Lewis Warsh/ Lydia Cortés

Yes?

For Lewis Warsh. 

Yes? 

And so ended the question

Whatever it might be

Current events politics war genocide

And so began the talk

The exploration

The searching

The beginning

Of two marvelous hours

On Saturday afternoons bimonthly

In a marvelous place

Be’s place – no Be’s Salon – on Park Ave So.

Be’s gone too now – a magical woman with a magical place – since last summer

Large windows with glass beads from top to bottom

That crystallized into notes if the windows were cracked open

If we brushed up against them accidentally, Yes?

Two hours of almost magic because i don’t believe in magic

But i learned so much in those hours learned to love the poetry

My fellow poets… those we studied… those i studied with…

We were 8, 10, usually, Yes? Or more?…

Be, Ruth, Lilla, Phyllis, Michele, Donna, KB, Dennis? Valerie, Karin,

Joe, Peter? Billy? Merry? Noam… Who am I leaving out?

Do you consider yourself an intellectual, Yes?

No i thought 

I come from the working class

Though i’d hardly done any work

To be part of the class that duly works

Not like my father toiling in cane fields

In cafeteria fields on Delancey washing pots pans

Short order cooking for Jewish delis

Or Mami working in the dixie cup factory making dixie cups

But I wasn’t an intellectual… how

Could I be if I’d not come from the class of the intellects

You have to come from a class,Yes? And stick to it, No?

Lewis that day went around the Be’s salon[around Be’s salon] and asked each

One, Yes, Are you an intellectual,Yes…or No?…and why so, Yes?

Lewis went around the group always so expertly, so interested in whatever

We had, we gave, we had to say… he always called us poets

What we said could say might say was important to say to hear…

There were 8 of us… Yes? 

We’d met at the

Poetry Project workshop and at the end of the 10 sessions, Phyllis Wat came

Around and asked if any of us had any interest in studying with

Lewis Warsh privately… we’d meet at Be LaRoe’s apartment on Park Ave So.

And so a group out of the Poetry Project group was formed and so we met

At Be’s and we paid Lewis 3 dollars apiece…Yes? After a while, did it go up

To 5, 8 even… Yes?

So little for so much

So much kindness

So much love

So much learning

Lewis never asked for a raise… it was one of us who seriously

Knowing how little we paid how much he, Lewis, gave made a suggestion

And so l found out, Yes? after weeks, months, years, yes, i was an intellectual

And Yes, I was I am a poet… 

I dedicated my second book, Whose Place, 

To Mami y Papi, who started it all… 

And to Lewis Warsh

Yes…?