Lewis Warsh/ Greg Masters

From My East Village

8. Utopia Redux

And now I come to Lewis Warsh

and Bernadette Mayer, who I met

in Boulder, Colorado, at 

the then Naropa Institute, 

where they were leading

workshops, June of ’78.

I blended into their household

as if there were no barriers

and would for the next several

years be a regular presence

amid the routine proceedings 

of the day, which in their system

was nothing like ordinary.

I’m not sure from where their income

was arriving, but they each were

available day and night the

first year or two I knew them, and

spent the time together in care

of infant daughter Marie, and

in ensuing years joined in quick

succession by Sophie and Max. 

I suppose I was quietly

astounded participating

as witness to the leisurely

unfolding of the days and nights

passing with little urgency –

from first light spent entertaining

and feeding the children and the

evenings, once the kids were in bed,

devoted to writing, each of

the authors settled at their desks,

the racket of two typewriters

commingling from different rooms –

a literary symphony

of industrious enterprise

producing words I yearned to read.

Bernadette, a new age goddess

and a formidable presence,

overhauled my value system,

wrenching me out of my caveman

sensibilities, disturbing

my soul in its new reckoning.

Her writing fractured narrative –

reordering components of

description and response into

a new form of matter – much as

my proclivities adjusted

fortunate in her presence.

Lewis was the embodiment

of Jean-Pierre Léaud, actor

of the French New Wave, who was a

role model for me in college 

years illustrating how males could 

be tender and introspective.

I’d help them move: once from Lenox,

Massachusetts to Henniker,

New Hampshire (where they’d both secured

teaching positions); one transfer

resettled them for a summer

at a house called Whispering Pines

(which recalled for me perhaps the 

most heavenly of songs by The 

Band), on Lake Buel in the Berkshires;

and I drove a rental truck once 

again – this time to a spacious, 

two-bedroom apartment (with French

doors) in the Ageloff Towers –

standing stately between East 3rd

and East 4th on Avenue A –

where many spaghetti dinners

would take place with more than a few

jugs of red wine consumed in the

ensuing years as Bernadette

took over the position of

artistic director of The

Poetry Project where I was

already administrative 

assistant along with Gary

Lenhart, and Bob Holman became

the program coordinator.

In the summer of ’81,

I invited the Warsh-Mayer

family to join me for a 

house-sitting gig removed to

rural Connecticut, the most 

bucolic and pleasant month of 

my earth time – luxuriating

with my adopted family 

away from the grim conclusion 

of the city, transplanted to 

a setting with a strawberry 

field down the road, a horse in a 

stable in the yard and a lake 

to bring the children to in the 

hot afternoons (see Bernadette 

and my dual journal At Maureen’s).

Between prepping meals, keeping the

children entertained, hosting a 

slew of visitors who’d arrive 

from the city, and writing at 

night, we read a lot of books

we’d borrow from the library.

I read everything Lewis told 

me to read. The locale in the

quiet countryside, our comfort

with each other, our being far 

from New York, whatever it was, 

the arrangement was conducive

to an unperturbed yet focused 

engagement with piles of print

matter, a paradise shielded

from toxic interferences 

by good fortune and the Mayer-Warsh

no-conflict-is-front-page approach.