dumbfoundry

The other night, at the National Arts Club, a couple of hundred admirers of the poet Jane Mayhall got together for a reading from her work. (Her previous book came out in 1973; her new book, “Sleeping Late on Judgment Day,” has just been published by Knopf.) [...]

“We had remarkable lives, Leslie and I did. My first year at Black Mountain, I was walking down a country road, and coming around the bend was a very famous person. I knew instantly that it was Einstein. I thought, Life is going to be like this. He said, ‘Guten morgen,’ and I said, ‘Guten morgen.’ That night, there was a hot-dog party for Einstein, and the physics teacher interviewed him. He said, ‘Mr. Einstein, which is the most important, art or science?’ Einstein said, ‘No doubt about it in my mind, it’s art. Art must always come first, art and feeling.’ Life had this quality. I thought, If I’m starting with Einstein, where will it go? It was a feeling that everyone was together and was going to do the best thing. It was just being alive.”

This entry was posted by eeksypeeksy on Wednesday, March 17, 2004 at 8:59 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.