Here's a truck stop instead of Saint Peter's

A quick, pre-holiday hello

Friends, I got shoulder surgery 3 weeks ago, and I expected that my period of convalescence would offer a fertile stretch of creativity, in which I’d be dashing off posts, reading stacks of books, and producing podcast episodes to share here on Hey Pop. Instead I’ve basically been a couch cushion—running the ice machine all day, munching on xmas cookies, and bingeing episodes of Fargo. Oh well.

I have some stuff in the works for after the holiday break, but before we go, two things.

The R.E.M lyric in the post title has been rattling around in my head since I read the excellent NYT magazine cover story from a couple weeks back, written by my good friend Jon Mooallem. It’s a profile of Michael Stipe and very much worth your time.

I’m aware that “Man on the Moon”—the song that includes the lyric, “Here’s a truck stop instead of Saint Peter’s”—is about Andy Kaufman. But as I’ve been stewing on that line, it occurred to me that, taken out of context, it’s a perfect metaphor for the often frustrating practice of art. We sit down each day in an attempt to make something beautiful and meaningful, to create St. Peter’s Basilica—channeling Bernini, Michelangelo, Bramante, and Maderno—but most days we end up with a truck stop. Today is one of those days. This month is one of those months.

---

---

Finally, before we pause, below is a poem by Michael Donaghy, one of my favorites. Michael was born in the South Bronx to Northern Irish immigrants. Once addressing a conference of librarians, he said this: “I owe everything I know about poetry to the public library system and not to my miseducation at university… The Bronx, who knows, now it may be full of cappuccino bars and bookshops, but back in those days it wasn’t. My parents would say something like ‘go out and play in the burning wreckage until dinnertime,’ and I’d make a beeline for the library."

Michael was a musician, worked for a time as a doorman in New York, and eventually decamped for London, where he spent much of his adult life as a central figure in the poetry world. He died at age 50 of a brain hemorrhage, leaving behind his wife and young son, a devastating loss to literature and to all who had encountered him.

Jon Mooallem and I got to know him during his last handful of years. We were young poets hanging around the fringes of the poetry-conference scene (sort of like desperate gigolos hanging around truck stops, now that I think about it), and we got to study a bit with Michael, bask in his presence over beers at the pub, and record him reading his work. He was a deeply original talent and generous friend. Here’s a poem for New Year’s.

Refusals
by Michael Donaghy

Shooting their horses and setting their houses alight,
The faithful struck out for a hillside in Sussex
To wait for the prophesied rapture to take them
At midnight, New Year’s Eve, 1899.

But they knelt in the slow, drifting snow singing hymns,
Hushing their children and watching the stars,
Until the sky brightened and the cold sun rose white
Over the plain where their houses still smouldered.

Some froze there all day, some straggled back sobbing
To salvage what little remained of their lives.
Others went mad and refused, till the end of their days,
To believe that the world was still there.

Here, ten seconds to midnight, they join in the count
Over tin horns squealing in the bright drunk rooms.

---

Kim Addonizio and Michael playing dueling flutes at one of those poetry conferences, while I joined them on guitar.

Michael’s Collected Poems is out of print and has gotten pretty expensive, but his volume, Conjure, is still somewhat affordable and my favorite of his.

Enjoy the holidays, and see you in 2024.