The Bronx Trilogy

By W.R. Rodriguez

Three books of poetry inspired by The Bronx. The entire text of: "the shoe shine parlor poems et al," "concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx," and "from the banks of brook avenue."

• Language: English
• Publisher: W.R. Rodriguez
• Release date: Aug 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370184521

W.R. Rodriguez

W.R. Rodriguez grew up in the Bronx where he worked as a bootblack in the family shoe shine parlor. He moved to Madison where he earned an M.A. in English and taught high school for over thirty years. The urban environment has been a major source of his writing: “Although I left The Bronx decades ago, it has not left me. To give ironic tribute to the Romantics, I regard the streets and tenements as worthy subjects of art. I enjoy creating poetry from my memories of people, places, and events, as well as from research and imagination. Also, I want my poems to work on the page and to have a strong voice if read aloud.”His poetry has appeared in magazines such as Abraxas and Epoch, and in anthologies such as The Party Train, Welcome to Your Life, and Editor’s Choice III. Articles about his family’s experience in The Bronx were published in The Bronx County Historical Society Journal.W.R. Rodriguez is the author of several books of poetry. His latest, from the banks of brook avenue, is an evolution of the work he began in the shoe shine parlor poems et al and developed in concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx.

Book preview

The Bronx Trilogy

Three books of poetry inspired by The Bronx

the shoe shine parlor poems et al second edition

concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx

from the banks of brook avenue

Zeugpress/Smashwords Edition

Copyright information

Table of Contents

The three books of The Bronx Trilogy are presented here in one collection.

I chose to use the second edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al as it includes a bibliography of previous publications and a preface which discusses the book and introduces the Trilogy.

This is a list of previous editions of the individual books:

Print Editions

the shoe shine parlor poems et al. Ghost Pony Press, 1984.

concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx. Zeugpress, 2008.

from the banks of brook avenue. Zeugpress, 2016.

Electronic Editions

the shoe shine parlor poems et al. Zeugpress: Smashwords Edition, 2014.

the shoe shine parlor poems et al: second edition. Zeugpress: Smashwords Edition, 2016.

concrete pastures of the beautiful bronx. Zeugpress: Smashwords Edition, 2014.

from the banks of brook avenue. Zeugpress: Smashwords Edition, 2015.

The poems in this collection are copyrighted and registered with the U.S. Copyright Office.

Please do not use them without first obtaining permission from the author

Contact information is available on the author’s website: http://www.wrrodriguez.com

If you visit the site, you can learn more about the author and listen to him read the poems.

© 1984, 2008, 2015, 2016 w r rodriguez

All rights reserved

ISBN: 9781370184521

Zeugpress/Smashwords Edition

Main Table of Contents

Table of Contents

The Bronx Trilogy

The Bronx Trilogy Title Page

The Bronx Trilogy Copyright Page

the shoe shine parlor poems et al

SSPPEA Title Page

SSPPEA Copyright Page

SSPPEA Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al

I: the shoe shine parlor poems

making it

the cop

the shoe shine poem

al’s pictures of old times

grandfather

coffee

blinky

the banana man

little spic & big man

the bust

jim

the long walk to bed

private rivers

II: et al

the moon does not linger

Something Fishy

the miracle

the old woman

late one hot august

the day i threw thoreau off the roof

they disappear

of bootblacks

what i remember most about hughes avenue

the accordion player

butch

weeds

the bronx at the end of the mind

SSPPEA Bibliography: Previous Publications

Concrete Pastures of the Beautiful Bronx

CPBB Title Page

CPBB Copyright Page

CPBB Table of Contents

CPBB Dedication

CPBB I

the bootblack

my little red fire engine

sledgehammer man

the spectacle

the cockfight bust

logic

the great american motorcycle boots

democracy

they told me not to sing

the malthusian theory

beyond the window

CPBB II

nightmare off bruckner boulevard

webster avenue

scratch park

off southern boulevard

the dharma express

the bronx vikings

jonas

gouverneur morris laughs from his grave

beyond the crying tenements

CPBB III

roosevelt’s bust

CPBB IV

saint mary’s park

fuzzy caterpillars

lost playgrounds

the seasons before

rosebud

flesh and blood

the trees of saint mary’s

CPBB V

pastoral esplanades

ferry point park

the subway grating fisherman

maples forever

crossing invisible streams

saint jude’s bazaar

CPBB Bibliography: Previous Publications

From the Banks of Brook Avenue

FBBA Title Page

FBBA Copyright Page

FBBA Table of Contents

FBBA I

forbidden places

a moon full and cold

just another new york city subway near death experience

yankee kitchen

the beach beneath the bridge

after seeing night of the living dead

on the coping

liberation: the brook avenue parking meter quartet

justice

she is leaving but

what could have more impact than a bus

plaza of the undented turtle

avenue b, 14th street, looking south

the push and chase and break of it

FBBA II

the third avenue el

standing upon the fordham road bridge

halloween

ne cede malis: poem for the seal of the borough of the bronx

washington comes to visit

grandfather: a photograph

bootblacks on the loose

al

p.s. 43

cypress avenue

skully

the tire man

a small but perfect world

the fountain of youth

FBBA III

welcome to the mainland

america’s favorite pastime

yankee fan

the gambling leaguers

lost again on old subways

randall’s island

triborough bridge: suspension

triborough bridge: stasis

triborough bridge: genesis

triborough bridge: kinesis

astoria park

the banks of brook avenue

FBBA Bibliography: Previous Publications

the shoe shine parlor poems et al

second edition

w r rodriguez

Main Table of Contents

SSPPEA Copyright Information & Acknowledgments

Grateful appreciation to the Mary Roberts Rinehart Foundation for supporting

the ccompletion of the original manuscript.

And thanks to Robert Stern for his friendship over the years.

The first print edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al was published by Ghost Pony Press

in 1984.

dedicated to my parents and to my wife

Acknowledgments:

Poems from this book appeared in the following magazines and anthologies:

Abraxas, Bronx Accent: A Literary and Pictorial History of the Bronx; Collage of 9 & 1; The Croton Review; Editor’s Choice III: Fiction, Poetry & Art from the U.S. Small Press (1984-1990); Epoch; Fistflowers: Poems of Struggle and Revolution; I didn’t know there were Latinos in Wisconsin I; I didn’t know there were Latinos in Wisconsin II; and The U.S. Latino Review.

© 1984, 2016 w r rodriguez

All rights reserved

Smashwords Edition

Main Table of Contents

SSPPEA Table of Contents

SSPPEA Title Page

SSPPEA Copyright Page

Preface to the Second Edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al

I: the shoe shine parlor poems

making it

the cop

the shoe shine poem

al’s pictures of old times

grandfather

coffee

blinky

the banana man

little spic & big man

the bust

jim

the long walk to bed

private rivers

II: et al

the moon does not linger

Something Fishy

the miracle

the old woman

late one hot august

the day i threw thoreau off the roof

they disappear

of bootblacks

what i remember most about hughes avenue

the accordion player

butch

weeds

the bronx at the end of the mind

Bibliography: Previous Publications

Main Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al

This book is dedicated to my parents and to my wife, and rightly so. My mother liked to talk, and passed on family stories, in elaborate detail, to me and to a variety of cousins. My father, whose family suffered through the Great Depression, and who worked his way up from office clerk to office manager, did nothing to stop me from avoiding a career in banking, or from foregoing engineering and declaring myself an English major. My wife does not define happiness and fulfillment in terms of money. If she did, she probably would not have married someone who wanted to write poetry.

Without assimilating my mother’s sense of detail, I do not know if I could write the way I do. Without my father’s tolerance of my youthful decisions, I might never have become a teacher of high school English, which allowed me to pay the bills while pursuing my interests in literature and writing. And my wife, going to poetry readings and reading revisions of my work, has been my best emotional support and editorial guide over many years.

I wrote the first poem, making it, in a Bronx laundromat. I was in college and living at home. Watching the family laundry spin around seems an appropriate context for the poem’s inspiration. When I moved to Wisconsin, I began writing the cop, blinky, the bust, and jim. Like most of my work, they are based on true stories, but I often change the names of the leading characters. I was influenced by the Beats and by the Romantics, and it occurred to me that The Bronx was a worthy subject for poetry.

Among the first in my family to attend college, I had moved from the tenements of The Bronx to attend graduate school at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Having started my career as a bootblack, I was somehow fulfilling the Great American Dream. It seemed fitting to call my first book the shoe shine parlor poems et al.

The cover photograph, taken in about 1929, shows my aunt, my grandfather, three uncles (two biological, one adopted) and several customers. After the riots of the 1960’s, the glass windows were replaced with plexiglass portholes bolted into plywood. By the 1970’s, sneakers, sandals, and vinyl shoes made their impact, and the shoe shine parlor’s income declined.

My uncle recruited me into the family business when I was eleven. I began by washing the shoes. After several months I was entrusted with completing the entire shine. Shining shoes is often looked down on in America. But it is an honest job. One works hard, sees the results of his labor, and is paid and given a tip. I

was proud of being a bootblack. I built muscle, learned to interact with people, and used my savings to pay my share of college tuition. And I got to learn what was going on in the neighborhood without being directly involved.

So being a bootblack, and listening to my mother, and having a tolerant father, and an understanding wife (who also grew up in the South Bronx and who also was an English major) enabled me to write this book. I am indebted to these blessings, and also to Ingrid Swanberg, whose Ghost Pony Press published the first edition of the shoe shine parlor poems et al in 1984.

Much has happened in the decades since the first appearance of this book. My parents have passed. My children have grown and moved on. The Bronx has been rebuilt. I retired from teaching, but three decades of producing a high school literary magazine taught me how to do layout and gave me some practice in editing. In 2008, I spent the summer