The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems

by Harvey Shapiro

The comprehensive collection of a master of the American modern form

Direct, informal, and richly evocative of his Jewish heritage and New York City home, Harvey Shapiro's poetry has occupied a unique place in American letters for over 50 years. This new collection brings together his latest work and much of his 11 previous collections, revealing the full arc of his carefully calibrated poetics. Shapiro engages themes including the immigrant experience, urban landmarks and lifestyles, family life, and war. The reader will see the more formal British-tinged cadences of his earlier work give way to the colloquial, personal nature of his later poems, and how Shapiro's candor and simplicity mark his work throughout the last five decades. Bringing the city and its balance of despair and exuberance into stark relief, this poetry is intimately attuned both to life's quiet disappointments and to its unanticipated miracles.

Genres: Poetry

Hardcover

First published February 1, 2006

About the author

Harvey Shapiro (January 27, 1924 – January 7, 2013) was an American poet and editor of The New York Times. He wrote a dozen books of poetry from 1953 to 2006, writing in epigrammatic style about things in his everyday life. As an editor, he was always affiliated with The New York Times in some capacity, mainly in the magazine and book reviews, from 1957 to 2005.

Reviews

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Poet Of New York City

I discovered the poet Harvey Shapiro in an unusual way through reading about Martin Luther King's 1963 "Letter from Birmingham Jail". Shapiro, the editor of the New York Times Magazine, had suggested that Dr. King write a public letter the next time he was imprisoned and then tried unsuccessfuly to get the New York Times to publish King's Letter when it was written. Many other papers and magazines subsequently published the letter. Shapiro died at 88 on January 7, 2013.

Born to immigrant and observant Jewish parents, Shapiro's first language was Yiddish. Shapiro enlisted in the Army Air Forces upon the United States' entry into WW II, flew 35 combat missions over Europe as a B-17 tail gunner and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. Following WW II, he spent most of his career as editor for the New York Times Magazine and New York Times Book Review. In 1983, Shapiro edited a Library of America volume on the Poets of WW II

Shapiro wrote 12 volumes of poetry between 1953 and 2006. They are collected in this volume, "The Sights Along the Harbor" (2006) which also includes a selection of new poems. With its over 50 years of poems, this book introduced me to the work of a poet I regret not knowing earlier.

Shapiro's work changed in character with the years. It developed into a highly personal, taut, and largely understated voice. His poetry owes a great deal to the poetry of Charles Reznikoff, who was a close friend of Shapiro's for many years. In its mysticism, religious searching and use of New York City symbolism, Shapiro's work was also deeply influenced by Hart Crane.

The poems are at their best when Shapiro describes the streets, subways, places, and people of Brooklyn and Manhattan, where he had lived and walked for most of his life. He describes Hart Crane's Brooklyn Bridge, neighborhoods, tenements and apartments, skyscrapers, subway stops, delicatessens, the old Women's House of Detention, and much more. Many of the titles of the poems evoke the subject matter, including, "Brooklyn Walk", "National Cold Storage Company", "The Synagogue on Kane Street", "Riverside Drive",, "In Brooklyn Harbor", "47th Street", "Happiness in Downtown Brooklyn", "Brooklyn Heights", "Meditation on a Brooklyn Bench", Manhattan in Summer", "Lower East Side", "Greenwich Village, 1999", and others. The poems have the feel of the city and of a poet who has walked and observed it intimately.

Shapiro was not a traditional Jew, but his poetry reflects on transcendence and on his orthodox Jewish upbringing. The Hasidic master, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav, appears to be a strong influence and appears in several poems. The poems include much reflection on mortality, particularly as Shapiro grows older. They are also full of the joy of an unabashed, robust sexuality, sometimes graphically expressed as in the long poem "Cynthia". Shapiro writes about WW II and his experiences as a tail-gunner. He has a great deal to say about the immigrant experience and his family. Many poems are about American poets who influenced him, including Whitman, Reznikoff, Hart Crane, William Carlos Williams, E.E. Cummings, and George Oppen. But his primary subject remains New York City.

Here is a short characteristic poem from the book titled "Through the Boroughs".

"I hear the music from the street
Every night. Sequestered at my desk,
My luminous hand finding the dark words.
Hard, very hard. And the music
From car radios is so effortless.
And so I strive to join my music
To that music. So that
The air will carry my voice down
The block, across the bridge,
Through the boroughs where people I love
Can hear my voice, saying to them
Through the music that their lives
Are speaking to them now, as mine to me."

And here is a poem called "Brooklyn" from late in the volume, as the poet reflects on his city while visiting Spain.

"The lights of two bridges
framed in my study window are more pleasant to me
because more constant to me
than the ornate lit cathedral
across from my hotel in Barcelona.
Let them be my memorial candles
when I am through with this world."

Shapiro is part of a long line of American poets who have examined the inner life while celebrating as well their own sexuality and the life of America's greatest city. I was glad of the opportunity to get to read Shapiro's work at last and to commemorate his recent death.

Robin Friedman