Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room

“Til breath do us part…” Jack Hirschman has left the enormous room. December 13, 1933 - August 22, 2021

ONE DAY

One day I'm gonna give up writing and just paint
I'm going to give up painting and just sing
I'm gonna give up singing and just situated
I'm gonna give up sitting and just breathe
I'm gonna give up breathing and just die
I'm gonna give up dying and just love
I'm gonna give up loving and just write

           —Jack Hirschman

I am not quite ready to write about Jack. So this is baby steps. Snapshots of memory. There are some poets that one needs to step back and contemplate, and then reminisce—the sum total is not just the memories of physical events. But it’s a place to begin. The stories are how we begin to remember and also how we grieve. And that remembrance is the legacy.

I first met Jack at Caffe Trieste, which was his unofficial office. He was smoking up a storm. While he and my then boyfriend, John Oliver Simon, were talking of baseball, I zoned out. I was processing the fact that Bob Kaufman had just died, someone I knew from my childhood. A friend of my mother’s. I was haunted by his death. So as they discussed the game, I kept writing in my journal. I was surprised when Jack eyed me, and suddenly insisted that I read what I had written in my journal, and so I did. He sat back, and said wow, you’re a real poet. I was fairly new to writing but such direct affirmation from Jack made all the difference in the world. And I never looked back.

Phil Cousineau told a story about how Jack loved baseball (I’ve posted a few friends’ tributes below to savor for later). I had totally forgotten about that. One time John Oliver Simon and I were at a baseball game, I think it was the Oakland A’s. Mind you I’d never even been to a minor, or major league baseball game. So it was fitting that it was the Oakland As. And then there was Jack bellowing away. There was a whole row of festive cross-dressed poets in the stands—bedecked in both Oakland As and SF Giants colors. John was wearing the CPITS hand logo shirt. Everyone gossiping, quoting Lew Welch, and alternatively writing in their journals. The game was right lively from then on. I grew to love the metaphor of suspended time.

 

Use the link below if you want to share the photos.  When I posted the original link on various group pages (if a group is private, you can’t share photos or posts), Facebook dinged the link as spam and blocked it five times. But this link will post the photos.

Here is a link if you want to see more photos.