other rooms already contained artifacts that the city had previously kept in an unbearably small building on Broadway.

"Yes," Zarra finally admitted in a low voice. "I am something. At least for now."

Suzanne frowned. "For now?"

"I'm on my way to Nashville," he said.

Something soured in Suzanne's eyes. "Don't tell me you're a country and western singer," she said.

"What's wrong with that?"

She glanced away this time.

"My father loved country music," she said.

"And you don't?"

"I hate it."

"Why?"

"Because all it talks about is heartache."

"That's not true."

"It's true about every country song I've ever heard."

"You never heard mine."

Suzanne looked up.

"I supposed that means I'll have to come up to your place to hear it?" she asked.

"We could go to a park."

"You're serious, aren't you?"

"Of course."

"All right, I'll listen to your music. Only not today. Today I've come to hear poetry."

"You mean Guttenberg?"

"Who else?" Suzanne asked. "Isn't he the main attraction?"

"I suppose he is," Maxwell said and glanced at the faces of the crowd again, expectant faces waiting to meet the man who'd known Jack Kerouac, and the other people of the Beat Generation, the man who bridged that time with this time and this Paterson with the greater Paterson of the past, the man who had come to give his blessing over what organizers of the Falls Festival promised to be the renaissance of art here.

"Don't tell me you don't like poetry?" Suzanne asked, seeming to read his thoughts from his expression.

"I love poetry," Zarra said. "But Guttenberg doesn't write poetry. He rants and raves, he curses up and down, and some fool pays him for it while others applaud, and every wannabe poet in Paterson imitates his style, hoping someone will pay them, too."

Suzanne stared.

"You do have strong opinions," she said. "What do other people think of them?"

"You mean these people?"

"Yes."

"They think I'm a heretic, and tell me I should go form my own group if I don't like theirs."

"Have you expressed these opinions of yours to Mr. Guttenberg?"

Zarra laughed so loud some of the other people paused in their gossip to look up, and when they saw who it was that had violated their sacred ceremonies, they grew annoyed.

"Oh, I told him all right," Maxwell said.

"What did he say?"

"He asked me to have sex with him."

"What?"

"Guttenberg's a homosexual," Zarra said. "I thought everybody knew that. Didn't you?"

"Well, I..." Suzanne started, then stopped, her face growing very red. "I suppose I knew. But is he always so forward?"

"Why don't you stick around after the reading and find out for yourself."

"What happens after the reading?"

"We all go to a bar and get drunk."

"Really?"

"There's a jazz club around the corner, and from what I gather it's Guttenberg's birthday. All the poets got together and prepared something special."

"Won't it be private?"

"Nothing Guttenberg does is private."

Sardi called Zarra "insufferable," and watched him twitch through the whole performance, and groan through the open reading that followed, making it nearly impossible for her to appreciate the historic moment.

"I understand how tedious it can become, having to listen to so many people," Sardi complained. "But everyone wanted to be able to say they read at the same reading with Arthur Guttenberg, and the fact is, many of them had polished up their best poems so that Guttenberg might discover them the way Williams had discovered him. But  to look at Mr. Zarra, you would think he was suffering some Soviet torture."

But according to one of the officers assigned to crowd control that day, the affair was a torture, and that if Guttenberg heard any of the poor poets that strived to impress him, he had to do it over his own rude litany of laughter from a private conversation he conducted in the rear of the room, a howling, back-slapping chat with old friends that left him little opportunity to catch the unending words of the would be poets. Guttenberg, apparently, seemed even a little surprised when Sardi tugged on his sleeve to indicate the end of the public affair.

All rose in a collective clatter and chatter and made for the door at once, following behind the still laughing man like bubbles behind a leaking boat, crowding the double doors, fighting each other to be close to the man they adored.

Zarra, apparently, held Suzanne back until the worse of it passed, then took her arm and leisurely strolled out into the dark parking lot and up the dark street, following the chorus of the poet's laughing as it bounded from the face of the dying city.

At the doors of the club, the crowd reassembled, its bulk pressing to squeeze through the narrow opening, the most important dignitaries of the local poetry scene first, with their noses elevated and their gazes glazed, and their self-righteousness unmarred by the bad jazz music dribbling out from inside.

"No one had thought to hire a competent band," Sergeant Dan Snyder told me, a jazz fan who had volunteered for the duty expecting better. "No one on the local scene knew the difference, except for a handful of people and they cringed as they entered, aware of the wrong notes and the sour approach the four piece band used in the name of jazz."

Guttenberg also seemed to notice, sitting himself at the table of honor with an expression of deep annoyance.

"How long is this going to take?" his gaze seemed to ask as it moved from face to face until it stopped on Zarra. A vague remembrance seemed to register in his eyes, and he grabbed Sardi's arm to question her, gesturing several times in Zarra's direction.

"I was so mortified I could have screamed," Sardi said. "I didn't believe Mr. Guttenburg was asking about that man."

Snyder noticed the sharp exchange at Guttenberg's table.

"The lady glanced over to where Guttenberg pointed, squinted, then seemed to grow angry, shaking her head vigorously as if that was the last person she wanted Guttenberg to meet," Snyder said. "Finally, she wormed her way through the tables and chairs cluttered with people to where Zarra and the girl sat."

"I told him Mr. Guttenberg wanted to talk to him," Sardi said. "I was not nice about it. But neither was he."

"So?" Zarra asked.

Sardi grew agitated.

"Don't start with your nonsense," she hissed, abandoning all attempts at civility. "It's the man's birthday and he's important, and he wants to see you. God knows why. I won't have you offending him the way you usually offend everybody else."

"I offend people?"

"Constantly."

"How?"

"Stop with the inquisition!" the woman moaned. "Are you coming over or not?"

Zarra glanced at Suzanne, whose green eyes had the same star-struck look at those in the crowd around Guttenberg.

"All right," Zarra said with a sigh, "Lead on, Virgil."

Sardi glanced sharply at him, trying to figure out if this was an insult or not, finally deciding he was just being snide again. She led him through the crowd to where Guttenberg had settled into his role, admirers of all shapes, sizes and colors fumbling prepared speeches or bringing him unasked for drinks, placing the glasses on the table before him like religious offerings. He took the drinks, swallowed each and issued a few words of thanks and encouragement to those who gave them, then turned to the next, forgetting immediately the person who he'd just spoken to.

"I brought them, Mr. Guttenberg," she said in a humbled tone.

"So I see," Guttenberg said, sitting back with his large hands folded across his equally large belly, his gaze studying Zarra's face, dismissing Sardi with a flick of his fingers. When she was gone, Guttenberg motioned for Zarra and Suzanne to sit. They complied, sitting across the large table from him, as admirers continued to come and go, and the space between them continued to fill with glasses, some now half full rather than empty.

"Where do I know you from?" Guttenberg asked Zarra.

"Right here," Zarra said. "You came here to read a few years ago.

"Ah," Guttenberg said with a relieved sigh. "And you were one of the young poets who wanted to learn at my side?"

"No, I'm one of the poets who told you you were full of shit."

Suzanne gasped. Guttenberg blinked.

"What?" the huge poet said, his voice without its previous pretentiousness.

"I also earned your ill favor by refusing to become one of the young boys who went back to your motel room with you," Zarra said. "That's what you probably had in mind for me this time, too, and I still refuse."

Guttenberg's bloated face reddened.

"Nobody talks to me like that!" he bellowed, shoving his seat back as he rose, while waving frantically for Sardi.

Sardi rushed over, her own jowls quivering. She had witnessed the change from across the room. She already knew Zarra had said something rude.

"What is it, Mr. Guttenberg? What has this troublemaker done now?"

"He's insulted me," Guttenberg said. "And if he's an example of the kind of poets you're breeding here in Paterson, I might as well leave."

"LEAVE?" Sardi wailed, her high pitched voice carrying through the club so that even the jazz musician stopped. "But we've arranged this party for you."

"Maybe you should have told him that," Guttenberg said. "Have someone find my driver. I'm going home."

"But..." Sardi pleaded, making a helpless gesture with her hands.

"And I won't be back," Guttenberg added. "A lot of other places would appreciate a poet of my talents, even if Paterson doesn't."

Then with one more glare at Zarra, the great man paraded out, Sardi and others begging at his heals for him to stay, or at least, come away with them to some more private feast to which the likes of Zarra would not be invited.

"That was cruel," Suzanne told Zarra when the entourage had moved out of the room, and the jazz band now played for a mostly empty room.

"It was cruel to let him go on for a long as he did," Zarra said. "Letting him build up these people's egos and his own. They all think they can make their poetry pay off the way he did."

"Why shouldn't they think that?"

"Because it isn't true," Zarra said. "He's a fluke. His poetry isn't really poetry at all, but a kind of jazz that for one instant in time was popular with the masses. He's been riding that wave for forty years, but few other people can, and he knows it. No one makes money off art except a few very lucky people. All the others find their dreams crushed when they try."

"You sound like a disillusioned poet."

"No, just a practical one. I write poetry, but I don't brag about it. I write songs because I think someone might buy them. My poetry will never make me money, but my music might. Even then, it'll take me years of practice and perfecting, and one hell of a lot of luck."

"So you're just like them," she said with a laugh.

"No, I'm not. They let charlatans steal their dreams."

"But you sit here in this town, thinking you will get what you want."

"That's partly true. But there's some other ingredient that makes for greatness."

"Which is?"

Zarra shrugged. "I don't know. I've read about writers and others, and in every case, some event happens to them, some person or disaster spices up their lives and their work, and sends them on their way."

Suzanne stared, clearly unconvinced.

"Look," Zarra said. "Why don't you come back to my place?"

"What for?"

"What do you think?"

She looked at Zarra for a moment, then towards the door through which the others had gone.

"I think I'll go find out what happened to the others," she said, and rushed out of the club, leaving Zarra to the jazz band and the nearly empty club.

Paterson main menu

email to Al Sullivan