Poet Dan Sklar is a professor of Creative Writing at Endicott College in Beverly, Mass. and a colleague of mine. Here is a slice of life he wrote about in Gloucester, Mass.

opinions

i’m standing outside the gallery thinking about bukowski and looking through the window at the people with wine glasses in their hand looking at the art and there are gloucester bums in there for the free wine and don’t look much different from the art lovers and i’m thinking about bukowski and his opinions which he had plenty of them and mostly correct in my opinion and next door is this big xmas tree sculpture made out of lobster traps with colored lights and buoys painted with things like a whale and a cat and a fishing boat and smiles and what not hanging all over it and you can walk inside and kids and people are walking in and taking pictures and two guys come along that look like working guys in blue jeans, plaid jackets, and  watch caps and they walk through and one says he’d like to live in there and the other says it would be a great club house for kids and they see me standing outside the gallery and they look in and say to me “you like that kind of art, the abstract stuff, looks like wallpaper” and i figure they are gloucester artists of the fishing boats and rocks and water and sky kind which i like too and they walk on quickly bumping into each other heading to the nearest bar even though i say there’s free wine in there they don’t ask me to come along and i’m thinking about bukowski looking in at the gallery where everyone is talking in little groups and looking at the art and everyone is happy and loves the paintings and more people go in and tell the artist how they love it and they are old hippies and art teachers and college administrators and bankers and writers i’m thinking how bukowski couldn’t stand robert creeley and charles olsen and the black mountain school or any school for that matter, but i say let them write what they want to write and if people like it then they do, he preferred the bums and fisherman and gamblers and bricklayers and factory workers to the so called poets and their schools, me too, and i’m thinking these things standing in the night gloucester air and can smell the terrific lobster traps.

 — Dan Sklar