MY TURN column
The Courier-Post
April 16, 2009
by DOUG OTTO
April is National Poetry Month across the U.S., but in Camden City, for more than 13 years, there has already been a monthly celebration of the literary form.
Camden -- the city of America's Good Grey Poet, Walt Whitman, and American haiku master, Nick Virgilio -- is also home to an intrepid band of poetry enthusiasts who religiously cross Cooper and Third Streets, just one-half block from the Rutgers University campus, to take seats in the backroom of a neighborhood pizza parlor, for the sake of poetry.
They don't go only for the food; they go to consume words: written, spoken and sung. Since 1995, one year before The American Academy of Poetry began its national festivities, Camden resident Rocky Wilson has been hosting poetry and pizza get-togethers for a crowd made up mostly of area baby boomers.
The impetus for this long-running event began at an Amherst, Massachusetts writing conference, where Wilson was working. After one of the sessions, he wandered around the New England town and stood in front of Emily Dickinson's house. "It's as if she spoke to me that day," he says.
When he returned to Camden, he was inspired to commemorate his muse by celebrating her December birthday with a gathering of kindred souls. The idea caught on, and now a different poet's birthday is honored each month. Two weeks ago, I attended an evening focused on Jack Kerouac. Mixed among the aromas of pizza, hoagies, salad oil and oregano were piles of Kerouac memorabilia, copies of "On the Road" and "Book of Blues." A Miles Davis CD played in the background as BYOB wine bottles were passed around, and someone was heard to say about Kerouac: "He was handsome, pickled and loved his mother."
It's an eclectic bunch of hipsters that congregate on the vinyl-covered wooden seats, and lean on the oblong tables of A Little Slice of New York Pizza Parlor sharing stream-of-consciousness conversations about art, music and politics. It's the perfect combination for the stuff of poetry.
This night there were about 30 attendees in a variety of styles: everything from jeans to khakis, sweaters to T-shirts, clogs to hiking boots, flowing peasant dresses to a man in semi-formal wear. At a table in the back, two Camden police officers on their dinner break ate wedges of pizza, listening to the recitations and smiling.
Everyone is encouraged to stand and read poems by the evening's featured writer, although many recite from memory. The first to step forward is Wilson, reading glasses at the ready, dressed in festive attire and accompanied by a hand puppet affectionately known to the audience as Bongo. (Tongue-in-cheek e-mails announcing the events are sent to nearly 100 South Jerseyans, usually signed by Bongo.)
Wilson has become an artistic folk hero in the environs of Camden's University District, and not just for his pizza parlor poetics. He often grows his beard and hair long, dons a floppy hat and work shirt, and portrays Walt Whitman. He wrote and starred in a Philadelphia Fringe Festival production called, "The River, the People and Walt Whitman."
Last December, Wilson traveled to California to perform a one-man show, "Whitman and the Universal Light," in an 80-acre redwood forest. He has appeared on stage at Camden's Gordon Theatre and the Walt Whitman Cultural Arts Center, and at Collingswood and Haddonfield poetry festivals, often riding his bicycle or the PATCO Hi-Speedline to events. Each spring, the group reads poetry in Harleigh Cemetery at graveside ceremonies for Whitman and Virgilio.
But Wilson seems most at home in the backroom of this inner-city pizza joint, suurounded by friends he's met along the way, making announcements of upcoming area literary events, art shows, readings and recitals. He doesn't need a national organization to declare National Poetry Month for him. He knows it in his heart.
The group often quotes Emily Dickinson's definition of poetry: "If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"
I think Wilson and friends understand.
