Poet Ed Galing: A Poet of the Greatest Generation

Ed Galing and Susie Davidson

2011-05-02T07:26:00.001-07:00

Susie Davidson, (and her partner Frankie) a reporter for the Jewish Daily Forward, an Ibbetson author, as well as the editor of the critically acclaimed Holocaust anthology "I Refused to Die..." ( Ibbetson Street Press) poses below with small press legend poet Ed Galing. Galing is 94 and just released his new poetry book "Pushcarts and Peddlars" (Poetica Publishing). Davidson recently interviewed Galing for an article in the Forward and visited at his home in Hatboro, PA. in April 2011.

Pushcarts and Peddlers by Ed Galing

2011-02-09T22:17:00.000-08:00

Puschcarts and Peddlers
Selected Poems by Ed Galing

$18.00 + $3.00 shipping
(all copies are signed by the author)
(ppb. 120 pages)

or mail a check/money order:
Poetica Magazine
Book Order
PO Box 11014
Norfolk, VA 23517

Cover Art Created and Donated
by Eugene Ivanov

Ed Galing is an award-winning ninety-three year old poet, cartoonist, and journalist. He received many literary awards, two pushcart nominations, wrote over seventy chapbooks, and was the harmonica-playing poet-laureate of Hatboro, Pennsylvania. Galing grew up in a tenement building in the Lower East Side of New York, learning about pushcarts, peddlers and bustling immigrants. When he was nine-years old his parents moved to Philadelphia where he finished his high school education, then he began to write short stories, poems, and sketches about his life. Shortly after WWII, Galing joined the Army and served as an occupation soldier in Europe, where he witnessed the death camps in Dachau. Galing married at age twenty-one and lived with his wife Esther for sixty-eight years, until her death. Galing is described by Doug Holder as a "poet of the greatest generation." Mr. Galing does not own a computer, he still communicates with editors and fellow poets by hand written letters. Mr. Galing lives at his home in Hatboro, PA, confined to a wheelchair, and as always, types all his poems using an old typewriter. His greatest wish is to see his Jewish works published and recognized, that those days of experiencing the Lower East Side, Dachau, anti-Semitism in the Army and Navy will never be forgotten. Poetica Magazine and Poetica Publishing Company will grant Mr. Galing his wish and will publish a full collection of his Jewish poems.

We are thankful to the talented and generous artist, Eugene Ivanov, for creating the art for the book cover, free of charge. Ivanov’s art was published on the front cover of our summer 2010 print edition. Visit his amazing work at www.yessy.com/eugeneivanov.

Lost Piano Concerto

2011-01-01T10:47:00.000-08:00

when i lived on the lower
east side of
new york
at the age of ten
the hallways
were all musty,
smelled
from urine,
graffiti on
all the walls,
echos would
float in the air
for miles
one day
in this terrible place
I found a piano,
it was downstairs
ready to be thrown away
an old steinway
with broken keys
rusted out foot pedals
and a roller,
somehow someone in the building
must have
used this piano, wanted
to learn to play it.
must have tried a long
time before giving
it up
i played this piano
everyday, my fingers
stroked the keys
i could only play with
one finger, and though
the notes were sour and
off key, i could play
alexander's ragtime band
it felt so good to
hear those notes
echoing through the hallway
it sounded like real music to me
and everyday i
would look for the piano
and hit the keys
in delight, and it made
me feel so good
the dreary, awful sounds
of the lower east side
melted away.

and i felt sorry for
whoever had thrown
the piano away,
it could be fixed
it thought,
someone could restore
it enough to make
it a grand piano,
and it was gone
someone had taken it
away,
to be tossed out
with the trash like
all the rest
and i felt so bad
about it, i cried...
it almost felt like
it was my own,
and i especially hated that there
would be no music in this awful hallway
only the usual sounds
of misery.

Wheel Chair by Ed Galing

2010-03-05T15:03:00.000-08:00

Ed Galing is 92 now, and is basically confined to a wheelchair at home. He has home attendants who help him out. Although his mobility has been affected, his mind is still sharp, and he continues to write poems and essays. Here is his latest:

WHEELCHAIR

i observe the world
theses days
from a sitting position,
no matter those early days
when i ran around the
track at college
in ten minutes flat,
and threw a javelin--
infirmities come
at all times and ages
for me it is
my nineties,
my temporary pain
in my knees
the wheelchair suits me
fine for the present,
i cook in a sitting position
and find no problem in
traversing my room,
trying to reach items
that were so easy to
get to, in standing position,
now it's getting used
to judging height and
distance, no reaching too far,
simply making it another day
my therapist assures me that
in a few months i will be back
on my feet again
and for that i am grateful...
something to be said
for the wheelchair

Review of Ed Galing's "Burlesque" by Irene Koronas

2009-09-30T09:15:00.000-07:00

burlesque
ed galing
iniquity press/vendetta books
isbn: 1-877968-33-1
2005 4.00

Ed Galing presents a time almost all of us have never heard of, or seen or been privy to, yet, his poems expose us to the bump and grind; strippers and comedians trying to entertain an audience of visually sex starved men. All this comes across in the poems. The reader will enjoy the show and will get acquainted with some of the characters behind the scenes. the poems look at life as it once was, naïve, compared to today.

“puttin the powder
on his scraggly
face

he looked at me
sadly and said

kid, whatever
you do,

don’t go into
burlesque”

Although the verse is brief in presentation, we the reader will come to understand what it means to reveal something never seen in public and we will dance with excitement.

“its only the chorus
girls, mostly,

who will go as far
as your money does.”

Irene Koronas
Submissions Editor
Ibbetson Street Press

Six on a Stoop By Ed Galing

2009-06-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

SIX ON A STOOP

we were all young kids
back then, on the lower east
side of new york, and in the
summer time we sat outside
on the stoop, watching the
people pushing and shoving,
and the pushcarts, and the
garbage, and the noise…
and we would make fun of it
all, like little brats often
do…there were six of us, all
of us full of beans,
for instance, little red-haired
betty, with white stockings,
sticking her tongue out as people
walked by us, and saying stupid
things, like nyah, nyah, nyah…
there was irving, about ten years
old, small, black hair, who
made up songs as people walked by,
and we all laughed as he pointed
out people, and then there was
harry, who lived in the same building,
about eleven, and played a trumpet
so loud we banged on his door…
he would sit on the stoop with us
and make noises with his mouth, like
a trumpet…a real goof ball…
in the summer time, when it was so
hot, we made the stoop our meeting hall…
we chewed gum, hit each other playfully,
and threw things around, and that’s
how the summer went for us…nobody
gave a darn about tomorrow…we were
just kids…in poverty…
years later, as it does,
one of us became a dancer on broadway,
another became a famous song writer,
and still another an orchestra leader,
the other three never amounted
to much, though they tried, because
you can’t really get anywhere, sitting
on a stoop on the lower east side,
no matter how much you try

ED GALING
Pennsylvania

* From Mobius magazine.

Poems about Ray Charles and Benny Goodman from Ed Galing

2009-04-30T07:47:00.000-07:00

RAY CHARLES

his long fingers
on the keyboards
were pure magic
you could see his
fingers move
and listen to the
sound of blues,
his voice, shaking
from side to side,
his smile a part of
the music, there was
no one as good as
ray charles,
a black man who was blind
but not his music
he knew the soul of music
and it was poetry
he could play a song on
your heartstrings and make
you cry
music was his main love
but it wasn't only blues
for he could play the song
"america' like you never heard it before
then
"he girl with the diamond ring, oh,oh,uh, uh"
we repeated his words,
so humble in his presence
i would listen and join in
with my tiny little harmonica,
trying to blend myself into his song
but of course ray
never knew this,
i could never play the blues
as he did, but oh, how i wished
i could...

Benny

those days when we
were between wars
when music made us all
feel good
as we young teenagers
jumped to the music of
benny goodman, and his
licorice stick,
benny, with the large
smile, and wearing glasses,
looked like our grandfather
but oh how he could play
that stick
we would rope off the street
back in 1934
and would turn the radio on
and dance
we turned and whirled
we dipped
we danced close
we made do
with what we had
we were young
and we loved young
and benny's fast
hot jazz
filled our dreams,
for benny knew how to make us
hop and laugh
those trilling
tripping notes
from the clarinet
strings of pearls
dance, dance, dance
oh how we danced:
"bei meir bistdu schoen"
a jewish melody
about how lovely your girl was
and benny turned into a
modern jump
times were good
even when they were bad
the war was a way off
but for now
this was good.

Letter about Ed Galing from Philadelphia Poet Janice Jakubowitcz

2009-02-10T07:43:00.000-08:00

What should a productive writer do on a snowy homebound afternoon? Write stories, edit stories, send away stories? Recently on a quiet snowy day, I decided to purge some of my files. It’s like the avoidance of studying for a test as a student; I’ll get the writing jitters so cleaning helps to relax. I keep articles from newspapers or magazines that are useful to character development and writing hints. I came across a golden one. It was a Letter to the Editor of my city newspaper written by a 79 year old poet. In this short piece he eloquently explained why he wrote. It touched me again. I didn’t have a date noted and decided to Google his name. I found an interview with Doug Holder and contacted him. It turns out that Ed is now 91 and I had that clipping for 11 years! Doug gave me Ed’s phone number and I called him yesterday. We had a wonderful conversation. He offered to send me books of his poetry but when he found out that I lived around the corner from one of his favorite restaurants, (Jack's Deli) we agreed to meet for lunch when the weather gets better. Also in this incredible connection, I learned through Doug about an ezine that is published locally. They host a poetry reading once a month a block from the train station that I take every day to my job in the city. And it gets better – another poet that I met on line has known Doug and Ed for years! Ah….I love the writing life and the wonderful surprise connections that can occur in this small planet that we live on.

* I agree. The Small Press has provided me with wonderful, interesting, people to talk to you and become friends with. I am not getting rich and I ain't a poet/laureate, and there is a lot grief connected with it, but: "don't change a hair for me, not if you care for me, stay little small press stay,... ( Thank's Cole Porter)--

Doug Holder

At The Deli: Waiting For My Son

2009-02-07T19:24:00.000-08:00

Waiting For My Son

it will take him about
two hours to get to
jack's deli, where i am waiting
he lives in maryland
says he can't get a good corned
beef sandwiches there.

so he is coming to meet me
here, and i sit in a booth
and wait and i am holding an
old album,
full of pictures from the old days.

one is when i bought him his first
bike, oh, how he rode around and
around, waving his hands happily.

it was the first bike he ever had, and
we lived in a housing project, very,
poor, but somehow, i was able to buy
him the bike.

i had never seen a happier boy in my life
i want to show him these pictures when he comes.

so much time has gone by since those days
for one, my wife has died, and
i am alone, and the album is about the
only thing that keeps me thinking young.

my wife once said: why do you keep the
pictures so long?, she couldn't understand how much it meant to
be able to see the
past, when we were young and happy.

he should be here soon...i keep thinking
now he is seventy years old, and i'm
ninety one... it's hard to believe so much time
has come and gone... so many tribulations.

wait till he sees this album, i think...
and there he is, just walked in, he sees me
and waves, and for a moment I can't believe
this is my ten year old son...this is a man...
who is slightly bent over, has a moustache, limps,
and is headed my way...no, there must be a mistake...
but here he is now, smiling and saying, hello, dad,
but the traffic was awful out there... now let's eat
some of the good cornbeef.

hello son, i reply. be my guest.

i don't think I will show him the album.
that's a different story, a different time...

New poems from Ed Galing in "Dance Of My Hands"

2009-01-02T06:56:00.000-08:00

New poems from Ed Galing in "Dance Of My Hands" http://www.danceofmyhands.com

TWO POEMS OF ED GALING
_______________________________________

The High Ground

when the mourners had
finally left the stage
and the cemetery went
quiet,
i had sprinkled some
earth on my wife’s
grave,
said my prayers,
now i stood alone,
looking around,
noticing the quiet
reverence of this
solemn place, and
thought about how short
life can be,
already overwhelmed
with sadness, i put
my hand out, and she
arose and smiled,
put hers in mine and
together we walked to
our car at the gate,
and she said with a sigh,
let us get out of here,
and I said softly,
where to, honey?
she waved her hand
lightly and said,
anywhere with you is
fine,
i was so delirious,
and we took off, and
i began to talk, and
then i turned to her,
and she was no longer
there,
no longer there,
as i drove on,
feeling her spirit.

Nursing Home

old age sometimes
becomes a burden
and then
the nursing home
becomes a haven
for those who
can no longer
manage on
their own;
pity them,
the poor,
the old,
the homeless,
the infirm,
the demented,
the ones in
wheelchairs,
say a prayer
for those who
have to take
care of them
the nurses,
the doctors,
those who have to
feed them
dress them
even bury them
say a prayer
and hope you
never have to
be in one
yourself.

Ed Galing: Poet of the Month Poetica Magazine Oct 2008

2008-10-15T15:10:00.000-07:00

Poetica Link:

http://www.freewebs.com/poeticamagazine/poetofthemonth.htm

Here are Ed's Featured poems:

Ed Galing

Land and Honey

the lower east side

of new york

was my playground:

i walked among

pushcarts on

orchard street

and delancy street,

i played ball with

my chaverim on the

early streets of

the east side, with

makeshift bat and

ball,

the summers were very

hot,

fire plugs gushed water

to cool us off,

as if the river jordan had

overflowed just for us,

my mother and father were

typical immigrants from

russia, simple people who

loved the Torah, and our

way of life, and instilled

into me the love for the

one and only God, who watches

over all of us,

the tenement houses rose high

and wash hung from the windows,

lines stretching across roof

tops,

drying in the sun,

we slept at night on the

roof,

the stars and the moon, like

the hanging gardens of babylon,

iriddense, magical,

"shema yisroel, adonai, echod,"

the first words i learned to

recite,

in hebrew.

Prayers

the high holy days

i am jewish

i am almost ninty

i have lost my wife

she died this year

i have nothing much

to live for,

when a man loses his

wife he loses it

all,

i take solace in prayer,

i hold the prayer book

in my hand, while the

cantor sings the mournful

hebrew passages of the

kol nidre,

when it comes to the

mention of the dead, my

tears wet the pages before

me until i can't see anymore,

i sob my wife's name

over and over again,

I say kaddish, while

the entire synagogue fills

up with the sounds of redemption.

Tantzen

my mother, when

she was alive,

God bless her

soul,

loved to dance;

she would say,

for instance,

when someone asked

her where she was

going,

she would reply,

"ich gay tantzen,"

i am going dancing,

what a wonderful

jewish word is

"tantzen,"

so clear, so exuberant,

so whimsical,

tantzen,

tantzen,

she would dance to

russian melodies,

polish one too;

for she came from

poland,

she danced at weddings,

bar mitzvahs, (bat

mitzvahs also,)

"ich gay tatzen,

ich gat tatzen,"

oh, she loved the

waltz,

in the arms of

my dear departed

father, i can see

her still,

swirling around a

ballroom, smiling,

so graceful,

throwing a wink

at me, standing nearby,

"ich gay tantzen."

Leah Angstman: On Poet Ed Galing

2008-08-22T13:25:00.000-07:00

(Ed Galing)

( Leah Angstman)

This is a statement from publisher Leah Angstman, who has and is publishing a series of poetry chapbooks of the work of 91 year-old small press legend Ed Galing. Leah is the founder of the “propaganda press” that is now located in the Somerville - Cambridge, Mass. axis. I have been friends with Ed Galing for years and I share many of these sentiments with Leah. Believe it or not I have never met Ed in the flesh, but I still consider him a good friend. Mark Pawlak, an editor for the “Hanging Loose Press” told me that this is not uncommon. He considered himself very close friends with a late West Coast poet even though they never actually met. Sometimes letters, emails and phone calls can cement a friendship. You might even be disappointed if you actually met the person. I don’t think that would be the case with Ed!

**********************************************************************************

STATEMENT FROM PUBLISHER LEAH ANGSTMAN http://www.alt-current.com

ed first sent me a sample manuscript back at the end of 2004 after getting my contact information from other poets in the small press, many of whom i was printing at the time and some of them local east coasters: joseph verrilli, b.z. niditch, the like. he sent me the manuscript right as i was packing all of my belongings in cardboard boxes to move from my then-apartment in detroit across the country to the beautiful pacific northwest. the manuscript landed in a box and made its way across the country, untouched and unread. i had become quite sick at the time with a temporary, but long and painful, illness, and i had to take a breather from the small press, although i never put the pen down, myself. there was a two-year hiatus of just living and breathing perfect mountain air, but the tug of the small press called me back, as it suddenly seemed that the writing world was missing some of its faces and words. in these years we lost diehl, egleton, spillane, williamson, koning, l'engle, sheldon. there were personal losses: mailer, paley, styron, and vonnegut. and there were poet losses: leonard nathan, vincent ferrini, william meredith, jane cooper, dmitri prigov, and the east coast's own sarah hannah and stanley kunitz. i started feeling like i needed to break back in and capture the words of the small press before even more fled.

so i pulled out the cardboard box of hidden and unloved manuscripts, dusted them off and gave them another look. in this box of treasures was one that seemed so genuine, so honest, that i almost couldn't touch it; this manuscript would later become what is today's confessions of a white hat, the first chapbook of ed galing's published by propaganda press. but just as surely as i'd set foot on the ground to reclaim my stake in the small press, the winds of change were making their way back across my life, and it was time to haul out those cardboard boxes and pack up my life again.

this time to the other coast, to breathe different ocean air amidst blunt people and tough attitudes, but to thrive among a culture- and history-rich small press and indie art scene in boston. and right at the turn of the new year, i dusted off that manuscript one more time to unveil the honest stories and words of ed galing. i needed to get them out to the world before we lost another one, to create a lasting place where the words of our past meet the people of our future.

ed's words are sincere, so very east coast, so very much a part of the surroundings and history of this place: the bluntness with no pretense or sugar coating. in casual conversation, i asked a fellow friend in a bar if he knew some underground poets, and of all the names i mentioned, he only knew one: ed galing. ed has a place here, among the pages of history books on this coast; he is a journalistic voice of a bygone era reminding us of how things change, yet how cyclic it all is, how swiftly the seasons move, yet how long we are grounded to this earth. he is a reminder of how we need to know ourselves, our race against the clock, our honesty with all that surrounds us. simply put: ed galing is the living testament of history to this country; and if we are to see ourselves into the future, then we must reach back and understand our past, know from whence we came, know how we all got here and where we're headed. ed will help you reach back and take that journey forward, and all i can do is bring him to you.

-leah angstman

Pam Rosenblatt Reviews 5 Ed Galing poetry chapbooks ( Propaganda Press)

2008-08-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

Diner (Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, P.O. Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139) alt-current.com

By Ed Galing

Bargain Basement and other selected poems (Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, P.O. Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139) alt-current.com

By Ed Galing

Out On A Limb (Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, P.O. Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139) alt-current.com

By Ed Galing

Shadows on the Wall (Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, P.O. Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139) alt-current.com

By Ed Galing

Chasing The World never catching up (Propaganda Press, Alternating Current, P.O. Box 398058, Cambridge, MA 02139) alt-current.com

By Ed Galing

Five of Ed Galing chapbooks have been reprinted by Propaganda Press in 2008: Diner (Peerless Press, 1999), Bargain Basement (Peerless Press, 2001), Out On A Limb (Peerless Press, 2002), and Shadows on the Wall (Peerless Press, 2006) and Chasing The World never catching up (Propaganda Press, 2008).

In each of these chapbooks, Ed Galing reveals poetry that is down-to-earth, concrete, and filled with wit. The typical reader probably thinks he can create poems just as wonderful as Galing writes. But, most likely, the reader turned poet is wrong. Galing’s poetry isn’t easy to recreate. Galing makes everything he writes look easy. Even the designs of his five chapbooks are plain and simple: 8 ½” x 11” standard white paper with a muted colored covers folded in half and held together with two regular sized staples along with no tables of contents pages or page numbers. Even the chapbooks’ titles are down to earth. Each title is developed from a poem within each of the chapbook, except for Chasing The World never catching up, a collection of poems first published by Spare Change. The titles’ simplicity make the reader wonder why Galing has chosen these particular titles, these particular poems. While Chasing The World never catching up, is a more complicated title to go with a more difficult read, Shadows on the Wall really has some controversial, difficult poems. Yet, Galing is an ordinary, no-show-off type of person. What you read is what you get. Or is it?

In life, Ed Galing is not your everyday type of guy writer, though he writes about life’s everyday happenings and progressions. He is a renowned 91 year old poet who was Poet Laureate of Hatboro, Pennsylvania in 1978; was nominated for the Pushcart Prize twice; has written over 23 books; published his works in over 400 magazines including RATTLE, POESY, MAIN STREET, QUERCUS, and IBBETSON STREET. He loves to play the harmonica and enjoys dining out, especially at diners. He was married for over sixty years, and has two sons, two grandchildren, and a great-grandchild.

In the chapbooks, Galing discusses things like diners, diner employees and customers who frequent diners, Pennsylvania, poverty, homelessness, home, mental illness, the Jewish holocaust, Jewish lifestyles and customs, old age and it’s implications, the ‘simple’ life, music and musicians and burlesque, dancing, the Twin Towers bombing, and family.

A lot of different themes run throughout Galing’s chapbooks, but the one we will write about today is Galing’s “home”, as in where home is, and how he keeps finding home in the various places he frequents. Many of the poems seem to be autobiographical.

In Diner, Galing writes about “diners, and those who work them”, the “restrooms”, the “counter work”, the “cashier”, “customer blues”, and a “diner”. After reading these poems, the reader gets the sense that diners are a friendly, surrogate family world to the speaker. Galing mentions the word “home” in “diner”, which is the title poem of this chapbook, and the reader understands that the diner is a place where the speaker feels comfortable enough to call “home”, a place where he has laid down roots, in a sense.

diner

it’s only a diner.

i eat there a lot.

people are nice here…

friendly…

waitresses smile

and make you feel

at home…

it’s only a diner…

yeah… but it’s more than

that…

it’s the place where

i feel like i’m with a family

feel less lonely

feel happier

knowing that other people

eating in their own little

booths

feel the same way too…

it’s only a diner…

but the men and women who

work here spend almost all their

lives

doing a hard day’s work and night’s work

and some of them call it

home, too…

just the way i do…

it’s only a diner…

it’s only a diner…

Through simple description, sentence structure, word usage, and repetition, Galing has conveyed his philosophy that home isn’t necessarily found in a square building structure with four walls, windows, a front door, a doorbell, and green lawn in the suburbs, but it is simply where you feel like you fit in, as Galing writes, “it’s the place where/i feel like i’m with a family/feel less lonely/feel happier/knowing that other people/eating in their own little/booths/feel the same way too…”

Galing’s chapbook, Bargain Basement, deals a lot with “home” and where home is, as can be viewed in the first poem, which is once again the chapbooks title poem, “Bargain Basement”:

bargain basement

one of the best things

about Horn and Hardarts

was the way they

treated me;

like a gentleman,

even when i was down

and out, not

a nickel in my pocket…

i could always get a cup

of hot water,

and help myself

to the ketchup…

made the best tomato soup in town…

and even the napkins

were free.

In “bargain basement”, again, Galing has journeyed outside the traditional view that

a real house is what a person should call home. Here Galing describes a restaurant, which is in a “bargain basement”, to be like “home” to the speaker who is probably homeless and receives “a cup/of hot water”, “ketchup”, “the best tomato soup in town” free of charge. The speaker says, “Horn and Hardarts/…treated me:/like a gentleman,” Such a warm and friendly environment makes the speaker, who may be Galing himself, feel at “home”.

Galing actually writes about a disruption in his family home life in the poem, “farewell to paradise”, also found in Bargain Basement:

farewell to paradise

the day my father

left and didn’t

come back

i was sixteen

i remember

walking into

a room as quiet

as a tomb,

my mother sober

faced standing near

the mantle

told me she had

news for me,

and when she told me,

i listened but

felt like dying,

and inside my heart

drummed a death song

and i watched my

mother dying too,

and i wanted to

take her in my arms

and tell her that

everything would still

be all right,

but i didn’t do it…

instead i walked out the door,

went across the street

to the small park

and it was cold and

i sat down on a bench

and i cried my

fucking eyes out

In a progressively sad and then suddenly angry tone, Galing writes about a very personal experience, an experience that had a traumatic affect on him. He was so distraught that he “…sat down on a bench/and (he) cried (his)//fucking eyes out” His once perfect family structure had broken. In “farewell to paradise”, Galing’s speaker says goodbye to the home life he once knew.

Through lower case the entire poem, including the first person, “i”, Galing has gently eased the reader into his life, though the ending line, “fucking eyes out” reveals

the speaker is not happy. Galing tells the reader things as they are. Simply put. No jargon attached. And it’s a relief for the reader to understand concretely where the poet is coming from.

Galing reveals more about his early home years in “GOOD DAYS AND BAD”:

GOOD DAYS AND BAD

we had our good days

and our

bad days

just like

anyone else…

people think when

you live in

south philly

you’re bound to

be different

cause maybe you

don’t have a

lot of money

and you live in

a row house

in a small

street

and sometimes

the garbage

and rubbish

is all mixed up

and scattered

everywhere

and the cars get

snowed in so

deep in the

winter

sometimes you’re

wishing you were a

million miles away…

but hey,

when you live in

south philly

you’re special

Obviously, Galing’s speaker identifies “south philly” with the place where Galing himself lived, the place where “we had our good days/and our/bad days”. Galing seems to write autobiographically about his poverty as a child living in South Philadelphia, as when the speaker explains, “cause maybe you/don’t have a/lot of money/and you live in/a row house/in a small/street/and sometimes/the garbage/and rubbish/is all mixed up/and scattered/everywhere”.

The speaker has been subjected to South Philly’s poverty, which isn’t such a pleasant memory, but Galing ends the poem on a positive note, writing that “when you live in/south philly/you’re special”. The speaker may have lived in the impoverished city of South Philly, but he knew it was his home, the place where he had roots.

In Galing’s “FAREWELL, SOUTH PHILLY”, the speaker again autobiographically talks about his mother. The whole poem is about “home” and identity, and about how

….These are the real south Philadelphians…

my mother was one of those.

long after I had left the old neighborhood

to get married

she remained behind

living poor in the third floor front apartment

where I had left her

taking care of the outside marble steps,

sweeping the street;

always cheerful and happy,

hardly any money, being on welfare.

she loved her surroundings at fourth and

Tasker,

and always looked out the third floor window

waiting for my return visit…

Galing writes how the speaker’s mother has found “home”, especially revealed

when he describes her “taking care of the outside marble steps,/sweeping the street,/

always cheerful and happy, hardly any money, being on welfare./she loved her surroundings at fourth and Tasker,…” She had found permanence, while Galing’s speaker has left this solid place for somewhere else. The speaker returns to the building site after a long time, long after his mother’s death. The speaker admits, “And I never cried so long, or so hard, in all my life.” The speaker has closure on the place where he was raised, where his mother was “at the window where my mother used to wave to me so many times/when I returned to see her…/I could swear that I saw her face looking down/at me, now, and waving,/and suddenly I smiled and waved back,/and whispered, goodbye, Mom…” Again, Galing has revealed a sense of “home” in Bargain Basement. Although his mother has died, the speaker still has a sense of belonging to a place which holds many memories for him.

Galing writes about “home” quite often in the five chapbooks mentioned in this review. But the strongest sense of “home” and permanence that Galing conveys is in “Because You Asked” in Chasing The World never catching up when writing about his relationship with his wife:

Because You Asked

For my wife, R.I.P.

are we dead?

she asks me

no, i say

we are still

alive,

but we are

old, she says,

we have to die

some day, i tell

her gently,

not yet…

but when you’re

old you die

my wife says,

don’t you know that?

we all die, i agree,

but even the very young

die,

the rich die,

the poor die,

the homeless die,

the soldiers die, too;

unless an accident happens

when we will die,

let’s not rush it,

it will come soon enough…

do we live here?

she ask again, as

if she forgot we have

lived in our home for

fifty years,

of course we live here,

i reassure her softly,

you and me… we live here,

where are our children?

she wants to know

they have long gone away,

i reply,

it’s just you and me.

we hug each other

eighty-eight isn’t

easy.

neither is alzheimers.

Galing has composed a wonderful poem about his wife and his kind, and gentle caring for one another. The poem flows from line to line, enjambment after enjambment. And, once again, the concept of “home” is discussed, this time Galing uses the words, “our home”, to show that the speaker, Ed Galing, knows what a strength there is in having a real home, family, and wife, as read when he writes, “do we live here?/she asks again, as/if she forgot we have/lived in our home for fifty years/of course we live here, i reassure her softly,/you and me…we live here,…”

Galing has written about the different stages and kinds of “homes” he as speaker

has encountered throughout his life, ranging from diners to bargain basements to south philly to the home his mother and he lived in during his early years to the home he and his wife raised their family in.

Diner, Bargain Basement , Out On A Limb, and Shadows on the Wall , and Chasing The World never catching up all poetically describe Galing’s journey to find “home” whenever and wherever he can.

These short and sweet chapbooks are excellent reads for people who want a down-to-earth, gentle, often humorous, and sometimes eye-opening as well as mind-opening, reading experience.

Hopefully, these chapbooks will make the permanent move to a shelf in your bookcase.

Pam Rosenblatt/Ibbetson Update/Aug 2008 * Pam Rosenblatt is a regular reviewer for the Ibbetson Update, a former arts/reporter for The Somerville News, and a member of the lietrary group: "The Bagel Bards."

###

Somerville, Mass. area poet and publisher Leah Angstman keeps 91 yearold poet’s work alive.

2008-08-08T16:43:00.001-07:00

(Ed Galing)

(Leah Angstman)

Somerville, Mass. area poet and publisher Leah Angstman keeps 91 yearold poet’s work alive.

Leah Angstman remains an enigma. She politely evades my requests for interviews, champions the work of a 91 year-old Hatboro, Pennsylvania Poet Ed Galing, ( a legendary small press writer), and has an ambitious indie publishing concern “Propaganda Press” that has an impressive slew of poetry titles. The author Budd Schulberg once asked “What makes Sammy, Run?,”….I want to ask: “What makes 20-something Angstman run?” Then again, maybe leave well enough alone.

In my mailbox at The Somerville News I found that Angstman mailed me another bunch of Galing titles: “Loose Ends,” “Rooftops: A Poetry Collection,” “Senior Center,” and “Lower East Side Poems" Galing is known for his poems of the Lower East Side of NYC where he spent a good portion of his childhood years, and they are not only works of art, full of rich detail and humor, but they are historical records of a milieu slipping away into the ether of the collective unconscious. I say Angstman is doing valuable work.

You can order these and others by contacting Angstman at: alt.current@gmail.com The website for the press http://www.alt-current.com

Here are a few poems from the collections for you to savor:

FAREWELL BUKOWSKI

Hey buk
I ain’t mad
At you,old pal…
I like your
Guts,
The way you
Fought life
Until you died…
I envy the books
You wrote,
And your barfly movie,
And your good mind,
And your thoughts,
And your friendships,
And your readings
For hundreds of bucks…
And the way you gave
As good as you got,
And all the women you had,
And all the letters you wrote
Turned into books
When you died…
And come to think
Of it, old buk,
What better way to end
Your life as a writer
Of poems,
Is to read all
In book form…
And in that way you
Live all over again…
So I salute you,
Cause you were one
Of us, once,
Until you came to dust,
And I will follow you,
Whenever my turn comes,
But I leave no letters,
Only a bit of dust
And rust.

Rooftops

When I ride the
Elevated train

I always
Sit near
The window

Looking out

Observing
As the train
High up
Snakes
Through the streets

I watch
The rooftops

Noticing
How different
Each one is;

Water towers;
Airconditiones;
Clothes hanging
On the line;
Tattered roofs
Churches,
Schools,
Low income
Houses,

But it’s only
When the train
Suddenly dips
Into a dark
Tunnel

That I realize
How much I
Need the light!

Steam Bath

2008-07-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

on the lower east side
every friday afternoon
the holy rabbis
come to get their
steam bath
and shower,
sitting on wooden
benches,
with the fog
enveloping them
so you couldn't even
see them,
these holy ones
turn into sexual
monsters, as they spew
dirty jokes, laugh
out loud
remark on the size
of their penises
and what they would do
to women,
and forget their holy mission,
you would be shocked
and surprised
but they still don't
care,
and later, the attendant
comes along with the
switch broom, to smack
their asses, till they are
red, till they scream in
agony,
as if to atone for all those
dirty thoughts they had,
feeling they deserve every whack
and thus,when they leave later on,
and return to their normal religious
virtues, they almost feel like
born-again christians

--- Ed Galing

In the summer shade of the Quercus Review (number eight)—featuring Ed Galing

2008-06-22T14:04:00.000-07:00

In the summer shade of the Quercus Review (number eight)—Review by Michael Todd Steffen

The summer edition of Quercus Review (number eight), across the country from Modesta, California, will be of interest to Boston area readers and poets and writers. Its featured poet, Ed Galing, at 90 years young, stands as a great oak of the small press, with a publishing career that spans sixty-some years. Ed is known widely to the local eyes of the nation, not least to friend and editor of the Ibbetson Street Press Doug Holder from Somerville.
I became aware of Galing’s work first through the Ibbetson Street web site and in the pages of Holder’s Off the Shelf run weekly in the Somerville News.
The featured section in Quercus gives 42 pages to Galing’s work, the first four consisting of an informal essay by Doug Holder who characterizes Galing’s experience as a “hardscrabble life,” the poet’s compositional effect a “no-bullshit, call a spade a spade style” and his poetry’s turn of wit a “calculated ironic distance.” It is an apt description of a craftsman’s unseeming wisdom and acquired skill with words and sense and how to place them, ever so nonchalantly, as in ONE DAY IN A NURSIN HOME, in which Galing, pushing his wife in a wheelchair to the cafeteria for lunch, is asked where his is taking her, and—

i reply with a smile
i thought today we would go
into the forest, and see the
lake, and the trees, and maybe
stop in the pizza parlor…

Galing’s answer here is as wry as the names of those with whom he plays cards in SENIOR CENTER—

during
lunch.
every day,
there is moe epstein,
abie weisberg, and sam
adelman, and me.

Galing’s poetry bears on you to the extent that you are immersed in language. People of some age and wisdom are keenly attuned to language in a way others are not. Some of us must especially focus in order to perceive the music in what is being said. A dip of the hand
does not find the resistance of wading up to your breastbone in a pool or shoreline. Galing’s wit and expression are so at one with the fluency of his spirit, after these some years, the demarcations in the language, the poetry, simply breathes from him. Ed sums up the almost transparent union in his composition process:

I sit at the electric typewriter and bang them out… It is as if the poem has come to mind long before it develops on paper.

Quercus is a reputable biannual literary journal of poetry, fiction and b & w art, which has featured such names as X.J. Kennedy, Naomi Shihab Nye and Charles Harper.
Their number eight, along with this generous feature of Galing’s work, includes poets and writers from every direction in the United States, from Ashland, Oregon to Bristol, Rhode Island, from Houma, Louisiana to Broomfield, Colorado, not to forget poet Mary P. Chatfield from Cambridge, Massachusetts whose quiet description of waterfowl and winter ice melting on the river in “Waking” reads itself as carefully as the observation “the wing display the splashing the feathering/the reeds.”
The fiction section highlights Frank Arroyo’s “Acceptance,” written with an exquisite patience for detail and palpable ambience. Reserving the story’s plot for your curiosity, I can’t leave this article without quoting from Arroyo’s deft descriptive style, the narrator’s perceptions as a child lying in bed at night toward the end of the story:

The silence of the house turned the air around me electric. I could hear the steady hum of the refrigerator; a car slowly turning some corner, and then speeding up; the wind seemed to rise with some great force, as if the ocean had come with it, leaves crackling against the bottom of the house, the wind caught in the swaying trees, a branch tapping the roof in a steady rhythm. Outside my bedroom window, through the twisting and blurring black branches, I focused on the thick blue air of the back field, how deep and tangible it seemed because for a moment it became a dark ocean of waves rolling with the rhythm of the tapping branch, the bright windows of the distant tenement building bobbing in the waves…

For a peak at this issue of Quercus Review and ordering information go to www.quercusreview.com.

Ibbetson Update/Michael Todd Steffen/June 2008

*Michael Todd Steffen is the winner of the 2007 Ibbetson Poetry Award.
Labels: Steffen on Quercus

The Elevated by Ed Galing

2008-06-05T18:16:00.000-07:00

The Elevated

the trains of new york rumble
through the night

overhead they snake along
curved rails, clattering
their way overhead,
as the train passes old
tenement houses, and people
walking down below
on the streets.

entering tunnels where it
becomes very dark, until it bursts
out into the light once again...

as a young boy my parents lived
close to the EL, and my bedroom window
faced the elevated trains, which
made noise all night long, as they lumbered
overhead, in the dark,

and often I would lie there in my bed
and listen to the rhythmic noise of the
wheels, and it was so strange that even
the noise they made was true to the
beat, making a kind of symphony of the
sounds, hurling the train through
poverty laden east side streets,

while inside the train itself, were many
drunks, gangsters, homeless people,
with no where to go, but just to ride
the rails all day and night,

while I listened to the sounds,
and was glad I didn't have to worry
about tomorrow.

The Boardwalk by Ed Galing

2008-05-07T17:10:00.000-07:00

THE BOARDWALK

In those days we went
To the beach by train,
We would disembark
And walk the boards
Smellin’ the sea breezes,
Admiring the way the
Swelling waves hit the shore,
And curled away in
Rhythmic motion.

We were young
And we would get to the
Sand and open our umbrella
Shedding our outer
Clothes.

We had our bathing suits on
Ready for the dip
In the ocean.
We laughed a lot
In those days
I remember
Admiring the way
We both looked
For young flesh is so beautiful.
I flexed my muscles
And grinned as she snapped away
We got sunburned
We ate our hotdogs on the boardwalk
Made love in secret under a blanket.
We soaked in the juices
And loved ourselves,
And to hell with tomorrow.

--Ed Galing

Confessions of a White Hat by Ed Galing

2008-04-27T07:22:00.000-07:00

Confessions of a White Hat by Ed Galing ( Alternating Currentc/o Propaganda Press POBOX 398058 Cambridge, Mass. 02139) propaganda.x.press@gmail.com $5

I speak to 91 year old Hatboro, PA. poet Ed Galing on a regular basis, and I am amazed that despite his advanced years his mind is still sharp, and he continues to regale the small press with his prolific output of poetry and prose.I am also glad that a local press: Propaganda Press, headed by Leah Angstman, has published a new chap from Ed. Ed has written extensively about his days as a boy on the streets of the Lower East Side of NYC, his stint as an occupation soldier during World War ll, and life in Amercia as a Jew, family man, and the many roles he has played in the expanse of his lifetime. His latest book "Confessions of a White Hat" deals with his time as a naval reservist in the post World War 11 Cold War era. In characteristic Galing style he gives the reader the taste and texture of the Navy-life as he knew it. Here Galing describes the milieu,and the sensibility of his place and time:

The Begining

we are a motley
crew
as motley as
you could ever wish
for; fresh out of
other branches
of the service,
after world war
two,
the Reserves
wave a silver
platter before
our eyes;
ex marines
soldiers
coast guard
Waves
we all clamber
on board,
not willing to
forget the
military yet;
the cold war
is still on;
unrest in other
parts of the
world.
Russian Bear,
i had to be nuts
but six months
after i get out
of the Army
i am now a
member of the
Naval Air
on Active Duty
at an air station
four miles from
home,
and the fat is in
the fire once
again.

Just Because by Ed Galing

2008-04-11T18:23:00.000-07:00

everyone who wants his
name to be known
should write
his or her own obituary.

do not wait
for others to write
about you,
this is not a
good idea.

they will
not do
your name
justice.

no one knows "you"
better than yourself,
so while you are alive
sit down
and begin to
write your own obit.

make it a good one.
put in all the
wonderful details
that made you what
you are.

omit disasters,
do not mention pitfalls,
dwell only on your accomplishments,
how beloved you
were while alive,
and all the good
things you did.

send it to your newspaper
omit the date of your death

fill that in much later.

--Ed Galing

A PROMISE

2008-03-08T17:30:00.000-08:00

BREAKING NEWS: Sam Pierstorff, the editor of the Quercus Review, will be reprinting my Ed Galing article previously in Rattle Magazine "Ed Galing: A Poet of the Greatest Generation" in the May issue. The issue will be a tribute to this 90 year old small press legend....

A PROMISE

i have an
obligation
to perform
as a Jew,
i have a solemn
duty,
not to forget
the past,
no matter how old
i become.

my heart as
always
yearns for
the homeland
for a place of our own
we Jewish people
so long without one,
I shall not
forget where i
come from,
the tenement house
on the lower east side
where the early
jews first settled
down in this new land

all of those memories
lodged in my brain
like a newsreel of the past
and i can still see
the ship, and those
who stood on the top deck,
watching as they
approached the statue
of liberty and freedom.

In my ninetieth year
in my mind
i have just been born.

BURLESQUE by ED Galing

2008-03-08T17:04:00.000-08:00

BURLESQUE

I alway sat in the
front row
with the bald-headed guys.
I was eighteen years old,
and all i wanted
to do was see a naked
girl in the flesh.
it only cost about
a buck or so to sit
downstairs,
there was a blacony
for fifty cents,
but you couldn't see
anything looking down
on the stage.
the orchestra was loud,
the drums with the
boom, boom, boom
the trumpets so loud
it broke your eardrums.
the curtain came up
and after a half hearted
chorus number,
the strip teaser came out.
we all hollered, take it
off, take it off,
the stripper pranced up
and down the stage,
bit by bit she peeled
off her clothes until
the G string.
she would wiggle her
ass, give a wink and
dissappear behind the
curtain.
then i went to the
men's room to take a
pee.

PHYLACTERIES by Ed Galing

2008-01-27T13:38:00.000-08:00

The phylacteries on
my forehead (small box)
were like a hot iron
the little Black Box
in the center of my forehead,
as if to brand me, once
and forever,
as a son, my father
wanted me to follow
in his footsteps
and the thongs on my left arm
wrapped around,
wrapped so tight,
as I recited the
"Shema" with
my father-
I at
thirteen felt like a
convict in irons,
and felt like I
was condemned
because God
could punish me
and I would die!
My father was Orthodox.
He wrapped himself
daily in ritual ceremony--
His proper shawl and mine
the mark of Cain
I wanted
none of it.

Diner Blues by Ed Galing

2007-11-29T16:03:00.000-08:00

DINER BLUES

used to be
i would go to
this diner
not far from
my house
and have a
lunch or breakfast
and my wife
would be sitting
across from me
and it felt
good
just like it
should be when
you got some
buddy with you
to enjoy life
like it should be,
but just when you
get to know what
its all about,
its over
kids gone
wife gone
you wonder why
you are still here.

so now i sit alone
and watch the
young couple in
another booth
she smiles
her eyes are gray
i can see them
because i am right
in back of them
and she is facing me
and looking at me...

i feel like crying
i want to make love to her
i drink my coffee
and keep my thoughts
to myself.

Old Age is Not for Sissies by Ed Galing

2007-11-18T15:21:00.000-08:00

Old Age is Not for Sissies
By Ed Galing
No ISBN
50 pages at $5 paperback
Peerless Press
3435 Mill Rd.
Hatboro PA 19040

The venerable Poet Laureate of Hatboro PA is still plugging away creating chapbooks, submitting poetry to journals, and grabbing life by the lapels. From the retrospective of nine decades, Galing’s poetry cuts to the heart of life and living. In this chapbook he addresses the vicissitudes of aging and fondly turns the pages of his life with an occasional bit of help from his cartoon friend, Sadie the Psychic. Always, Ed Galing looks at life with humor and acceptance.

“Longevity” commemorates centenarians introduced by Willard Scott on TV. Galing enjoys the show, and wonders if he’ll make it to age 100:

…then my knee starts
to hurt

as I head into the
kitchen for a cup
of coffee and an
aspirin.

In “A Bit of Philosophy” Galing contemplates life, love, happiness, sorrow, and wonders if his poetry makes any kind of impression on anyone. Before poem’s end, he gives himself and his readers a mental shaking:

Hell, it ain’t easy getting old…
it ain’t for sissies…

now stop your sniveling, and wipe your nose!
and eat your farina!

“So, Where are We, Anyway?” is an amazing poem, simple and powerful and typical Galing:

growing old
might grey your hair
and bend your back

but need not erase
a bright smile on your
face

and the gentle fond
remembrance of the days
when your life was full
of sunshine, beaches, parties,
love, laughter and adventures.

growing old
only makes you
stop wasting your days.

I’m always delighted to find a new Ed Galing chapbook in my mailbox. I read his work and hope with each new book, hope some publisher will see the lifetime of grit and joy on every page, as I do. If it were in my power, a publishing contract would be Ed Galing’s Christmas miracle this year.

Review by Laurel Johnson for Midwest Book Review

Central Park and Other Stories

2007-10-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

Central Park
And Other Stories
By Ed Galing
No ISBN
53 pages at $5 + s & h
Peerless Press
3435 Mill Road
Hatboro PA
19040
http://edgaling.blogspot.com

Ed Galing's poetry has been featured in many well-known journals and he
has numerous chapbooks to his credit. I've been privileged to review most
of them. This is his first book of prose. These stories first appeared in
Spare Change, a publication out of Cambridge, Mass dedicated to poverty and
homelessness issues. While reading this book my first thought was: Amazing!
His writing style is feisty, honest, touching, and amusing, with an
energetic spirit shining out of every story. Ed Galing knows poverty and
injustice; he remembers a childhood spent in the tenements of New York City
and Philadelphia. Galing sympathizes with the homeless because he
understands that many Americans are one paycheck away from living in a
cardboard box. And so, in his ninth decade of life, Ed Galing, Poet Laureate
of Hatboro PA, compiled this book of fictional short stories that contain
more than a modicum of truth. These are among some of the best short stories
I've read anywhere, by any author, famous or otherwise. I've chosen a random sampling of these fifteen stories for review purposes:

"Central Park" introduces readers to Joe Brown. Joe has no skills with
which to earn real money and his odd jobs don't allow for even the cheapest
of lodging. He looks on the bright side, though, and tells himself sleeping
under the stars in Central Park is akin to camping out.

In "Conversations With Myself" we meet Harry Cohen, age 82. This lonely
widower never had much money but lived frugally and raised two children. He
enjoys discussing politics and books, and pursuing a gentle flirtation with
his lady friend.

35 year old Harry Epstein drives the narrative in "My War With the
Unemployment Office." Abandoned by his parents as a child, he grew up in
foster care. He's knocked around from job to job for years but hopes for
steady work so he can find a decent apartment. He files for unemployment
after his latest lay off. His only hedge against poverty is a $5 bill hidden
in his shoe.

"Once Upon a Neighborhood" is a poignant picture of life back when
almost everyone was poor. But in South Philly neighborhoods, working class
people banded together and even The Mob had a heart. Cops, firemen,
hustlers, and the working poor could forget their troubles for one night
when a young Sinatra entertained at a local nightspot.

Jeff Grimly is riding high with a good job one day, and homeless the
next after losing his business in "The Fall Guy." Jeff learns that honor and
honesty are worth more than money, even to a homeless guy.

Bill Kearney is a 50 year old music teacher at a Settlement House on New
York City's East Side in "East Side Melody." Josh Samuels is his 16 year old
prodigy, living in abject poverty, struggling to avoid joining a gang.
Amidst the dregs of tenement life, Kearney finds gold in a boy whose
untrained musical gift is stunning.

"Diary of a Squatter" shares the life of Jake Summers. Jake lost his
wife, then his home, after getting laid off from his job. He's too proud to
live in shelters so lives in a condemned, boarded up building that used to
be a crack house. His home has no electricity, water, or heat, but the
beauty of this story is how Jake makes an acceptable life out of nothing,
with only a mouse for company and a few candle stubs to read by.

A handful of discriminating, respected poets and publishers have
discovered Ed Galing's work and I've been singing his praises since
reviewing his first book of poetry. After reading Address: Central Park, I'm
doubly impressed with his abilities. Check out Galing's blog, created and
maintained by Doug Holder, to see more of his work. Ed Galing's home made
books are treasures and highly recommended.

Review by Laurel Johnson
Senior Reviewer, Midwest Book Review

Molly Goldberg by Ed Galing

2007-08-25T13:25:00.000-07:00

*The Goldbergs was one of the most successful entertainment ventures ever, a radio and television show that reached across every medium.

It all hinged on one woman - Gertrude Berg, a true multi-media pioneer. Beginning on network radio in 1930, The Goldbergs had a phenomenal seventeen year run, second only to Amos and Andy as the longest-running program of radio's golden years. A Broadway play and daily comic strip were also spun off from the show.

hello, mrs. goldberg...
hello, mrs. blume

long before television
long before computers
or e mail

even before telephones
and cell phones

molly goldberg and
mrs blume ran the
lower east side of
new york

communicating from
one window to the
next

the back of each
tenement house
had windows facing
each other

and mooly goldberg
fat and jolly like a
jewish housewife should
be

alwayd had time to converse
with mrs. blume across
the street, in the back,
from open windows,
both of them shouting to
each other across the
vast void,

hello, mrs. blume, how are you?
oh, i am allright, mrs. goldberg

they would chatter for hours,
shoulders on the sill,
discussing the news of the day,

while the evening meal of
borscht and potatoes
overcooked in the kitchen

THEY DIDN'T MISS A THING.

Letter From An Old Jewish Poet

2007-07-27T17:35:00.000-07:00

Letter from an Old Jewish Poet

* dedicated to my friend Ed Galing

Your are like a son to me.

I love your work.

Again

I have included a small poem,

so it shouldn't be missed,

I am old,

certainly

not a reason to publish this.

And how about that boychick

on the Coast?

God forbid

he should publish my work,

like a son to me too

but such a callow jerk!

And mister big shot editor

why do you publish her?

she's nothing but

a cat-loving cur!

As you know

I am an old man

weathered its true ,

and most-of-all- remember

I am a Jew....

Did I tell you?

You remind me of my son.

But truth

be told

you both

ain't that young.

But you can imagine

my outrage

when my name

does not appear

on that page,

and I realize

my time is short

on this

relentless stage.

-- Doug Holder

The Perks of Being An Editor by Sam Pierstorff

2007-07-24T14:59:00.001-07:00

The Perks of Being An Editor

* For Ed Galing

I can really
only think of one.
His name is Ed.
He's 90 and he writes
long letters to me
with lines sloping
heavenward,
and the pyramid walls
of each "A" are jagged
as saw blades.

His wife of 60 years
recently died.
He tells me this
in every letter,
but I haven't forgotten
either.

It's what I think most
when my own wife
of only 6 years
shuffles
into the living room,
wondering
if I'd like some
black tea.

Ed's in an old folk's home now,
playing harmonica
and tickling the keyboard
until it laughs
or cries.

But I get the feeling
in every letter
that Ed's always writing
to a dear friend.

And that's the way
it should be
with poetry,
too.

* Sam Pierstorff is the founding editor of the Quercus Review.

Shpilcus in the tuchas

2007-07-04T17:53:00.000-07:00

SHPILCUS

whenever my father
was annoyed with me,
or someone else,
when we lived on the
lower east side,
he would say with
astonishment,
what's the matter,
you got shpilcus
in your tuchas?

it was his favorite
expression, brought
over from the other
side of the ocean,
my mother used to frown
and say, sam, stop saying
it, it isn't nice,
my father would then grin,
and say to her, maybe you
have shpilcus in your tuchas,
too, and then he would laugh
out loud, while my mother
made a face of annoyance,
most of the time he said
it to me, whenever i wanted
to go out on the street and
play bill, or snatch an apple
from a pushcart, or just
go somewhere besides sitting
on the fire escape,
he would make a noise with
his mouth, like hmmmmph,
you got shpilcus in your
tuchas son? what's the hurry? you got all day...
he just didn't understand...
i didn't have all day...
i think it's the ultimate
expression, having something
up your ass you don't like,
and often i wondered what
a shpilka looked like,
was it like a hemmorhoid,
a bug of some kind, what was
it? these days at my
age i often wonder if i
have shhpilcus without knowing
it..i'm always in a hurry...
a hurry to go somewhere...
my father was a wise man.

Ed Galing: Tales of South Philly

2007-06-04T18:10:00.001-07:00

Review of tales Of South Philly by Ed Galing

=======================================Tales of South PhillyBy Ed GalingNo ISBN28 page chapbook at $5Four-sep PublicationsP.O. Box 12434Milwaukee WI 53212

Tales of South Philly is, perhaps, Ed Galing’s best known work. The PoetLaureate of Hatboro PA grew up there in the years between W.W. I and W.W.II. These are priceless poetic memories of the people and places he knew in his youth -- Jake’s Candy Store, Porter Street, Snyder Avenue, Market Street, colorful immigrants who lived a hard knock life but proudly learned English and became citizens, and Mafia guys who took care of their own. This excerpt from “by definition” begins Galing’s odyssey back in time:

"you just don’t come to live in South Philly just because you like it here…….you come here the hardway…the way I got here…"

“Love on the Sly” tells of South Philly girls. "They had their dreams, and most of them did not include marrying poor:cause south philly girls came from poor houses and dreamed of movie stars like Gable or Stewart or maybe Fred Astaire…Poverty and crime took a huge toll on South Philly. State and Federal programs poured money into South Philly.

In “progress” Galing documents the results:
"…and pretty soon what was supposed to be the end of living in poverty and the beginning of a new era began to turn to ashes…those who lived there tried to hang onto their memories…but a few months ago they blew those hi rises down…dynamite rippled through slight murmur and the houses that jack built came down…."

Ed Galing was abandoned to poverty, unceremoniously dumped off in SouthPhilly by his father to be raised by a devoted mother. He grew up tough in hard streets, but loved the shops, sights, scents, and people who shared his existence. All that and more is in this paean to an era long gone. Tales ofSouth Philly is highly recommended because Galing tells history like it was, as only he can.

2007-06-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

The Violinist and Other Selected PoemsEd GalingThe Poetry Collection3435 Mill Road, Hatboro PA 19040No ISBN $5.00

At near-ninety years of age, Ed Galing is a Pushcart nominee and the official Poet Laureate of Hatboro PA. He's authored numerous chapbooks and his poetry has been featured in just about any poetry journal you can name. His work is a virtual monument to America as it is and was. In fact, because of their content and appearance, his chapbooks could be described as folk art. Galing by-passes amenities and goes straight for the heart in his work. In this latest chapbook, readers will find paeans to the phenomenal Gene Krupa and Fats Waller as seen through Galing's eyes in their glory days.

And as always, the poet memorializes sweet years of his youth, memories of his parents, his father's violin music. One of my favorites in this chapbook is "Marathon," a long poem about a dance marathon during the Depression years. This poem is almost like being there on the dance floor. Galing has seen it all during his long life and documents his experiences with clear eyes.

For example, in this excerpt from "The Heyday" he remembers burlesque and makes a valid social commentary: "burlesque died a gasping breath when the floodgates opened and civil liberty took a different turn."

This excerpt from "Retrenchment" tells a too-familiar story of workers in America. It was true when Galing was young and struggling, and doubly true today:

"that's what you get fromthose in power,controlling workers' lives hour by hour. and when they're finished,they spit you out,and that's what democracy is all about."

Whether social or personal, Galing shows life like it is based on eighty-plus years of experience.

The Warehouse/ Nursing Home by Ed Galing

2007-06-03T16:49:00.000-07:00

Two Poems by Ed galing

The Warehouse

this is my first day in
this nursing home,
my son said, dad,
this is the best place
for you right now,
yeah, sure it is…
just because i had a
small stroke at eighty
he puts me in here…
well, i cant blame him,
he is sixty himself,
works night and day,
he cant take care of
me, specially now…
dad, he says, soon as
you get better, you
can come home with my
wife and meyeah, crap too… it will
never happen…
anyway, now that i am here
in a wheelchair, i have a
roommate next bed, a big
black guy who snores all
the time,
and the hallways are full
of screaming alzheimer
people, and broken down men
and women who each live in
their own hell… i call it a
warehouse for old people,
before we die…
once you get in here you
dont come out…
(they say the food
aint bad here…)

Nursing Blues

you don’t need to go
to hell when you
die
just get sent to
a nursing home
any one
and you will
soon learn what
it is
to die by inches…
the one my sister
in law was in
was the worst i
ever seen,
she laid in a goofy
bed, with a
mattress that blew
up with air,
the nurse came
around to stick
her with a needle,
and to wipe her
ass,
my sister in law
groaned, when
they put her in
her wheelchair,
she was half out of
it, when they took
her into the dining
room to eat with all
those crazy people in
there,
I seen it with my own
eyes,
she has alzheimer’s,
at the table she
fell asleep, and her
face hit the lousy
food they had given
her
god have mercy
the nursing home
don’t

2007-06-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

From "The American Dissident" Ed Galing Speaks out!

A Literary Journal of Critical ThinkingIn the Samizdat Tradition of Writing against the MachineA Forum for Examining the Dark Side of the Academic/Literary Industrial Complex
Ed Galing (Hatboro, PA)

Ninety years old, outspoken, hate government bureaucracy, and the namby-pamby sons of bitches destroying our way of life. I am also a Jewish man, who doesn’t care if you like me or not, and a gentle man; just leave me alone, goddamn it. I hate the way day care centers for the very old treat all of us like a bunch of idiots—coloring books, and playing kiddy games. When I was young there was the WPA. Lots of drones worked on this make-believe program. I have written many letters and had a, knock on my door when I was 21, for criticizing the city government. I worked on the writer’s project during the war—another phony job. I have served in the army and navy... got out after 17 years with no pension because the navy shipped me away from home, and made it impossible for me to complete my last few years… I suffered plenty. The whole damn world is run by lunatics. My wife had terminal illness and was in a nursing home after an operation, then in a holistic room in a hospital where they give you 6 months to live (or less). We were married 68 years—2 grown sons, 2 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren. Once we were all young, and family. Now we’re suffering from old age and death. At this time of my life I’ve written over 50 chaps, been in hundreds of zines—won awards, first prizes, etc.—so what, eh?

Turkish Bath by Ed Galing

2007-06-03T16:22:00.000-07:00

Turkish Bath

one of the enjoyments of
jewish life on the lower
east side,
the turkish bath--

there was a saying,
if you could last in
the turkish bath,
you are a real man...

the baths were red hot,
steam coming in the
damp enclosed room, that
turned the room into a dark
cloud,
and you could hardly see
where you were, or who was in
the room with you,

the water was scalding,
but good...
and there were those
wooden benches, we
sat on,
it was called the
Schvitz, and even the
name sounds like something
really hot, as it was,

old men would sit
on the benches naked
maybe a towel around their
middle,

pot bellies, wrinkles
bare feet and
smell of fish,
while the clouds mercifully
surrounded all of us,
and we would talk about the
world,
talk about the old country,
israel, and maybe even a bit
of the talmud was discussed here...

it was cheap... one dollar...
this all means schvitz could make
you or break you..you always
came out of there feeling like
a new man...your sins all washed
away...

Jack's Deli -- Philadelphia, PA.

2007-05-07T19:14:00.000-07:00

Jack's Deli

every sunday
jacks jewish deli--
crowd outside the front door;
we all stand in line to get inside;
place is packed,
old men and women,
we are all here, walkers and wheelchairs, canes,
no matter, we all get in,
inside its like the tower of babel,
the deli counter smells from corned beef,
the jewish pickles
fat and briny, tempt us;
the booths,
loaded with widows and widowers,
all talking with their mouths full;
jewish language, and laughter,
a heaven of its own, waitresses
run around filling empty coffee cups;
this is the reason
why jack's deli is so crowded on weekends;
it's not the food,
it's the atmosphere.

The Videograph

2007-04-12T18:05:00.000-07:00

THE VIDEOGRAPH

At ten years of age
I was running the
streets of Delancy
and Rivington, a small
boy with lots of vitality
breathing in the smells
of the pushcarts on Orchard Street,
snatching apples from
merchants, thinking: 'they
can't catch me."
And whenever I had a nickel
I would walk over to Houston
Street, because that's
where the Videograph machine was,
by turning a crank on the
side, the figures inside would
move and come alive,
I would crank the machine, peering
into two lenses, laughing
with glee at a man named Ben
Turpin, whose eyes were crossed,
and Marie Dressler, a fat woman
with a big nose, as they hit each
other, and the faster I turned
the crank, the more they moved,
sometimes I got lucky, and
would turn the crank and see
Sheba, the dancing girl, clad
into a tantalizing costume, and
shaking every part of her body,
and smiling as if she enjoyed it,
and I would turn the crank
faster and faster, laughing at how
I could make her shake even more,
and was always sorry when I
had no more nickels.

POOLSIDE by ED GALING

2007-03-26T18:24:00.000-07:00

POOLSIDE

*summer in the city in the Lower East Side of New York in the 1920's.

you
who bask
in the warmth

of maimi beach....

swim in gilded
pools
and have someone
bring you the
snacks at poolside--

remember us
those who lived
on the lower east side
and opened up
fire plugs in one
hundred degree weather
screaming as we doused
ourselves with the
flood, until the cops
came to chase us away
and closed the fireplugs,

no one to cool us off
the way you are
no one to bring us mint
juleps, and sit poolside...
I can still feel the heat,
still remember how the
fireplug waters almost
washed me away.

Praise from Writer Laurel Johnson for Ed Galing

2007-02-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

This is from Laurel Johnson's Blog:

Poet and cartoonist Ed Galing
A year or so ago, the editor of a poetry journal sent me Ed Galing's chapbooks to review. I was immediately charmed by the man and favorably impressed by the depth of his poetry.Galing is almost 90 years old, a typical American of his generation. He served in World War 2, raised a family, and was married to the same woman for more than six decades. He's wanted to be a writer all his life, but poetry and prose does not put food on the table and pay the bills for most writers so he placed that calling on hold until retirement.Ed Galing has had regional recognition for years. He's the Poet Laureate of Hatboro PA for example. It's only been in recent years that Ed has begun to receive wider recognition. That recognition is long overdue in my opinion. He brings to his poetry and cartoons a lifetime of watching the world around him. He zeroes in on human strengths and foibles as well or better than any poet or artist you can name, living or dead.Ed does not have a computer. All letters and submissions are either hand written or typed on a manual typewriter. The lack of a computer does not hamper him in any way. Many of the best hard copy journals today feature his work.

-- Laurel Johnson is a reviewer for the Midwest Book Review

Poet-Veritas: Ed Galing

2007-02-14T16:33:00.000-08:00

Ed Galing: A page on The American Dissident

2007-02-07T07:49:00.000-08:00

Ed Galing now has a page on The American Dissident website:

www.theamericandissident.org/Poems-GalingEd.htm.

Letters About Ed Galing

2007-01-14T12:47:00.000-08:00

Mr. Holder,

As my uncle Ed will tell you, we reserve a special word in Yiddish for people like you: “Mensch” (true gentleman, honorable, caring, and ethical).

My uncle just sent me a note that you had personally developed a web blog (www.edgaling.blogspot.com) for his poetry works.

I viewed it and commend you for your work…and for your support of the morale and artistic ability of this DEAR man of 89 years (almost 90).

Ed was married to the (deceased) sister (Esther) of my mother (Zelda – aged 85).

As I child, I grew up seeing the ‘pain’ in my uncles eyes that he did not pursue a career much like yours…journalism, poetry and the rest.

He surely had the ‘urge’, but not he opportunity…as many in his post-war era – just happy that they could, at least, make a living for their family.

I remember his often saying “I would have…could have…AND….. SHOULD have….(pursued my dreams)”

Those were words of inspiration to me (though he never knew it) because I said to myself (seeing his pain…even though I was a child) that I would never let myself be in a position to say those words.

So, at the age of 55 (always wanting to be a singer), I began to take voice lessons from professional singers/coaches (mostly operatic).

The results can be seen/heard on my website: www.StanSimkinsSings.com

I KNOW that G-d meant for me to sing professionally because how can you explain that I would have had the opportunity to be the opening act for a rock-and-roll group that I saw “live” in 1956. Who would expect to do that at the age of almost 62. I had the PRIVILEGE on April 15, 2006 to be the opening act in Las Vegas (Rampart Casino) for The Comets (formerly “Bill Haley and The Comets” – who sang, Shake Rattle and Roll; Rock Around the Clock). The members of that ORIGINAL group ranged from 72 - 82 years (with only one substitution, on guitar, aged 62). Talk about NOSTALGIA!!

I am singing at hotels, restaurants (doing dinner shows) and am beginning to expand out --- just a matter of more marketing…and plan for this to be my ‘retirement job’ when I decide to finally give up my consulting practice.

The point of my message isn’t really meant to be about me, but about my uncle --- whose poetry, HOPEFULLY, touches the hearts of his readers… and perhaps inspires them AS HE DID TO ME.

Keep up the GREAT work you do. Though there are many who may not tell you, I am SURE they are thinking it.

Stan Simkins

Sample Poems from "The Tower of Babel"

2007-01-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

TOWER OF BABEL

strange voices
not from biblical days...

these are the days
of incessant
voices on television
all day long

telling you that
nothing is good
anymore

i get up
at four or five
in the morning
just to listen
to these babblers

with smiling
faces
handsome men and
women

telling us the
news of the day

and each day
how many died
the accidents on
the highway

the warmongers
planning the
final Valhalla

followed by the
weatherman
or lady

it was better
in the old
days.

Small Press Review: Buying A Suit On Essex Street

2007-01-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

Review of Ed Galing's " Buying A Suit on Essex Steet" in The Small Press Review Nov-Dec. 2006

Ed Galing, 88 is a historian of New York's Lower East Side in the days of pushcarts and of tenements packed with poor Jews and other immigrants-- Emma Lazarus: " tired and poor...wretched refuse" and Mike Gold's "Jews without money." According to Galing, his family, fit those categories, living on welfare and stifled in a "small iron cage" of an apartment.

Galing writes about his poverty-thwarted childhood in a clear style, short lines, and brief stanzas, aptly set in Arial bold by Dave Roskos, the proprietor of Inquity Press. The cover bears a photo of Galing in fedora and black-double-breasted overcoat about 50 years ago, and the back cover shows old Ed in an open sports shirt. In both photos he is smiling, broadly on the front cover, world-wisely on the back. He's a survivor: at his most bitter he writes: "fuck humanity," at his most hopeful, he says: "god bless."

Today his Essex Street Neighborhood is being gentrified, with large apartment towers rising amid the dwindling number of tenements. The clothier where he bought the suit of the title is long gone, like most of the other small buisnesses that served his family and later drew bargain hunters to the Lower East Side. All that remains are the memories and words of Ed Galing in the many small press venues that have published him.

George Held.

East Side Melody: Introduction to Ed Galing.

2006-12-29T16:40:00.000-08:00

ED GALING:

A Poet whose roots are in the Lower East Side of New York City.

Some thoughts from Ed about his late wife:

"one month after she has left me to lie in the cemetery, and the many friends and good relatives have disappeared, it's just me and her all over again, and I tell you, she is not dead...and today she and i are going for a long ride, into the Pocono mountains, she always liked that ride into hills and valleys; and perhaps we will find a shady spot somewhere, and talk about life and how lucky we are to have each other." ( Excerpt from: "Gently in the Night"- a poem by Ed Galing")

PARTIAL LIST OF ED GALING'S BOOKS at the UNIVERSITY OF BUFFALO ( RARE BOOKS)

1 Galing, Ed. Buying a suit on Essex Street / 2006 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/ 0)
2 Galing, Ed. Buying a suit on Essex Street / 2006 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/ 0)
3 Galing, Ed. Adventures of Sadie the psychic.Vol. 2 / 2006 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/
4 Galing, Ed. Cuff links and poetry / 2006 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/ 0) SPECIAL
5 Galing, Ed. Goldfish follies : 2006 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/ 0)
6 Galing, Ed. Confessions of a white hat / 2005 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL
7 Galing, Ed. Posthumous letters of Ed Galing. 2005 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS( 1/ 0)
8 Galing, Ed. Borscht : 2005 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS /
9 Galing, Ed. Burlesque / 2005 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS /
10 Galing, Ed. Catch a falling star / 2005 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL
11 Galing, Ed. Scribbles / 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS /
12 Galing, Ed. Mail call : 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS / Poet
13 Galing, Ed. At random / 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS / P
14 Galing, Ed. "Dear editor" : 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS /
15 Galing, Ed Soul food / 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS
16 Galing, Ed. Where do we go from here? / 2004 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL
17 Galing, Ed. The violinist (and) other selected poems / 2003 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS
18 Galing, Ed. A fine kettle of fish / 2003 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
19 Galing, Ed. The Tower of Babel / 2003 Book SPECIAL-COLLECTIONS SPECIAL

TANTZEN

* for my late wife

My mother used

to say

"Ich gay tantzen."

(I am going dancing)

In the Jewish

idiom

it sounds so

honey clear,

"tantzen"

"ich gay tantzen"

dancing,

I am going

dancing,

all my life

it seems as if

I have always

been dancing,

sometimes a

slow waltz,

other times a

tango,

sometimes a Fox Trot

and when my

wife and I were

young,

together we

did the Jitterbug,

"ich gay tantzen,

mother."

Look at me

in my old age

my wife has

departed before

me,

my tears spill on

my pillow each night,

where has everyone

gone?

"ich gay tantzen.
"ich gay tantzen."

A Note From Ed Galing

I often try to remember my past; most often my past on the Lower East Side of New York City.

I Keep going back to it from time to time. New York in the 1920's was a fascinating city in which to live.

Our ancestors all came from the old world, and Jews seemed to be always persecuted. I am 89, I have grown old, but I still wonder why the world is the way it is. The Holocaust. Never to be forgotten.

I was born in 1917 and my first home as a young Jewish kid was the Lower East Side of New York City. I sooned learned I was different in many ways. We followed the Torah and God's commandments. We worshipped our own way. We never harmed anyone.

Sometimes its good to take a look back. Follow me please...

Ed Galing/ Hatboro, Pa./Dec. 2006

RATTLE MAGAZINE (DEC.2006) "ED GALING: POET OF THE GREATEST GENERATION."

By Doug Holder

I wrote more than a few poems for my friend Ed Galing after getting the many letters he has sent me over the years. Ed letters are probably as good as his poems. They are alive, spirited, like a scrappy street urchin, that Ed was in his early years. Ed can be needy, infuriating, hilariously funny, but most of all loveable. And that’s the way I characterize his poetry. Like Ed, it shoots from the hip, giving you it straight with no chaser. I find that in contrast, a lot of the poetry I read today has a calculated ironic distance, almost as if the poet is afraid to display some honest sentiment or emotion. Ed Galing, at 89 is a poet who knows his allotted time is too short for posturing, a cool detachment, and obtuse and inaccessible verse. After long years of writing, and submitting his work Galing has joined the ranks of the major small press poets that includes: A.D. Winans, Hugh Fox, Lyn Lifshin, Alan Catlin, Lynne Savitt, and others. Like the poets just mentioned Galing’s poetry, stories, and essays have appeared in the most obscure and the most well-known journals across the country. Whenever I pick up a little magazine like the Chiron Review, Rattle, Lummox Journal, Poesy, Brevities, The Small Press Review, Pegasus and hundreds of others, I am not surprised to find Ed Galing’s name there.

I first encountered Ed Galing’s poetry in a defunct magazine founded by the late Ralph Haselmann Jr. “Lucid Moon.” Ed Galing was described as the “harmonica-playing poet-laureate of Hatboro, Pa.” (His hometown) I later found out that Galing’s work was liberally spread out over a wide-swath of small press magazines, journals, newspapers, and the whole spectrum of publications. What came through in Ed’s poetry was his no-bullshit; call a spade-a- spade style. He reminded me a lot of my wisecracking, Jewish uncles from boyhood, always busting chops and spinning stories. He is what they would call a “mensch” A Yiddish word; it means someone of consequence, someone to emulate. That’s Ed.

In a number of interviews that I conducted with Ed, I became aware of his hardscrabble life, as it was reflected in his poetry. Ed told me that he started to write poetry as a young person during the Depression era. Galing’s family was on general relief, and they lived in very Spartan conditions on the Lower East Side of New York City, and the gone-to seed environs of South Philadelphia.

Galing remembered his high school English teacher Dr. Ginsberg who was supportive of his work and pushed him to read the classics. Galing told me he took to poetry early on. As to why, he related: “Poetry could say something in a few words that prose could only do in the thousands. Poetry allowed me to pour out my heart and soul...” Later Galing mined his early years as fodder for his large body of work. In his most recent collection “Buying a Suit on Essex Street” (Iniquity Press) Galing writes about his boyhood urban retreat—the fires cape on his tenement building over the bustling immigrant filled streets of the Lower East Side.

Fire Escape

Mine was on the
fifth floor

A small iron
Cage

Outside the front
window

Looking down on
Essex Street

Lower East Side:

Down below I
could see pushcarts:

Crowded streets,
people pushing and
shoving,

Screams and mutterings:
shouts of despair:

Up here, when I sat
outside the window
in my fire escape
refuge

I was six years old:
and already I knew
what it felt like

To be caged in
like
some wild animal.

Ed remembers vividly the cornucopia of sights and sounds the Lower east Side had to offer: “There were the cries of the merchants and the hundred of people pushing and shoving . There was a flavor to those streets I won’t forget. I think it shaped my life. There were the rooftops, the wash on the lines, the garbage on the streets, and the gang fights.”

Galing also had the bitter taste of in-your-face anti-semitism . He learned from the predominately Christian world that the Jews killed Christ, and that Santa Claus wanted no part of him. All this left an indelible impression on the man.

Galing has written many poems concerning anti-semitism, as he experienced it. As an occupation solider in Europe shortly after World War 2 he was a witness to the death camps at Dachau. Galing told me: “All of these events shaped my sensibility and my poetry. I found anti-semitism everywhere…the Army, the Navy. Galing saw the horrific ovens of the camps, and was enraged at the denial of the atrocities by many Germans he encountered. Galing, through the Lucid Moon Press, published a small book of his war time experiences, complete with photos. In spite of these experiences he did not become misanthropic. Galing told me “ This affected me as a man. I wanted to use my words to benefit mankind. I wanted to show that love is important to life.”

To this day Ed Galing visits Jack’s Deli in his old stomping grounds of South Phillie, and entertains the patrons with his harmonica playing. Now that his wife is a resident in a nursing home, he visits her daily, and shares his poetry and music with the other residents as well. Ed makes no concessions to the computer age and still corresponds with fellow poets by hand written letter. He types his poems out on an old typewriter. Ed and I talk on the phone regularly, and he expresses his frustration with the infirmities of old age, his wife’s declining health, the capriciousness of editors, you name it. Yet, overall, Galing keeps a positive attitude, and still has eagle eye out for the next poem. Galing has experienced a lot, but like many of his rapidly diminishing peers he is able to grasp what is important from what is not. Ed has no time to worry about the latest trend, engage in navel gazing, or morbid introspection. What matters to Galing are the people in his life that he touched and who touched him. Ed Reflected: I have two grandsons, three grandchildren, and I am married to a wonderful woman. What is there to know about Ed Galing? Just a simple man, trying to write poetry, and perhaps trying to hear a good word about my work.”

Day’s Work

if my father taught
me anything,
it was how to exist
where existence
was hard to do.
and where every
breath of air
in our lower
east side building
was filled with
the acrid order
of rotten vegetables
that most of us
tenants ate, when
we could afford
to buy the left—
overs, from the
pushcarts on orchard
street
oh, the rabble, oh
the stench
oh, the jostling
and pushing of
so many of us
as we walked along
pavements so crowded
that we had to almost
walk out into the middle
of the street…
my father made life
as endurable as possible,
by wearing the same clothes
all year round, and when they
tore,
his needle and thread would mend them,
he ate little, mostly potatoes,
which gave him that round little
belly, and portly gait,
and he busied himself around
the apartment we had,
my mother in the kitchen,
making food on the coal stove,
learning how to squeeze beets
to make borscht,
and me in my six year old wisdom,
learning how to steal an
occasional apple from the
pushcart outside…
all in a day’s work in
those days.

And just like his old man before him Ed keeps working, at his craft, a craft which has been his life.

--Doug Holder Doug Holder is the founder of the “Ibbetson Street Press, and the Arts/Editor of “The Somerville News,” in Somerville, Mass. His poetry and prose has appeared in: “The Boston Globe,” “Café Review, “Facets,” “the new renaissance,” and many others.

INTERVIEW WITH ED GALING ( Lucid Moon Magazine)

Ed Galing Interviewed by Doug HolderLucid Moon Interview #6

Doug Holder of Ibbetson St. Press interviewed Hatboro, Pennsylvania Poet Laureate and cartoonist Ed Galing in the fall of 1999.

ED GALING: A MENSCH AND A POET

I first encountered Ed Galing's poetry on the pages of the small press journal Lucid Moon. He was described as "the harmonica playing Poet Laureate of Hatboro, PA". His poetry appealed to me because of its simplicity, its unadorned eloquence. Galing, now in his 80's, has been writing for at least sixty years. His work is liberally spread over a wide variety of small press literary magazines, journals, newspapers, the whole spectrum of venues. His writing is a lyrical exploration of his experiences as a Jewish kid on the streets of the Lower East Side of New York, an occupation soldier shortly after WW2, a young husband trying to make a go of it, and as a wise, elderly man, with enough distance to laugh at what we younger folks call "life". Ed did not have the advantage of a college education, the extended adolescence of the early Baby Boomers, or the self absorbed angst of Generation X. What comes through in Ed's poetry is his no nonsense approach to life. He calls a "spade" a "spade" in the best sense of the word. He reminds me of any number of Jewish uncles I had, cracking jokes, "busting chops", and spinning stories. Ed is unapologetically corny, obscene, sentimental…in short he is what I call a Mensch (Leo Rosten, in his book "Hooray For Yiddish" defines "Mensch" as someone of consequence, someone to emulate, of noble character.)

DH: Ed, you have been a writer for many years now. I understand that you've written for newspapers, magazines…you name it. Now you are known as the Poet Laureate of Hatboro, PA. What turned you on to poetry as a genre of expression?

EG: I began to write short stories and poetry when I was still a young person going to high school. I think it had to do with the foolish idea that being a writer was the road to riches and fame. I lived with my mother and father during the Depression. We were on general relief and were very poor. We lived in three spartan rooms…this was very tough for a kid growing up. These conditions left an impression on me. I suppose that I wanted to get us out of this type of existence. I began to write. My English teacher, Dr. Glicsberg, was supportive of my work and nurtured me. Under him, I studied all the great poets, Frost, Longfellow, Dryden, Shakespeare, and others. I found that writing poetry, as opposed to short stories, allowed me more room to express myself in lyrical and metaphorical ways. Poetry could say something in a few words, that prose could only do in the thousands. Poetry allowed me to pour out my heart and soul. As a result of this, my poetry began to appear in lots of magazines and newspapers. I didn't dare call myself a poet until I felt I deserved that title. There are so many poets in the world today, writing in so many styles and modes. Somehow I found myself writing nostalgic material of my early years in New York. Most recently, I was elected Poet Laureate of Hatboro, PA, at 79 years of age. I also have received numerous citations and awards from the Pennsylvania House and Senate, for literary excellence. Poetry at least for me is the gateway to the soul. In a few words a poet can restore hope, show his faith, make you weep and smile, or laugh out loud.

DH: Ed, as a Jewish kid, your stomping grounds were the Lower East Side of New York City. This is the same milieu that Henry Roth, author of Call It Sleep, called his boyhood home. How did this background shape you a s a writer and a poet?

EG: I was born in 1917 on the Lower East Side of New York, in a big tenement building. My father was the janitor of the building. My mother was a housewife. The only life I knew as a child consisted of running around the pushcarts on Orchard St. and Delancey Street. I listened to the cries of the merchants and the hundreds of people pushing and shoving on the streets of NYC. There was a flavor to those streets that I won't forget. I think it shaped my feelings for the rest of my life. I learned of poverty, and how to exist, running on those streets, chased by Gentiles. There is no question that those days were hard ones. I lived in the Jewish part of the Lower East Side, but there were also other sections, dominated by Italians, etc. This was a time of many gang wars. As a Jewish boy I had to learn to run pretty fast. Henry Roth put it correctly, "No one could possibly write everything about those early days, and get it all down on paper." I still remember the rooftops, the wash on the lines, the garbage on the streets, the way we played on the pavement, the gang fights…which thank God I was not part of. I learned at an early age that it wasn't such a good thing to be a Jew. I learned that I killed Christ, although I didn't even know who he was then. I also learned that Santa Claus wanted no part of me, because he never brought me presents as a kid. I remember how hard my mother worked, and all the holidays. In spite of all the hardships, it left an indelible impression on me. Henry Roth is not the only Jewish writer who lived and wrote about the Lower East Side. I would recommend reading Harry Golden's wonderful books, especially about those early East Side days.

DH: The Depression, hard times, poverty, often appear in your work. Is your poetry a sort of catharsis to the deprivation you felt during the early years?

ED: Absolutely. Everyone of us who has lived a life, certainly writes poetry from their own experiences. The best poetry written come form the heart. No flowery words are necessary. Just the music of the soul. Yes, I always seem to write about the Depression, poverty, and hard times. My father left my mother, and we were left on our own in a bad section of Philly. South Philly was famous for some of the finest actors, singers…it may have not been bad for people not on welfare. My poor mother had no means of support, wound up on welfare, and I was a kid of only nine. I used to see the welfare worker coming, asking questions, and how hard my mother worked to keep me with her. She always had a hard life. When she died, she had no formal ceremony. I remember the hearse driver and I riding together on a stormy day, to put her to rest. You can't help but remember such things, and use them in prose and poetry. I find that poetry takes the bitterness out of me, a sort of catharsis. Yet, it crops up again and again. I've tried to write lighter poetry, more amusing material, just to get away from these sad thoughts. I find that many poets write "confessional" poetry, perhaps overdoing it. I have tried to concentrate on better moments in my life. I must confess…it does me good to write about those other times also. A.D. Winans, another excellent poet, writes a great deal of poetry about the hard life…I think we all do that. Some of the best poetry springs out of this experience. I have been deprived of some things, but I had a wonderful understanding mother, who gave her life for me, so that I could grow up.

DH: As I mentioned before, Henry Roth is a big interest of mine. In his Mercy Of A Rude Stream trilogy, he followed the life and times of Ira Stigman, a semi-autobiographical fictional character, from childhood to young manhood. Has your writing been influenced by Roth? Did you experience any of the Jewish self-hatred that Stigman suffered as he tried to fit into Gentile America?

EG: No, I can honestly say that Roth has not influenced my life or writing. Nor can I say that I experienced self-hatred because I was a Jew. I am not an Orthodox Jew. As for the Jewish self hatred that Ira Stigman faced in Roth's book, I can understand it, sympathize deeply with it, but it really did not influence my work. One must face the fact that Anti-Semitism is an evil that must be eradicated. I spent as year in Germany after WW2, as an occupation soldier, and saw the death camps at Dachau. All of these events have shaped my sensibility, and probably has come out in my poetry. I have found Anti-Semitism everywhere…the Army, Navy … everywhere! I have tried, in my own way, to overcome it. I was lucky, and I always try to understand that there are more good things in this world than evil. I am proud to be a Jew, and always will be.

DH: Ed, you were an occupation soldier shortly after WW2. You saw the aftermath of the Holocaust, the carnage, the human tragedy. What lasting impact did this have on your poetry?

EG: Funny, about the war, I was 28 years old when I was drafted into the army in 1945. I had been exempt until then because I worked in an arsenal for the government, helping the war industry…(imagine calling that industry)…well, when the Germans surrendered, and the Japanese continued to fight, the government called up all able-bodied men, the older guys, to help defeat the Japanese. I left my wife and children and went to Camp Blanding, Florida, for basic infantry training, then shipped overseas. By the time the Japanese had surrendered I was sent to Germany with the first occupation force. Here, they were punishing the war criminals. The country was in turmoil, and the Germans lived among the ruins. I really felt strange, a Jew working among them…in a countryside that was picturesque…but where all these horrors took place. During my stint, I saw the Nazi death camps of Dachau. I saw the ovens, all those horrible moments of war. It sickened me, and I found it difficult not to yell at the German people, "Why did you kill my people?!" I was full of hatred then, and the fact that the Germans denied knowledge of this slaughter, made things worse. It certainly made a deep Impression on me. This visceral experience compelled me to write about it. I finally wrote a small novelette that the journal Lucid Moon published, with photos, of my time in Germany as a soldier. Army life, while in training was brutal, rougher on anyone Jewish. I was in camp with a preponderance of Southern boys. There were very few Jews in camp. I remember one, Greenberg, he was a rebel. They rode him hard. To his credit he took it all in. The Nazi death camps shoved a stark reality in my face. Walking around the site, with all these walking skeletons…half dead men and women, made a powerful impact. I saw the ovens, and I went into the room where they told people they were to be given showers, only to be gassed. I could almost hear them scream, see the agonized scratches on the walls, as they died. These impressions stay with me even today. Had I been afforded combat duty, I probably would have killed without pity. This has affected me as a man and a writer this way; I want to be able to use my words to benefit mankind. To show that love, instead of hate is the key to life. Who am I to declare all this? Still, I hope my voice means something. My experiences with poverty, tragedy, rough times, the Depression, has no doubt affected my writing.

DH: I suppose one reason we write is to satisfy the primal urge to have something of ourselves, to mark our territory, to say, "Hey, I was here." What's the message you want to leave your readers with? What do you want to stand out in the readers' mind about Ed Galing, the poet, writer, and fellow traveler?

EG: This is a profound question. I really don't know how to answer it fully. In spite of all the tough breaks I had, I also had a lot of wonderful things happen to me. I have been married for 61 years to a wonderful woman, I have two grown sons, three grandchildren, and one great granddaughter, Through the good times and bad times we stuck together. This doesn't explain the primal urge, does it? I suppose I just want to be remembered as a human being who wanted to bring joy and understanding to a world that sorely needs it. I don't need riches and fame to accomplish this. I only need folks to publish my work, understand me, not necessarily agree with me, and if something I wrote isn't up to par, give me a chance to do it better. I have some books in the University Of Buffalo Poetry/Rare Books Collection. My local library has eight of my books on their shelves. Anyone can go read my work, long after I'm gone. At age 82, I have had a long writing career. What is there to know about Ed Galing? Just a simple man, trying to understand the world, and perhaps hear a good word about my work. If I have accomplished this, I have done well. What else could any poet want?

Reprinted from Ibbetson St. Press issue #4. This article also appeared in Spare Change News.

SELECTED POEMS: ED GALING.

So Long Ago

not to many around today

who will remember

as I do

the lower east side

of new york.

today at my age

they call me ancient

you have been

around a long time,

they tell me

with a chuckle.

You know things

we never heard of before

they say with a wonder,

but so what? i was born

in 1917, the

time of World War1

but today no one

ever heard of general pershing

or woodrow wilson,

it's like I live

on a different planet...

and I wonder

if I belong

here anymore.

SOUNDS OF NEW YORK

it's the sounds

you hear

while you bolt

up those steps...

a tenement

in the lower east side.

each floor

a different sound,

a baby crying...

another floor

screaming--

a slap,

or the next

a victrola,

a wafting

yiddish melody.

behind that door

a meal of borscht

perhaps a potato

and then the roof--

the sounds...

wind and torrents of rain

like a slap in the face.

Sounds of the ghetto

none like you

ever heard before.

ICE BOX

when you heard the ice man

comin' up the stairs

he'd have his ice pick

around a big chunk of ice

walk up the three flights

right into our kitchen

and plunk the ice

into the wooden box

never missin a beat...

the horse and wagon was

always waiting outside

with ice chopped into

chunks

covered with a burlap bag...

and lots of times

i'd eat a sliver of ice

watchin the droplets

as it hit my tongue

enjoyin the

sharpness of cold.

( From: "Tales of South Philly" -- four sep publications)