Considered one of the most influential poets in New York City, Bob Holman has been around since the days when beats like William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg roamed the streets. He coordinated readings at The Poetry Project in the East Village in the late 1970s, brought slam poetry to Manhattan when he co-directed the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in Alphabet City in the ’80s and ’90s, and in 2002 founded the Bowery Poetry Club. After closing last summer, it reopens today with the addition of Duane Park, a restaurant formerly on Duane Street, which will share space with the club. Now 64, Holman lives above the club and is a visiting professor of writing at Columbia University. This is his poetic New York.
1. The Poetry Project, 131 E. 10th St.
It’s been in existence since 1966, and is completely artist-run. Patti Smith was a performer there; Allen Ginsberg (right) was a performer there. The original government grant ran out after two years, but poet Anne Waldman kept it going. I remember Ginsberg raising his hand at a community meeting in about 1979 when we were talking about whether the Project should become a nonprofit. He was saying he would vote for it if there would be more parties after the readings.
2. The Hare Krishna Tree, Tompkins Square Park
It’s where Ginsberg sat and chanted the Hare Krishna poem in 1966 [said to mark the founding of the religion in the US] and where the annual Howl Festival [May 31 to June 2] now sets up. Every year on the last Friday in May, around Allen’s birthday, there is a group reading of Allen’s masterpiece, “Howl.” It’s great to see the beat poets’ traditions continuing.
3. Nuyorican Poets Cafe, 236 E. Third St.
It was closed in the ’80s due to AIDS, crack and gentrification. I was helping reopen it when I saw this article about slam poetry in Chicago, and it grabbed me: A poetry “slam” sounds more exciting. You didn’t know who the poet was going to be, you only knew they were going to read one poem, with judges picked from the audience. I wanted to do them on Friday nights at 10 o’clock, which was unheard of — poetry readings happen on Wednesday. And so it became the birthplace of the poetry
slam in New York City. We had the 1996 Grand Slam Finale that Saul Williams won, that also featured Beau Sia and muMs da Schemer [who was in the HBO series “Oz”]. It became the basis for the movie “Slam.”
4. Bowery Poetry Club, 308 Bowery
When it opened, it was more like a community pass through. People who needed spots for readings would know this was the place to come. Lady Gaga did it in 2003, but we knew her as Stefani [her real name]. She was with violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain. He was the musician in residence. She read rock ‘n’ roll angst poems. She was kind of folk, a sensitive teenager. She was a serious poet and a good poet too. When my wife, painter Elizabeth Murray, died of cancer six years ago, I read the poem that’s sort of my signature poem for her [“Praise Poem: Elizabeth Murray”]. It was published in the book I did with Chuck Close. The room was packed, with a mix of shock and joy and sorrow. My brother played guitar and sang “You Are My Sunshine.” Real slow. That’s when I broke down.
5. Yacht basin at World Financial Center Plaza, off West Street between Liberty and Vesey streets
Down at the yacht basin, there are poems sculpted into the iron work fencing by Walt Whitman and Frank O’Hara. The two of them really do describe what New York is about. The Whitman line, “City of the world! (for all races are here, All the lands of the earth make contributions here;) . . . Proud and passionate city — mettlesome, mad, extravagant city!” always seems so perfect for Gotham. The O’Hara [poem] includes the line: “I can’t even enjoy a blade of grass unless I know there’s a subway handy.” I don’t know who chose them, but whoever it was knew their poetry.
6. White Horse Tavern, 567 Hudson St.
If you walk past the bar, you walk into the Dylan Thomas room, which has a bunch of portraits of Thomas, theater programs and other memorabilia. It is where Dylan liked to drink, and it’s where he spent his last night in New York before he got back to the Chelsea Hotel, where he got sick and eventually died. It’s great to see a bar that holds on to its own. People are stunned to walk into a bar that looks like the classic watering hole and discover there is a whole room of memorabilia. It’s a wonderful place to hoist a pint.
7. Strivers’ Row, 138th and 139th streets, between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Harlem
It’s where Langston Hughes liked to hang out. Strivers’ Row was a place that was in the middle of the daily life of the writers in the middle of the Harlem Renaissance. It’s a beautiful block of old brownstones. Really, it’s just a place in Harlem to go and meditate.