{"id":17069,"date":"2021-08-25T21:16:50","date_gmt":"2021-08-26T01:16:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/?p=17069"},"modified":"2021-08-25T21:16:50","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T01:16:50","slug":"ammiel-alcalay-remembers-jack-hirschman-1933-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/ammiel-alcalay-remembers-jack-hirschman-1933-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Ammiel Alcalay Remembers Jack Hirschman (1933-2021)"},"content":{"rendered":"
News of Jack Hirschman\u2019s death on August 22nd\u00a0simply knocked the wind out of me. Despite\u00a0his age, it came without premonition, and felt\u00a0unexpected and jarring. When mutual\u00a0friend David Meltzer passed in 2016 I dreamt about him, only to wake up to the\u00a0news. Jack had collaborated\u00a0closely on David\u2019s magazine,\u00a0TREE<\/i>, the harbinger for a radical Jewish poetics that found sources\u00a0not only in the kabbalah but in a politics grounded\u00a0in the generative and\u00a0generous light of interpretation.<\/div>\n

I remember well Jack\u2019s\u00a0own version of Tai Chi, consisting of going through the motions of pitching a\u00a0baseball in slow motion. That he often did that\u00a0at Specs, the great North Beach\u00a0bar, and with a drink, was beside the point, or maybe to the point. Given\u00a0Jack\u2019s total detachment from the world of\u00a0branding, the late Ben Hollander and\u00a0I once gave Jack a most uncharacteristic gift: a Koji Uehara T-shirt, to\u00a0celebrate a pitcher whose manner and\u00a0style he had fallen head over heals for.

Though I never remember\u00a0jokes, the one Jack told me about the talking dog who once worked for the CIA\u00a0remains unforgettable. After taking me\u00a0out to dinner once in Chinatown, he\u00a0pulled me into Kerouac Alley and, in that inimitable Bronx baritone, said:\u00a0\u201cAH-meee-el, I got two new jokes.\u201d\u00a0And he proceeded, with perfect timing.

When I invited him to\u00a0CUNY, sometime in the late 1990s or early 2000s, he said it was the first\u00a0invite he\u2019d gotten to an American university since the\u00a01960s, when he was fired\u00a0from his teaching position at the University of California for\u00a0\u201cactivities against the state\u201d that included writing,\u00a0speaking out and\u00a0demonstrating against the war in South East Asia, as well as giving an A to all\u00a0his students, to fend off the draft. And Jack had a\u00a0bona-fide PhD, not like so\u00a0many poets that found their way into the academy in the 1980s and beyond. I\u00a0remember vividly his stories about waiting\u00a0outside Patchin Place in Greenwich\u00a0Village to try and catch the reclusive Djuna Barnes, one of the subjects of his\u00a0research.

Cub reporter in the\u00a0Bronx at the age of 15, student at City College in the early 1950s, member of\u00a0the Roque Dalton Cultural Brigade (along with\u00a0Alejandro Murgu\u00eda, Juan Felipe\u00a0Herrera, and others), Poet Laureate of San Francisco\u2014Jack\u2019s life in poetry is\u00a0dense and rich and real. The range of\u00a0truly explosive books he translated is\u00a0extraordinary: the ones I always hold close are the Haitian poet Ren\u00e9\u00a0Depestre\u2019s\u00a0A Rainbow for the Christian\u00a0West<\/i>, the Algerian Ismail A\u00eft Jaffar\u2019s\u00a0Wail\u00a0of the Arab Beggars of the Casbah<\/i>, and the Greek Katerina Gogou\u2019s\u00a0Three Clicks Left<\/i>, not to mention his\u00a0versions of Mallarm\u00e9. I have piles of poems and broadsides and books that he\u00a0gave or sent me, letters, e-mails, copies of his correspondence to\u00a0Charles\u00a0Olson, to Vincent Ferrini, to Meltzer, and others. In some cases, I even found\u00a0texts in archives that Jack didn\u2019t have a copy of!

Our interwoven strands\u00a0are dense with love, sympathy and experience and, like all those he touched, I\u00a0will miss him tremendously. We send our profound condolences to his wife, Agneta Falk, and daughter Celia Hirschman, as well as extended family and friends.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
In preparing for\u00a0a tribute to Diane di Prima, I\u00a0found a poem Diane had written in 2013, for Jack\u2019s 80th\u00a0birthday,\u00a0which ends like this:

\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack leaving many messages to call\u00a0him
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack insisting I call him right\u00a0away, then turning his phone off
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack Hirschman never answering his\u00a0cell phone
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack telling me to text him, my\u00a0phone doesn\u2019t text
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack\u00a0demanding<\/i>\u00a0I text him\u2014I don\u2019t know how

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack sure I\u2019ll feel better, if I\u00a0just drink some vodka
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack telling me give up dentists,\u00a0and \u201cgrow a moustache, it\u2019s cheaper\u201d

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack Hirschman at 80, looking 12
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack looking wise, either 12, or a\u00a0very wise infant

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack passionate & careful
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack tender & cruel
\u00a0

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Jack Hirschman making the world a\u00a0better place
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0whether\u00a0it likes it or not
<\/i>
And in a group\u00a0correspondence, devorah major, another San Francisco Poet Laureate and an\u00a0old friend of Jack\u2019s, sent out a fierce and beautiful\u00a0poem, an \u201cArcane for Jack\u00a0Hirschman,\u201d taking up the name Jack gave to his ongoing series of poems,\u00a0The Arcanes<\/i>, collected in three massive\u00a0volumes, which begins like this:

\u00a0
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0on the day Jack died
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0there were words

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0furious fated fecund failing words
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0poured from the poets

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0because they knew what Jack would do
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0on such solemn occasions

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0he would write into the sunset
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0slit open the dawn
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0write through the heat of the\u00a0afternoon

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0as the moon secreted itself behind\u00a0thick clouds
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0inside the starless night
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0he would write

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0he would hold a person in his heart\u00a0and
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0embody their fulsome laugh
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0their once powerful stride
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0the rolling rhythms of their verse
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0the insistent uprisings in their\u00a0soul

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0so they wrote their poems
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0and riots grew from syllables and\u00a0the
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0deepest of sadness wrung inside the\u00a0death

\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0personal and pervasive the poems
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0rocked and swam through salty tears


\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0Ammiel\u00a0Alcalay
\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0August\u00a024, 2021<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

News of Jack Hirschman\u2019s death on August 22nd\u00a0simply knocked the wind out of me. Despite\u00a0his age, it came without premonition, and felt\u00a0unexpected and jarring. When mutual\u00a0friend David Meltzer passed in 2016 I dreamt about...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17073,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[76,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17069","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-obituaries","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17069"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17075,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17069\/revisions\/17075"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17073"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pierrejoris.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}