Sandy McIntosh - Lesser Lights

Praise for

A Hole in the Ocean:

A Hamptons Apprenticeship

These irresistibly amusing and engaging recollections of the authors encounters with the great and near-great artists and poets who washed ashore in the Hamptons has a special charm, as our intrepid protagonist plays unofficial chauffeur, therapist, straight-man and witness, always with retrospective self-awareness, insight and bittersweet gratitude.

Phillip Lopate

Sandy McIntosh writes like a combination of Dostoevsky and Woody Allen.

Mary Mackey

Deliciously droll. Stars-in-the-eyes young poet meets literary and art world icons in the Hamptons. And re-meets and reconsiders. And admires. And continues to honor and to create his own work.

Laura Wells, The East Hampton Star

Intelligence, foresight and wit.... There is something here that is at once deep, engaging and profound.

Neil Leadbeater, Galatea Resurrects

A Hole in the Ocean is a beautiful written recollection of a simpler time on the east end when main streets were quiet even during the summer and one could hear `the crashing of the ocean waves a half-mile away. e.e. cummings said `A hole in the ocean will never be missed. Neither should this book.

Brian Cudzilo , Dans Papers

Also by

Sandy McIntosh

Poetry Collections

Earth Works

Which Way to the Egress?

Monsters of the Antipodes

Endless Staircase

Between Earth and Sky

Selected Poems of H.R. Hays (editor)

The After-Death History of My Mother

Forty-Nine Guaranteed Ways to Escape Death

237 More Reasons to Have Sex (collaboration with Denise Duhamel )

Ernesta, In the Style of the Flamenco

Cemetery Chess: Collected and New Poems

Prose

A Hole In the Ocean: A Hamptons Apprenticeship

The Poets in the Poets-In-the-Schools

From a Chinese Kitchen

Firing Back (collaboration with Jodi-Beth Galos)

Computer Software

The Best of Wok Talk

Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing!

Lost in Literature

Lesser

Lights

More Tales from
a Hamptons Apprenticeship

Sandy McIntosh

A Volume in the Chapter One Series

Copyright 2019, Sandy McIntosh

Cover Art Copyright 2006, Ken Robbins, Days of Heaven

FIRST EDITION

All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher,
unless faithfully conforming to fair use guidelines.

Marsh Hawk books are published by Marsh Hawk Press, Inc.,
a not-for-profit corporation under section 501(c)3
United States Internal Revenue Code.

printed book design: Susan Quasha

e-book design: Heather Wood

print ISBN 978-0-996-99113-1

ebook ISBN 978-1-732-61410-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McIntosh, Sandy, 1947 (author)

Lesser lights : more tales from a Hamptons apprenticeship /

Sandy McIntosh

New York : Marsh Hawk Press, [2019]

LCCN 2018023766 | ISBN 9780996991131 (pbk)

McIntosh, Sandy, 1947Friends and associates. | Poets,

American20th centuryBiography. | Art and literatureNew York (State).

| Hamptons (N.Y.)Social life and customs.

Classification: LCC PS3613.C54 Z46 2018 | DDC 811/.6 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023766

Marsh Hawk Press

P.O. Box 206

East Rockaway, New York 11518-0206

www.marshhawkpress.org

Personal Thanks

For my generous and inspiring editor, Mary Mackey. For my colleagues and friends, Thomas Fink and George Whitson.

For Francis Smith, who, in many pre-dawn sessions, cheered on Roberts evolving scandals. Thanks to Jackie and Mel Moss, Gretchen Berger, and Graham Everett for filling in the missing pieces.

And always for my wife, Barbara.

Introduction

The Night Jackson Pollack Died

I

Taking Reality Through Its Paces

Filmmaking with
Ilya Bolotowsky and Norman Mailer

II

Communists in The Hamptons

Stuffing Ideology Into Art

III

Ghosts

The Professional Poet

Meeting Prousts Granddaughter at Canios, Sag Harbor

Meeting Capote at Keenes, Southampton

Coffee with Jean Stafford, The Springs

Hot and Cold Type: Working for Dans Papers

The Art of Lorenzo Parsons

P. G. Wodehouses Typewriter

IV

Robert, in Twelve Episodes

1. The Feral Poet

2. The Evidence

3. Teen Angel

4. Family History

5. Eating Gold

6. Who Is Sylvia?

7. Massive Diner Food

8. Wanda

9. She Walks Out

10. Manners

11. Robert on the Rebound

12. The Voice of Common Sense

Epilogue

A Ghost Driving West

People, Places, Things and Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Cover Artist

Chapter One: On Becoming a Poet

Wed been having a musical evening at Alfonso Ossorios studio the night Jackson Pollack died, H. R. Hays said. The sky was like tonight: clear, balmy. I think someone was playing a jazz sax. Dreamy. I drifted off. Then my wife Julie was shaking me. Wake up Hoffman, she whispered. Look over there. I looked and saw those police emergency lights down at the end of the road.

Are you sure? asked David Ignatow. I thought Pollock was killed on Springs Fireplace Roadthat hairpin curve.

Well, said Hays petulantly. Thats where we all were at the time. On Springs Fireplace Road. Thats where Alfonso Ossorio lived. Right after that hairpin curve.

That was in the 50s. I didnt even live here then, said Ignatow.

We werent talking about you. Not everything has to be about you, muttered Hays.

As a twenty year-old student and poet, I was happy to be sitting with them that night, listening to their stories and their bickering on the Hays second floor porch at his home in the East Hampton woods. Happy that they were interested in me and in the things I was struggling to write. In fact, I couldnt believe my luck.

In 1966, after six distressing years in military school, I had enrolled at Southampton College. It was then a branch of Long Island University, since dissolved. Its mission was to serve local students, the children of farmers and shopkeepers who served the wealthy summer residents living near the Atlantic Ocean. Most students attending the college had practical career objectives. Few had any interest in the humanities, especially in painting, creative writing, sculpture or serious music. The college, having failed to lure established academics from metropolitan universities to what was for nine months of the year a desolate rural environment, had to resort to hiring locals with uncertain academic certifications to teach those students who might be interested in the arts. But the Hamptons being the Hamptons, the local artists and writers included in the faculty at that time came immediately to resemble the quietly shimmering artist-teachers of the innovative, short-lived, experimental Black Mountain College in Asheville, North Carolina, at which some of them had actually taught. For instance, at Southampton Willem de Kooning lectured on painting; Ilya Bolotowsky, the neo-plasticist painter with a thick Russian accent, taught Freshman English. Among poets teaching were the Bollingen Prize winner David Ignatow, and the pioneering performance poet Charles Matz. The playwright and poet H. R. Hays headed the Theater Department.

Why did a group of distinguished artists and writers congregate at a new, undistinguished college? You see, de Kooning told me after wed become acquainted. In the wintertime, theyre here all alone. They work in their studios all day and then want to get together at night, usually at Bobby Vans, or some other bar. Then they get into a fightJim Jones likes to throw punchesor get drunk and the police take them to jail. Its either that or they meet at the college and have a good time without getting into too much trouble. The truth is, Ilya Bolotowsky added. Were all exiles.