John Updike died on Jan. 27. I know this is old news, being that today is already Feb. 16. But what I have to write here is very old news, some 20 years old.
Back in the mid-1980s, when I was in my heyday of performance poetry, I was a featured reader at a venue on Broadway Avenue in Long Beach. As I recall, perhaps 40 people were present.
Halfway through my impassioned reading, a tall, thin man entered and stood at the back of the room, listening intently for a few minutes, smiling, and then quietly leaving. Damn, he looked familiar! But I was concentrating on my performance, giving it my all.
After I left the stage, my fellow poet and friend Don Gross told me that John Updike had popped in.
My brush with literary genius.
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About Me
- Heidi's heart
- Southern California, United States
- Perhaps my friend Mark summed me up best when he called me "a mystical grammarian." I am quite a mix--otherworldly, ethereal and in touch with "the beyond," yet prone to being very precise and logical, when need be. Romantic in the big-canvas meaning of the word, I see the world as an adventure, as a love poem, as a realm of beauty and wonder.
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