Fred Whitehead - You're not originally from the area. Where were you raised? Gene Grabiner - The Bronx and Yonkers. F.W. - What brought you to Buffalo? G.G. - I was hired at UB in the Graduate School of Education to teach the Sociology of Education. F.W. - When was the first time you tried your hand at writing? G.G. - Wrote some pretty sophomoric and teenage angst poems in high school. F.W. - You were a professor at Erie Community College for quite a while. When did you start there? G.G. - Despite having written many scholarly articles, and after seven years there, I was denied tenure at U.B. because it was said that my work was "not published in recognized, refereed journals in the field.” Of course, the relevant questions are: whose recognition counts?, who are the referees? Academic freedom is a sometime thing. Fortunately, I got hired at ECC, where I taught for 30 years. F.W. - Have you taught elsewhere?
G.G. - UB, Everett Junior High, San Francisco Berkeley High School. F.W. - You attended Berkeley, I believe. What was it like when you were there? G.G. - The university was terrific. My professors were excellent and very supportive. Along the way to getting my PhD, I did a Master’s in criminology—not in a mainstream cop program, but in a program that asked the basic questions about crime, theories of crime causation, and how to reform the criminal justice system. I worked in two student-founded journals, was in a building occupation and, along with a few thousand other students protesting the Vietnam War, was tear-gassed from the air by the Alameda County Sheriff’s Department. F.W. - Is that when you started to think about politics and the effect they have on people? G.G. - Actually, I started thinking seriously about politics in college. But even before that, I was opposed to nuclear weapons and to war. F.W. - I'm pretty sure I know the answer, but where on the spectrum do you fall politically? G.G. - These are questions you are asking of poets? F.W. – Ha! I've been known to. G.G. - I am a socialist. F.W. – I lean a bit that way myself. I feel we are entering a very unstable period in our history. How important is poetry in getting the word out in respect to making people aware of the wrongs in society and how we can get back on the proper heading?
G.G. - I don’t think that poetry changes anything. It can inform, educate, and illuminate the issues of our times and our lives. Whether on the personal, societal, or global levels, and not always in a conscious or deliberate way, poetry, (and art, music, and dance), becomes part of the broader cultural struggle— which, itself, is an aspect of the underlying political-economic struggle. In a certain way, poetry can become the voice of history. F.W. - You have written quite a bit for journals and publications. What are a few of them? G.G. - Among other journals and anthologies, my work has been published in: Comstock Review, Slant, Connecticut River Review, Passager, Jewish Currents, Rosebud, Blue Collar Review, and J Journal. F.W. – I don't submit much to journals, going a different path for now. Do you submit your poems to many? G.G. - I do. F.W. - You just published a book of poems. What is it called and who published it? G.G. - My chapbook, There Must Be More Than Trigonometry, was just published by Foothills Publishing. F.W. - Mike Czarnecki does a great job with Foothills. Is this your first collection of poems? G.G. - Yes. F.W. - Buffalo has always had a strong poetic community; what do you think of what seems to be a pretty good uptick in activity in the local poetry scene?
G.G. - It’s terrific. And it’s vigorous and flourishing. I will say, however, that there’s plenty of teenage angst floating about. Also, in my opinion, since the Beats are done, I don’t listen much to the neo-Beats. I think that poetry is hard work; so, I wish more poets would work harder at their writing. I think that rap is very important since it brings us back to poetry’s origins: the metrical, spoken word. I have heard some excellent rap poets. I would like to see their words on the printed page. There seems to be a few divisions in the Buffalo poetry community: academic/extra-academic; white poets/poets of color; older poets/younger poets. But in general, and just because they are poets, there is also a lot of unity. Still, I would like to see much more multi-racial, multi-ethnic poetry. Inasmuch as we need that sort of unity in society, particularly to confront the issues we face, I would like to see that unity in poetry. That does not mean that different groups and traditions lose their identity. It just means that we have solidarity, and learn from one another’s traditions and voices. F.W. - Who were some of your early influences. Not just as far as poetry goes. G.G. - Langston Hughes, Lucille Clifton, Zora Neale Hurston, Leopold Senghor, Anne Sexton, Bertolt Brecht, Randall Jarrell, Gary Snyder, Alan Ginsberg, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Marge Piercy, Robert Bly, Ruth Stone, Herman Melville, Robert Herrick, Christopher Smart, Otto Rene Castillo, Pablo Neruda, Frederico Garcia, Lorca, Henry Roth, and the Chinese mountains and rivers tradition of Ch’an Buddhist poetry. Of course, there are too many more influences to mention. F.W. - Besides writing, what else do you enjoy doing with your free time? G.G. - I have been working on police reform in Buffalo for the past year and a half with The Partnership for the Public Good, and I remain an active Central Labor Council delegate. I also like to fish with my kids, and spend time with my new grandchildren whenever possible. F.W. - Getting some traveling in? G.G. - Just returned from giving a reading in Bath, NY. I may be reading soon in NYC as well as out west. F.W. - And many more around here, I hope. Thanks Gene! ![]() Here are some of Gene’s poems as well as links to a few of his published political essays. https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2012/10/29/romney-not-for-workers-labor-creates-the-wealth/ https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2015/02/07/aliens-and-humans/ https://talkingunion.wordpress.com/2016/06/15/worse-is-not-better/ Winesburg
Once, a man wrote a strange book full of prophecies & thwartings. It was so odd it might have wanted to be a book about white whales & doubloons, brassy still seas & survivors afloat. But it was its own book of desires & losses, of almosts & nevers, hot skin on skin for yearnings not realized. Really, a book of women who knew what they needed & men who did not know themselves. Reading it, you would think it was written yesterday; or maybe would be written tomorrow. The narrator was in the book but never there himself until he left & someone else told that tale. This strange book was lost in small towns in early Ohio; the sadness of its truths was discovered in the cities. Conversation with Seamus He’s got some fused vertebrae, long-haired orange cat I found under the cabin, maybe from being hit on the road as a farm kitten. He wheezes like me maybe from being abandoned in forest-winters, scrounging in the deep freeze. We discuss leaving this life. We concur. That is, I assume his not paying any attention is concurrence. We both stand in the same gold field on the balance beam between getting out of the here and now, or hanging around. Fingered When the slim disease came to Sing-Sing, the hacks would shove in dinner on metal trays with brooms: a quarantine shuffleboard. He had blotches on his face, or his teeth rotted or maybe he was queer, with a strange cancer-- worked in the kitchen. So when other cons burned his cell, he got administrative segregation, was sent to the hospital-- out of the narrow alleys of their lives. One time, this lifer met with the counselor, filled out a form, handed back the pen. She just sat there, pen untouched on the table. When the slim disease came to Clinton, hacks in the yard wore goggles, gas masks, gloves. In the beginning, AIDS fingered eight thousand when it came inside. All Eyes Are Upon Us Mother, mother There’s too many of you crying Brother, brother, brother There’s far too many of you dying --Marvin Gaye ...then they stomped John Willet as he lay on the sidewalk hands cuffed behind his back and shot Michael Brown who was on his way that fall to college Stop and frisk Stop and frisk and used a chokehold to kill Eric Garner who sold cigarettes one-by-one on the street in Staten Island and punched again, again in the face great-grandmother Marlene Pinnock as she lay on the ground then they stood around while an angry bartender pushed vet William Sager down the stairs to his death; maybe helped hide the security videotape then it was unarmed Dillon Taylor in Salt Lake City, and homeless James Boyd in Albuquerque and Darrien Hunt in Saratoga Springs, Utah-- how about that grandmother 96-year-old Kathryn Johnston shot to death in a SWAT team raid gone bad? then it was unarmed, homeless, mentally ill Kelly Thomas clubbed to death by three Fullerton cops left with pulp for a face in ‘73 in Dallas Santos Rodriguez was marked by officer Cain who played Russian Roulette with the handcuffed 12-year-old in his cruiser-- till the .357 fired ; Santos’ blood all over his 13-year-old handcuffed brother David and those cries of 19-month-old Bounkham Phonesavanh in whose crib the flash-bang grenade exploded Shelter in place Shelter in place or 41 police gunshots at immigrant Amadou Diallo who died right there in the doorway of his Bx. apt. Bldg. and that cop who shot and killed 7-year-old Aiyana Stanley-Jones as she slept and those Cleveland cops who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice who had a BB gun and gave him no first aid-- watched him die all those police with gas masks and helmets in Ferguson, Missouri telling the people don’t be on the streets after sundown Ferguson— still a sundown town maybe soon like a town near you with M-16’s, MRAP’s, armored personnel carriers-- in this war against the people Lockdown Lockdown Spare a Dime? i. Vast urban anacondas of the unemployed ripple muscular down sidewalks, around corners, under neon, past decorative awnings, window displays; past black-shirted cops ii. Relinquishing of keys, last click of that office door, final clang of a locker at the plant after the layoffs iii. Blue abandonment of that woman who worked on the line since her teens: where she met her boyfriend, married, kept house with him, raised three children, pledged the flag, was a church regular. She is left with a stack of address labels for mail that now will never again leave that neat, small suburban house, deftly taken by the bank. Hyena In that back corner of the zoo, hyena remembers & remembers the savannah, river flowing golden about her chest. The call of memory shudders from deep in that gristled throat. It rings in all our afternoons of gray drizzled rain. In this humid night, her awful jowl drips. Even in the muffled silence of deep winter, she calls & calls for her sisters. & in the heat of still summer hyena call bounces off the concrete zoo enclosure, caroms around the neighborhood. Howls that suffuse the air & hunt in our alleys, behind convenience stores, snaking around barber shops, stalking us in darkened theaters. She’s no laughing matter. Heavy-shouldered, slope-spined; bone-crunch jaws, checkered rough fur-- a checkered past. She longs for the return; when we were not the protectors we fancy. Now, in my sleep-fogged memory, that primordial throaty voice floats across thick veldt air: terror that keeps me close to jungle when I climb down, stand upright, take those first tentative steps away from trees.
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