Paul Pines

Hotel Madden Poems

In '62

  • Frank O'Hara said
  • he hadn't yet died
  • for art
  • but
  • spoke too soon...

  •                                    before
  • getting run over
  • by a Fire Island dune-buggy
  • so Alfred Leslie
  • could paint him
  • lying
  •                                   a Pieta
  • in the lap
  •                                  of a summer night
  •    *   *     his body
  •       '       ghostly
  •      ~       white
  • on sand awash
  • with headlights

  • No matter what
  • a man does
  • he should
  • I suppose
  • die simply
  • because it's the next step
  • on a journey
  • he may
  •    or may not
  •    continue

  •    like steps
  •    outside my door
  •    down a hall
  •    of empty rooms
  •    steps
  •    I hear
  •    have heard

  • behind the doors
  • of my life that
  • may be my own


    • Reviews


    Paul Pines's dedication to Hotel Madden Poems describes the book as a "fugue." That is exactly what this brilliant and compelling work is. Pines, a virtuoso of precision, knows that the word "fugue" contains two meanings. One comes from music…the other from psychiatry: a fugue is a period during which a patient suffers memory loss…The memory loss that Pines's poetic fugue embodies is America's; the metaphor he uses to symbolize it is the Hotel Madden.

    Lawrence Joseph - AMERICAN BOOK REVIEW