Chicken Soup by Ed Galing

 Ed Galing sent me this poem shortly before he died in Dec. 2013:


most of all
i remember
my mother's
chicken soup.

1922
lower east side
i was often sick
my mother
fed me with
a large spoon.
"Eat, eat, you will feel better!"
that aroma
some secret ingredient
did its job.

my mother
overjoyed
nodding
my father smacking
his lips.

she said it was
a jewish dish
but the bible
did not say
this.

" Moses on the Mount,
had a bowl
before he got the
ten commandments."

the entire building
smelled of chicken soup
and matzoh balls 

At 96
i'm still not 
through
i sip the soup
and eat the matzoh balls
too.

 

Front Cover Ibbetson Street 35 ED Galing Tribute!

                                

 

I got this from Ibbetson Street designer Steve Glines. This is the front cover--with some of our featured poets, and the late Ed Galing's resplendent smile as portrayed by artist Ashe Troberg. We will be sending the final PDF to the printer on Friday afternoon, and we hope to have copies in our hand in mid to late June--meanwhile Steve will be putting a print-on-demand issue up that can be ordered. This should be done by next week. You would be doing the press a great favor if you purchased extra copies online from our bookstore... Ibbetson Online Bookstore  and don't forget our books--enjoy them and help this small press at the same time!

---Doug Holder

Poet Ed Galing Presentation: Lizzie Goddard-- Endicott College-- Creative Writing Workshop

Lizzie Goddard  (Author of Ed Galing Presentation)

..... I always thought my late friend poet Ed Galing should be studied in college. And I have used his work in my creative writing classes at Endicott College. Professor Dan Sklar, a fellow lover of Galing's work, had a student who made a presentation about Galing: the man and his work.... Hope you enjoy--Doug Holder

Lizzie Goddard

Ed Galing Presentation

5/6/14

            Ed Galing was born in 1917, died in 2007, and spent his early years in the lower east side of New York City. He first started to write poetry when he was a young man during the depression era. His family went through many troubles while he was growing up and he wrote a great deal about it in his early poetry. His family was on general relief, they lived in harsh conditions and his home even caught fire once when he was a boy. He first became involved with poetry when his high school English teacher, Dr. Ginsberg, got him interested when they read some poetry in class. The young poet was intrigued. Galing said, “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”. He wrote many poems concerning  his experience with anti-semitism and how enraged it made him.  Even though he was a modern poet, he did not use technology to write his poems. Instead, he hand wrote them all and did not worry about the new trends that afflicted contemporary poetry. He wrote about whatever was on his mind and did not concern himself with the new high tech world. Galing reflected in an interview, “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”. The two poems by Galing I am going to write about are titled “Prayers” and “Obituary”. These two poems both discuss his impending death.  His poetry is very realistic and he does not puff up his life to transform it into something magical. Ed Galing wrote about things that concerned, affected, interested and conflicedt him. He wrote what he wanted to write.

            The first poem, “Prayers” is a very deep and emotional poem to read. Galing discusses how he feels after he has lost his wife, his religion, and how going to these services at temple affected him even more. He discusses how his prayers and religion are an outlet for him. The passage that touched me was one that deals with  the specter of death, “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”. After reading these lines, I really felt the emotion that Ed felt as he mourned his wife’s death. As I read his biography, I did not think he would write such a deep and emotional poem. This poem caught me by surprise because of it's imagery. I pictured him alone, praying and crying to his prayer book. I imagined tears falling from his face and dripping on his prayer book that he held on his lap. After reading these lines I felt tremendous sympathy for Galing. He seemed like a positive and realistic person,  and so I was surprised put out his vulnerability in his poetry. The lines that also stuck out to me were, “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”. These lines made me feel sorry for Galing. He reveals in the poem that because he has lost his wife, his life was over as well. I think this is one of the only poems I have read of Galing’s that discusses love. He mostly talks about his life in New York or things in society that concern him. It was refreshing to see him discuss love for his wife.

            The second poem, “obituary” discusses Ed’s thoughts about the obituaries that are posted in newspapers every day. His poem “obituary” stuck out to me as something you would not normally read about in a poem. G. Tod Slone writes a brief biography in his publication, The American Dissident, about how Galing sent in this poem to his magazine not long before he passed away. I found this very interesting because the poem “obituary” discusses how Galing wants to be remembered and how an obituary portrays somebody who has died. The lines that stood out to me the most were, “these people are great/ I like them all/ some of the obits are very long/ some are very short/ come and read mine/ when I die/ please make sure/ I am smiling”. I took it that Galing was actually being sarcastic. When he says “these people are great/ I like them all” he is showing that he does not know anything about these people who have just died and that society seems to think that putting obituaries in a paper will cause people to connect in some way with the deceased. Galing's sarcasm is evident throughout this poem. When he states that all the people who have obituaries in the paper never cheated, lied or did anything bad, I noted the irony. All of these deceased people traveled, ran for office, and had a loving family. Galing adds these clichés to show that society wants to make everything happy, shiny and perfect, yet that’s not how the world is at all. Galing is commenting that these people have actually lived an imperfect life but that they are not asking for people to like them in their obituaries or think that they lived perfectly and happily. Death is something that in reality should not be characterized this way.  From his final lines “please make sure/ I am smiling” ...I pictured a very cynical smile. He might be smiling because he has escaped society once and for all.

            Galing’s poetry is unique and very dark in its meanings. I believe the struggles he faced through life allowed him to produce this type of poetry. Even though he may not be well known around the world, his poetry can still be read and means something to a lot of people. After reading his poetry, I realized how influential he really is. Doug Holder, a professor at Endicott, writes the whole blog posts for Ed Galing's website. Professor Holder used to talk about him a lot in our creative writing class and even shared some of his poems with us. Ed Galing’s poetry is unique, modern and influential for many people and will continue to be for years to come.

......Lizzie Gordon is from Winthrop, Massachusetts. She is currently a junior studying English at Endicott College. She is involved in the Sigma Tau Delta honors society. After graduating college she hopes to become a middle school English teacher. Aside from academics, Lizzie has been a member of the Endicott College cheerleading team for the past three years. She is a pet lover and enjoys outdoor activities.

Artist Ashe Troberg: Painting Ed Galing

Ed Galing

 

 Artist Ashe Troberg, the founder of The Brooklyn Voice ( http://brooklynvoice.com) is working on a painting of Ed Galing for the next issue of Ibbetson Street--a tribute to the late poet--who died at 96--this December.. I asked her about her process as she works on Ed's portrait. I also told her that she in a way is a poet-- in that she interprets a face with her tools, as the poet does with his or her tools--so to speak. This is what she had to say:


" There was a time that I totally painted without thinking and all my connection to the painting was with my subconscious. . But I am a bit more aware now. Being aware allows us to realize things .. and connect many dots. Very often I get engrossed in a painting. Ed's is one of those. As I continue to learn his jaw lines, his hair lines I sort of traveled through.. .or at least I could say reflected on how he looked as a young man. .. his life.. .his peak of time. You do get connected. ..especially when someone like him, who is no more.  ..Artists are just artists.. .I mean composers, poets, artists, authors.. .they create. . Only their tools are varied. ..they can create a moment from a certain scent. Winter or a rose Garden. . Or dusty old library. They.create that moment with their own tool. So yes all of us who create something are just artists."

An Elegy for Ed Galing in the Form of a Letter to the Deceased by Alan Catlin

An Elegy for Ed Galing in the Form of a Letter to the Deceased

Dear Ed,


“I wake up
to the sadness
of being seventy"

               

Ed Galing and Harmonica

the poet Maia Penfold wrote some years ago,

reflecting how beautiful the world looked from

outer space and how, here, on earth, we dishonored

ourselves, fought senseless wars, persisted in all

forms of cruelty to our fellow men. I can only

imagine what you might add to her reflections

with regards to human follies without end.

At 96, you wrote about having lived too long,

of the loneliness, missing, most of all, your wife

of sixty-seven years, gone now for many years.

You wrote of constant pain, how helpless you felt

in a wheelchair and of the one remaining joy of your

life, writing poems. Those poems you typed , badly,

slowly, on a manual machine and mailed to small

press magazines no one ever heard of but your friends,

mostly fellow poets, who loved you and your work.

I can’t express how much I admired your needing

to write and how that was inextricably linked to your will

to live, when nothing else seemed to matter; the writing

kept the love alive, all those people you cherished

nearby. That last week you wrote letters to old friends

suggesting this was the end. I wrote back, a day late,

right away; after all you never know which one might

be the last one. I’ll cherish my last letter from you though

you’ll never know what I had to say.

love,

alan