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    Honestly
    Honestly
    Honestly
    Ebook52 pages35 minutes

    Honestly

    By Steven Zultanski

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The third book in a trilogy that explores the limits of individual expression, Honestly is an intimate, quiet, and unresolved little book about talking and listening.

    It begins with research into a forgotten relative who was kicked out of the author's family after he was jailed for conscientious objection to WWII, and who then moved to New York to become a composer. From there the poem swerves into a series of minor-key personal anecdotes, interlaced with conversations with friends about work and relationships. Throughout, communication is framed by the economics and psychology of the home. Dialogue takes place in close quarters—constrained by money, space, ego, and empathy.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookhug Press
    Release dateMar 6, 2018
    ISBN9781771664110
    Honestly
    Author

    Steven Zultanski

    Steven Zultanski is the also the author of Pad and Cop Kisser. He co-curates the Segue Reading Series and occasionally curates and edits other things too. He lives in New York City.

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      Book preview

      Honestly - Steven Zultanski

      9781771664103.jpgTitle page: Honestly by Steven Zultanski. Published by Book*hug, 2018.

      first edition

      Copyright © 2018 by Steven Zultanski

      all rights reserved

      No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

      Book*hug acknowledges the land on which it operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and most recently, the Mississaugas of the Credit River. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land.

      Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

      Zultanski, Steven, author

             Honestly / Steven Zultanski.

      Poems.

      Issued also in print and electronic formats.

      ISBN

      978-1-77166-410-3 (

      softcover

      )

      ISBN

      978-1-77166-411-0 (

      HTML

      )

      ISBN

      978-1-77166-412-7 (

      PDF

      )

      ISBN

      978-1-77166-413-4 (

      Kindle

      )

             I. Title.

      PS3626.U58H66 2018 811’.6 C2018-900360-X

      C2018-900361-8

      I never met my great-uncle, Dick Stryker.

      But about ten years ago, while visiting family, I found his copy of Joyce’s Ulysses; the inside cover was stamped with his name and the pages were dotted with marginalia.

      I asked my parents who he was, but it had been so long since anyone had mentioned him that they could barely remember the rumors: he was a pianist and a composer; he was jailed for being a conscientious objector during World War II; he spent two years in a prison in Ohio; his father kicked him out of the family; he moved to New York; he was gay; he was an alcoholic; at some point, he burned his face off somehow; he might have been homeless for a time; he refused to have anything to do with his family.

      I wanted to know more, I wanted to feel a slightly stronger mild connection to this person I’d never heard of.

      At first, it was hard to find information about him; as you might expect, his name is difficult to google.

      There are many Dick Strykers, and most of them are the pseudonymous authors of porn.

      But I did find a brief reference to our Dick Stryker—my Dick Stryker—participating in an early production by the Living Theatre, and this led me to the published diaries of its founder, Judith Malina, which contain frequent references to Dick.

      Turns out he was roommates with Malina and her partner and collaborator Julian Beck, and he wrote music for many of their early plays.

      Unfortunately, the diaries don’t provide many personal details, but the glimpses into the company he kept suggest that he lived an active artistic life, despite his eventual obscurity and disappearance: he hung out with John Ashbery and Frank O’Hara; he played one of the radios in the first performance of John Cage’s Imaginary Landscapes

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