If you're just aching to know where actor Bill Murray was the night of Thursday, September 24th, he was at the new offices of Poets House on the banks of the Hudson River in Manhattan.
Murray read a poem by Stanley Kunitz and one by Jason Shinder.
Evidently Murray is a fan of poetry because he attends Poets House events from time to time.
For those of you in NYC, Poets House's grand opening is tonight and tomorrow night.
10 River Terrace
New York, NY 10282
(212) 431-7920
info@poetshouse.org
Here's the Kunitz poem Murray read:
Halley's Comet
Miss Murphy in first grade
wrote its name in chalk
across the board and told us
it was roaring down the stormtracks
of the Milky Way at frightful speed
and if it wandered off its course
and smashed into the earth
there'd be no school tomorrow.
A red—bearded preacher from the hills
with a wild look in his eyes
stood in the public square
at the playground's edge
proclaiming he was sent by God
to save every one of us,
even the little children.
"Repent, ye sinners!" he shouted,
waving his hand—lettered sign.
At supper I felt sad to think
that it was probably
the last meal I'd share
with my mother and my sisters;
but I felt excited too
and scarcely touched my plate.
So mother scolded me
and sent me early to my room.
The whole family's asleep
except for me. They never heard me steal
into the stairwell hall and climb
the ladder to the fresh night air.
Look for me, Father, on the roof
of the red brick building
at the foot of Green Street —
that's where we live, you know, on the top floor.
I'm the boy in the white flannel gown
sprawled on the coarse gravel bed
searching the starry sky,
waiting for the world to end.
You can read more of Kunitz here.

2 comments:
Geez, I'd kill for a Poets House here in Wisconsin... highly doubtful, of course, but one can dream.
I've been ingesting a pretty solid diet of poetry of late and a shrine such as Poets House would be quite a wonderful retreat.
Interestingly enough, in this world of mass marketed paperbacks, e-books, and mega-monolithic-motion-pictures based off toys and funny books, poetry may be the last outpost the written word, in its purest form, has anymore.
C'mon, if the Waffle House can franchise, why not the Poets House???
Hey, Jeff, a few years back, Poetry magazine got a $100M gift from a member of the Eli Lily family upon her death. The New Yorker magazine asked my friend (and poet) Kurt Brown what Poetry should do with the gift. We were joking about his response when I suggested they start a National Poetry League. Build poetry stadiums, have teams from different cities: The San Francisco Stanzas, the Houston Haiku, etc.
Unbelievably, I just found the New Yorker article in their archives here.
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