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.
Mystical experiences, yearnings, politics, little dramas, poetry, kidney dialysis, insulin-dependent diabetes, and opportunities for gratitude.
Monday, February 16, 2009
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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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