Hot Dogs, Cotton Candy, Ferris Wheels – and Poetry?

Before there was Disneyland and Six Flags, there was Coney Island. Located on the southern end of the Borough of Brooklyn in New York City, Coney Island was the largest amusement park in the United States between 1880 and World War II. Today, the iconic park has two amusement complexes – Luna Park and Deno’s Wonder Wheel Amusement Park – and numerous entertainment sites not included in the two parks.

Its impact on American popular culture has been large. Consider root beer and the Coney Island hot dog. The roller coaster. The carousel. The area was one of the first to use new technologies like electric light. And the first baby incubator debuted there.

Coney Island is still a popular destination for New Yorkers and visitors, but it has changed considerably over the decades. It is also gaining a reputation for poetry.

Poetry?

In 2009, native New Yorker and poet Amanda Deutch organized a poetry festival for Coney Island. Seven years later, Deutch heads Parachute Literary Arts, a community arts organization that “celebrates poetry in Coney Island and makes poetry available to those who live and work in the Coney Island neighborhood.”

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Falling in Love with “Brooklyn”

It’s been a long time since I fell in love with a movie, 34 years to be exact, and the movie was the Oscar Award-winning Chariots of Fire. Based on real events and people, it was a film that told a story, yes, but a story that swept you up in its characters, a group of young men who reached for something beyond themselves.

And now I’ve fallen in love with 2015’s Brooklyn.

I didn’t think film producers made movies like this anymore. Brooklyn is a love story, a coming-of-age story, an immigrant’s story, and the story of a young woman who’s making her world in the world. If it included a subtle or not-so-subtle political or social message, a feature of many movies today that tends to make them something less than what they could be, then I missed it.

To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Photograph: Emory Cohen and Saorise Ronan in a scene from Brooklyn.

It's a New York Day

We try to visit MOMA
but it’s closed on Mondays,
bummer, so we walk
down Fifth Avenue
in the light rain to the Plaza,
we want high tea but
we’re politely shown
to the Grill (improper attire).
We find a rare book shop,
barely noticeable from the street,
and walk up the stairs when
we’re buzzed through the door
to see and smell rows and shelves
of leather-bound words.
I go solo to see this revival
of Moon for the Misbegotten
at the Cort and have a drink
at intermission on the warm,
wet, June sidewalk.
I still smell the rain, different
here than anywhere else.

This poem is submitted to Poetically Friday at One Stop Poetry, hosted by Brian Miller. To see other poems about New York, please visit the site.

Painting: At the Sherry-Netherland, oil on board by Amy Stewart. Via Lost Coast Daily Painters.