Ed Galing and Susie Davidson

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

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

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.