outlaw poetry and free jazz network

Miriam Halliday Borkowski | Photo by Jean Weisinger

I first met Miriam

at a poetry reading that happened monthly in an attic in New Brunswick, a small city in New Jersey, USA in the early 1980s. It was viewed as the ‘other’ reading in town, different from the ‘popular’ reading in one of the bars downtown. I thought it was the best reading around. Eight or ten people, who always had new stuff to read each month, who were talking about putting out books of poetry, or writing their first novel, or starting literary magazines. Among them were Miriam’s future husband, Matt Borkowksi, and John ‘Lunar’ Richey, whose work appears here in Outlaw Poetry. They were serious. They cared about the Word. One of the most serious was Miriam.

I remember these words bursting forth in a torrent from this tall, slight woman.

I remember how they looked on the page, zigging and zagging across it, with all these odd line breaks….that made perfect sense…..such vivid, colorful images… and words that hit all five senses.

Above all I remember the sense of urgency in her poems. There was a fierce sense of caring in her work, a caring that made you want to care too. The lines had such an crisis quality to them, as if they must be read and acted upon NOW. There was such a yearning, searching quality in the poems. To me, they all seemed like a continuous stream, a wild torrent. And she demanded you jump in and swim for it whenever you read her work.

For a few years, Miriam and her husband Matt lived up the street from me. I felt really fortunate to have them nearby. I remember dropping over there and discussing all these half-formed, half-baked ideas with both of them, late into the night. Miriam was always giving me stuff, new books to read, or poetry from another of the local poets she knew. I hardly remember leaving that house without something to read tucked under my arm. And she always urged me to read more than she had given me. Always mentioning new strange books I had never heard of. And when I rolled my eyes, urging me to read them anyway. Always challenging me to widen my horizons literarily. Always egging me on to try new things with my writing.

Even though her work and mine were so different from each other, we seemed to agree on a lot about poetry. Her work was so frenetic, so spiritual, full of vivid metaphor, so metaphysical. Mine was matter-of-fact, realistic, very work-bar-and-street kind of stuff, conveyed by simple images. My work was more limited really, still is. Yet somehow we connected whenever we discussed poetry or any other art. I think that’s because we were trying to get at the ‘underneath’ of the poetry, what went on behind, the force that drove it, what it meant and felt. I think that’s what we both understood, and that’s what helped form our connection and friendship. And better yet, it was a connection that we never talked about. It was more felt and understood at an intuitive level. We never even mentioned it.

That’s what I remember about Miriam
the most.

Ken Greenley, Denver, CO 11/17/09

some related articles are listed below:

1. miriam halliday borkowski | sleeping under giants in a cazadero forest
2. miriam halliday borkowski | johnnie & me
3. miriam halliday borkowski | come see the crack lines on julian in saint francis of assisi’s city
4. miriam halliday borkowski | point lobos sea poem for matt’s 42nd birthday san francisco
5. miriam halliday borkowski | sea poem for sarah on her 21st birthday and because she just graduated from the american academy of dramatic arts in new york city
6. miriam halliday borkowski | the drunk’s wife leaving the city
7. ken greenley | gasoholic
8. ken greenley | city playground
9. ken greenley | creed
10. ken greenley | don’t fall in
11. ken greenley | night shift poem
12. ken greenley | sacrifice
13. ken greenley | dead cans o’dad beer
14. matthew borkowski | hieronymus bosch comes to lavallette, n.j.
15. ken greenley | magnetic colfax
16. ken greenley | the bees don’t want that monsanto food
17. norbert blei | notes from the underground
18. eugenia borkowski | untitled poem
19. matt borkowski | laundromats
20. joe salerno | getting up for work III
21. gary goude | sad lives
22. todd moore | nightmare splender
23. todd moore | what are the stakes in american poetry?
24. john yamrus | i don’t know what it was
25. gary goude | jake’s dream
26. ronald baatz | I should’ve been a cowboy
27. todd moore | blood calls to blood
28. todd moore | outlaw bonfires and dillinger’s blood
29. todd moore | billy the kid in the theater of blood
30. ben smith | motion sickness
31. dave church | drunk radio poems
32. todd moore | the long way home and the blood on the floor
33. todd moore | stories, ashes, and fire
34. todd moore | the treehouse reading
35. todd moore | scratching it out street level for the poem
36. john macker | january 20, 2009
37. todd moore | how to survive the coming night: the poetry of john yamrus
38. todd moore | into the open madness: the poetry of kell robertson
39. todd moore | i’ll play dillinger
40. john yamrus | they’re winning, you know