his propulsive rage,
his crazy decapitated
metaphors that lived
one inside the other
like savage scroungers.
I liked his wild hunger
to smash the world
hidden inside each spat
out word. Most of all
I liked the rage, and
wrote him a fan letter
after I read his first book.
He invited me to lunch
in Berkeley, where he
taught Byron, of all people.
Why was he, someone
who spoke not one word
of English until he was six,
a nervous child of Yiddish
speaking immigrants, who
grew up in a tenement
on the Lower East Side,
teaching an English fancy pants?
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