Intersections

Cairo Traffic is the latest book of verse from Lloyd Schwartz, whose hegira through the creative community of Cambridge and Boston has taken him through poetry and criticism, theater and academia

by Chris Wright

HARVARD YARD: Schwartz participated in one of the university's most unconventional seminars when he attended Robert Lowell's weekly "office hours" during the 1960's. Lowell was "as serious about poetry as a minister would be about God" -- and he didn't think much of Schwartz's work.

When Lloyd Schwartz left New York for his new home in Massachusetts in 1962, he was in tears. "Crossing the Throgs Neck Bridge," he says, "I just hated it. I cried in the van, moving all this stuff to Cambridge."

Today, Schwartz says he wouldn't, perhaps couldn't, live anywhere else. But if Boston has undoubtedly made its mark on Schwartz, he has also made his mark on Boston. Though he considers himself primarily a poet, he is one of those eclectic literary figures who have become part of the city's fabric. Along with publishing three collections of poetry (including his latest, Cairo Traffic), Schwartz has written articles for the New Yorker, the Atlantic, and Vanity Fair. He is the director of the creative-writing program at UMass Boston. He is a long-standing classical-music commentator for National Public Radio. For 22 years he has been the classical-music editor for the Boston Phoenix. And then there was his brief, but auspicious, acting career.

In an age when specialization seems to be the keystone of success, Schwartz has thrived on a kind of footloose enthusiasm. "When I was a kid, I collected coins," he says. "I knew other coin collectors who wanted every single kind of dime or every single kind of penny. But I really wanted one of each, one of each different thing."

I have known Lloyd Schwartz since my undergraduate days at UMass and now work with him at the Phoenix. Recently, we spent a couple of days driving around Boston and Cambridge together, exploring the places where, for 38 years, he has sought to fulfill his love of different things.

Harvard University

In the heart of Harvard University, hidden away beneath Quincy Hall, there is an "airless, windowless" room with a history that belies its dinginess. It was here, throughout the 1960s, that one of the most celebrated poets of the 20th century conducted one of the most unconventional seminars in Harvard's history.

Robert Lowell's weekly "office hours," in which budding poets were invited to come and discuss their work, was a sensation among those lucky enough to know of their existence. Picture Madonna inviting aspiring singers over to her place for a sing-along, or Michael Jordan shooting hoops at the neighborhood park. "Anyone could come," Schwartz recalls. "Literally, people would walk in off the street with copies of their poems."

"It was a bit of a free-for-all," he says. "Anyone was free to say anything. Sometimes he would ramble and tell stories, but you craved them. You didn't want to just have him talk about poetry. He loved games of ranking: what are your five favorite poems? What are the five greatest lines ever written?" Sometimes, Schwartz says, the entire class would become transfixed by the end of Lowell's cigarette, upon which there often teetered a dangerously long column of ash.

"He was very funny," Schwartz says. "He loved jokes, and he loved wit and wordplay, but he was profoundly serious about poetry -- as serious about poetry as a minister would be about God. And he was absolutely ruthless in his criticism. He was always kindly, but he was absolutely tough-minded about what he thought didn't work, and there were certainly people who came in who had no talent at all. He would find a nice way of telling them. There were very few things he liked."

As a matter of fact, Lowell didn't like much of Schwartz's work. "On the whole, he didn't care for what I was doing," Schwartz admits. "I was using very plain language, and that was not his thing." There was one poem Lowell liked, however, a comic dialogue poem called "Who's on First?" "That," says Schwartz, grinning, "was really thrilling."

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Chris Wright can be reached at cwright[a]phx.com.