Jack Hirschman, Rest in Poetry (RIP) (December 13, 1933 – August 22, 2021)
Jack at Babe Ruth’s funeral. Jack was in line to get into Yankee Stadium, with hundreds of other kids, when a milk truck pulled up to a stop light. The kids went wild, the truck driver freaked out and ran away, as they all filled their bellies with the stolen milk. Milky faces, sad at the Bambino’s death.
Jack at Spec’s sitting in the back, holding forth. Poets crowded around the table leaning in listening. Arguing, shouting, laughing, gossiping. Walking in hoping he would be there. Saying to myself for years, "Please be there, please be there, Jack."
Jack standing on a corner in North Beach holding a stack of the “People’s World,” smiling, saying “only a quarter, all the worker’s news.” I always bought one and gave him a dollar saying, keep the change and please give away three, to which he would always reply, “Thanks Comrade.”
Jack on the steps of Sproul Plaza, at UC Berkeley for the reading the day after mass arrests, at Anti-Apartheid protests in 1985. He liked my poem, which had a line about the policemen twirling like ballerinas, which I acted out and read directly to the police, which made even them laugh. When I asked him what he was doing after the reading, he said, “All the poets are all going back to Specs, do you have a car?” “Yes!” A group of about 6 poets piled into my car. That led to years of going to Specs and hoping Jack would be there. That was the day I met Jack, a real poet.
Jack at City Lights, reading from his just published 996-page, door stopper of a book “The Arcanes.” The place was packed, as Jack blasted, bellowed, alternating between bass sax and pissed off bear. People were cheering him on. "Go Jack go!" There was Susan Birkeland, who I hadn’t seen in a few years, who was wearing a scarf around her head, as she had lost her hair from the chemo treatments, she had her wicked grin and soft blue eyes and we held each other tight as Jack read. Went to Specs with her after and I got to hold her more. We walked up to Filbert Steps to see the green parrots and say good bye. She would pass away a few months later. I will put Jack’s “Susie Arcane,” in the comments below as it is one of my favorite Hirschman poems and says so much of how I feel about Jack in his tribute to her.
Jack pitching at the annual “Poets vs Artists,” softball games, held in Golden Gate Park and organized by Whitman McGowen. Of course, Jack’s ball player nickname was “Red.” He had a big exaggerated wind-up and relished being a star of the poet’s team. He wrote a poem about playing catch with his son, that I can’t find, but it was a magical poem with images of light and the softness of his beloved baseball and being a father.
Jack walking with me from Café Trieste to in his tiny hotel room around the corner. Sitting on his bed as pulled out painting after painting and being blown away that this amazing prolific poet was also an amazing prolific visual artist.
Jack drinking coffee in the morning at Café Trieste. That big crazy smile. How he would ask about the work I was doing with the Alzheimer’s Poetry Project. How he made me feel seen and how just knowing him, made me feel like a poet. How much San Francisco as a poetry city, was really just that Jack was there in a back room, at a table, on a corner, in the park, tossing a ball, his long hair and bright red scarf flowing in the fog. How much my love of San Francisco is my love of Jack. Rest in Poetry Comrade.
Photo credit: Sergio Sala.
The Susie Arcane
In Memory of Susan Birkeland
by Jack Hirschman
I.
Strangely as if the lid
of her own coffin were
closing over her
just when people are
reading her words,
she’s quietly resting
cherishing thoughts of
the thoughtlessness
she’s slipping into,
of looking the inner one
in the eye and finally
being zero.
So no more boats to
go down to the piers for.
Yet, still wanting, in the
waning, mistily she strains
upward: the other side,
all who’ve died, seems
alive and kicking. She
wants to be there.
She’s dying to be.
She’s waiting for him
to come over her, to
take her out.
Who never fails. Him.
Above all. Who’ll carry
her away to she.
Nothing more. No doubt.
She has next to nothing
to do but check out.
II.
Say there are places in
San Francisco sparkling
with the serious joie
de vivre of her poems
read from that core of
crisp bright soul,
that the North Beach
corner where she sang
with friends and wine
and shmoogadoo really
feels posthumous. Those
days that were…Ladadadadada.
Her eyes now ready, her
breast now ready, her hips
and thighs and modesty as well
Darn, she just would like
to know when she’ll
arrive at that language
she’s been written by. Hands
are in hers. Holding. Do
you read me in the darkness
when the light is on? O yes,
yes, open to ten thousand
things. The humming
of butter melting on his
body, for one. But all’s
overing, ovary just
can’t be. Yes, yes, it can.
Where it isn’t. Here. In
memory of the morning sun.
III.
Death being what it is,
you know, and that’s
why she is too.
Susie, dear Susie
with your brave spiral
of rage and tenderness,
projective and scored.
Among so many street
poets how brightly you
shone, enthusing, a
blushing leaf of grass
who could burn at
Abu Ghraib, and chide
a celebrity brother for
forgetting your home
town of Hibbing---O
Death, you rat, you bit
into Susie just when she
was coming to full poem
prime. Here’s your cheese,
Death. Be snapped to death
for taking Susie. Poetry’s
so sad about her not being
able to be written by her,
it’s gone to a corner and
won’t come out until
she speaks again.
And of course, being poetry
now, she does.
She exclaims:
“I jump with glee!
I make voluminous tea
for all the entities
that are my friends in the
morning. Have some. It’s me.
Have some of me.
It’s good.
It’s good and warm
In the morning.”
© Jack Hirschman
Paris, France