Carol Bergman

President Obama had his last press conference of 2016 and this is my last blog post of 2016. Our President looks weary and so am I. But it’s the holidays and we are implored to make merry, to be grateful, to put all our worries aside. Not possible. According to my husband, an historian, the election just past was an American Tragedy. This from a man who rarely gets depressed.

Holidays. There will be presents, a sparkly tree, good food and good company (Canadian, British, American), a romp or two in the snow, a drive over a gorgeous mountain range. I will stop and snap some photos. The air will be fresh, good people will embrace us upon arrival. Our daughter’s dogs and cat will be happy to see us and vice versa. All good cheer, but not enough this year. I need more: a schemata, a plan, a writer's resolution.

Here it is:

I will write continuously and consistently about any threat to free speech, a woman’s right to choose, bigotry, deportation, hate crimes, threats to Social Security. Many areas of day to day life will be under siege. I cannot list all of them here. First up, already in draft and sent out to readers, an essay about my back room abortion before Roe v. Wade (1973) the law that is now under threat by a soon to be stacked Supreme Court. Dear Reader, I will let you know when it is published.
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Oh, how the mind wanders, connects, obfuscates and clarifies. Not necessarily in that order and mostly when I am moving, usually in the water, sometimes on dry land. This strange juxtaposition of thoughts occurred to me on the A train yesterday. I had been reading Philip Roth’s “American Pastoral,” a prescient and disturbing book. It’s my second Roth in several months. First up during the election was “The Plot Against America,” also prescient and disturbing.

Though Roth overwrites and his machismo grates, I have never put down one of his books. His most recent—shorter—books, “Indignation” and “Nemesis” are masterpieces.

Page 87 of “American Pastoral”: “People think of history in the long term, but history , in fact, is a very sudden thing.”

That thought has stayed with me all week. But how did it connect to “poetry is kind?”

The progressives among my readers will understand: we’ve been hit by a 2x4, e.g. “history is sudden.” And even those more centrist will agree, we’re headed for a bumpy ride. Every day there is more bad news about an inappropriate, dare I say—cruel-- appointment to head a government agency. Worse, this election, like the 2000 election, may have been stolen. As I write this morning, President Obama has announced an investigation into Russian cyber interference. The accusation is no longer “notional.” It is certain.

Now for the second phrase: poetry is kind. What do I mean to say? That poetry is consoling, most probably, particularly in a confusing moment in history or our personal lives.

I have been collecting poetry in a designated notebook ever since I joined a writer’s group with three poets. I had been working as a free lance writer for Holt Rinehart & Winston and one of my editors there was trying to write fiction. So was I. She was starting a writer’s group and asked if I’d like to join. “What about a couple of poets?,” she asked. I think my only thought was: why not? I was in for some big surprises.

Unconcerned with linear narrative, poets think in images and connect ideas as, yes, juxtapositions, just as I have here today. My linear narrative prose illusions were shattered and I began to write more freely. It was grand. Since then, I’ve returned to reading and writing poetry regularly, sometimes daily. I have a poetry app on my electronic devices and continue to build a personal anthology. But when I mention the word “poetry,” to my students, they often glaze over.

They are mostly young, eager and thoughtful. To a person, they were hit hard by the election, hope shattered. They were shocked one week, angry the next, a predictable cycle of grief. Then came depression, a subdued entry to the classroom, nearly catatonic. So, this week, I brought in some poetry and read a selection for thirty minutes before we got to “work” critiquing their manuscripts. “Let your mind drift. Relax,” I said. I assigned prompts from lines in the poems—two minutes each. “Try not to ‘think,’ I said as you read what you’ve written aloud.”

I don’t know if the poetry and the prompt exercises helped. I hope they did because I care so much about my students and their progress as writers. And I feel strongly that older adults—parents, educators—have an obligation to be supportive guides in grave and challenging moments. We have more perspective, more experience. But if my students needed reassurance, I did, too, of course. By encouraging them I was lifting my own spirits. In the end, we shared our wisdom, our resilience, and the life-affirming poetry I had brought to class.  Read More 

We’re here to celebrate the publication of “Nomads 3,” the final volume of my Nomads Trilogy which will be published in one volume in the New Year. These writings began as an experiment and became a project. I’ve learned a lot, found joy and struggle in the writing, and stand before you tonight satisfied that the trilogy is complete.

It will be more necessary than ever in the coming months and years to find solace, empathy and insight from art. The Nomads Project is one writer’s modest contribution. As a writer, it’s my mandate to observe keenly, feel deeply and do my best to transform observations and feelings into artful prose. Just as importantly in the coming months and years, is a promise to remain active in the protection of a free and vibrant press. I am a child of refugees. The privilege of having been born here is an accident of history. I do not take that privilege lightly.

I have promised you a serene evening and to that end I have with me two professional theatrical friends—Stephanie Stone and Constance George (their bios are on back of the programs I have placed on the tables.) And though we designed the program together, and I wrote the pieces you will hear them read, and as they are artists in their own right, I have entrusted them completely with their own interpretations. Therefore, the evening is a collaboration with them and with you, the audience. Once they appear on this stage, my work no longer belongs to me. I dedicate it to everyone here tonight, to all my readers, and to the next generation. May they live in a kinder, safer and more peaceful world.  Read More 

Thanksgiving Day in Ulster County, NY. Because all the “Crooked Hillary” election signage was down, the “STOP” signs at the intersections suddenly stood out in high relief: stop, move on, they seemed to say.

I had left the ten-year-old German Pointer at the house and was walking my daughter and son-in-law’s adorable new rescue—part Husky, part German Sheperd we think--when I spotted a small blue car parked alongside the road up ahead. A man in full camouflage was storing his gear in the back seat. I heard gunshots in the distance and slowed my pace. As we were on the road, not in the woods, I hadn’t thought to put on neon colors and was wearing a black Gortex. Hunting season, oh dear. I had forgotten and so had everyone else in the house! All that cooking amd savory aroma was distracting.

Thank goodness the new puppy has light fur, I thought. He is learning to be obedient and stayed close to my left side. I praised him and then stopped completely. I was now about 20 feet from the blue car. I hesitated and almost turned back. But why was I afraid? I was afraid because, since the election, there has been violence. I was afraid because there are venal racists who speak in tongues similar to Nazi tongues, venal racists who are taking power in Washington. I was afraid because my family is Jewish, I could easily be taken for Arab, and because most of my ancestral family was murdered in death camps. I was afraid because the KKK endorsed our president-elect.

I recalled my first visit a decade ago to this “Trumpland” rural area, long before Michael Moore might have dubbed it “Trumpland.” My daughter and son-in-law’s house is next to a fire station. It’s an all-volunteer fire department and there are regular pancake breakfasts to raise money. We went to our first one, tried to strike up conversation, and were completely ignored. What was going on? City invasion was going on, the city/country divide more like a chasm since the construction of the Ashokan reservoir flooded twelve towns at the turn of the 20th century to satisfy the water supply of "city people.” That was bitter and long lasting, communities displaced and eracinated, graveyards unearthed and shifted.

At first, the locals did not know that my daughter and son-in-law were here to stay, that they were not city snobs. Thankfully, they would not be outsiders for long though the political divide, at times, is still stark. Nonetheless, they don’t argue or confront; they behave as good neighbors behave, helping out in a hurricane, coming to the rescue of a neighbor who fell down some concrete steps, becoming anti-fracking activists for the benefit of everyone’s water supply.

Now I could see that the man was young and that his camouflage was crisp and new. That was reassuring in some way. This was not a man breaking the law. Everything about his movements as he stashed the gear into his car and took off his jacket seemed sane and careful. But he was obviously not huting alone as I could still hear shots in the distance. I walked closer and wished him a Happy Thanksgiving. He turned to me and wished me the same. He had a cherubic face, a face that I could not imagine killing anything. And though I do not eat meat myself, and object strenuously to raising meat to be killed for food, I with-held my judgment. Hunting in New York State is strictly controlled by the Department of Environmental Protection. One turkey of either sex between November 19 and December 2. That’s it. These were wild turkeys, after all, I told myself, in a mostly poor, rural area, the very American heartland that East Coast intellectuals ignored in the recent election to their/our peril. Since then, like so many other democrats—small d and big D—I have been on a personal crusade to close the divides and understand what has happened.

As an experienced journalist I am accustomed to getting into the thick of everything, to ask questions and listen with grave attention to the answers. Why should Thanksgiving Day be any different? “Did you manage to catch a wild turkey for the Thanksgiving table?” I asked. The young man said, “yes,” and smiled. Could his family afford a store-bought turkey, I wondered. Were they relying on his prowess like the original 17th century Dutch settlers? Like the Cayugas or Onondagas who were here before them?

Those thoughts—stretching back into our colonial history—humbled me. And humbled I shall try to remain.  Read More 

Il était une fois: once upon a time. This is the French “word of the day” that popped up in my email this morning. How quaint considering the outcome of the election. I have started to fill in the blank, as follows: Once upon a time women could not vote. Once upon a time slaves worked the fields and built the White House. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, gay marriage was against the law. Once upon a time, not so very long ago, interracial marriage was against the law. Once upon a time my refugee parents found safe haven in America.

And so on.

We all have our personal election stories to tell and many of them will continue to be troubled and troubling. For our personal health and well being, we have to regain our balance quickly. We all have friends, neighbors and family who have different religious beliefs, different politics, different priorities and challenges. Maybe they refused to vote, or voted for a third party on the ticket and this infuriated us. Maybe we stopped calling them and they stopped calling us, or we unfriended them on Facebook without warning or explanation.

As writers, it is our mandate to observe deeply and to build verbal bridges, not walls. Not to normalize the abnormal, I am not suggesting that. Nor to soften hardship or pretend all is okay when it is not okay. But to be able to continue a conversation, not to shut it down, that is what a writer must do, what we all must try to do in the coming months and years.

First things first, I wrote to my student, Valerie Pepe. For two years we worked on her book “Deformed; My Remarkable Life,” which has just been published. I knew a while ago that Valerie and I did not share the same politics; she supported Carson, I supported Bernie Sanders. I never discussed our choices, never brought it up, never responded to her stories about Carson. But, recently, we became Facebook friends. I usually keep my personal FB page private and suggest that my students “like” my Carol Bergman: Writer professional page. But sometimes these boundaries are permeable. My company had published Valerie’s book, we had worked together for more than two years, she is a mature and special person. I said yes.

I knew that I could hide my long post-election Facebook post from Valerie, but I decided not to do that. Instead, I sent her a private message:

"I don't allow many students to become my FB friend. You have been special. But we don't share the same politics. I have known this since you told me you supported Carson. You will read my post this morning and realize my dismay at the election results. I hope we will be able to talk about it."

Gracious as ever, Valerie wrote back to me immediately:

"Our Friendship comes first over anything political. Everyone has the right to believe in what they want. Miss you lots. I have a book signing tonight! All the best, Valerie"


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I’ve never enjoyed mythology, fairy tales or biblical stories nor have I –consciously—used any such references in my writing. I have not had a classical education, never learned Greek or Latin and was terrified by the grim Grimm Brothers Fairy Tales my European parents read to me. “The child intuitively comprehends that although these stories are unreal, they are not untrue ...” wrote psychologist Bruno Bettleheim in his book, “The Uses of Enchantment.” Exactly. And so it struck me as bizarre to find myself conjuring the character of Jezebel—that wicked, controlling woman from the Book of Kings --in an attempt to understand the unrelenting demonization of Hillary Clinton. Beyond the objective reality of her political and personal “mistakes,” why has she been so vilified? Why have those vicious accusing words “crooked,” and “liar” stuck to her and not come unstuck. She has been portrayed as a demon and as Satan himself.

I am reminded of Marie Antoinette’s fate during the French Revolution. Long before she was beheaded, she had been lampooned and stripped of her royal dignity in “libelles,” the tabloid scandal sheets of the day. Many of the writers were hacks tempted by money, without conscience or professional ethics. Gossip and rumor titillated a willing public fearful of the Austrian princess who had arrived in Paris to marry Louis XVI at the age of fourteen. Pornographic images of the Queen often accompanied salacious text. She was accused of stupidity, sexual deviance and treason. Surely, her entourage were all spies for her Hapsburg relations, these spin masters wrote. The constant repetition of words and images ignited a deep mythic fear in the French populace. It remains to this day. Ask anyone about Marie Antoinette and they will probably know nothing about her artistic achievements, her courage, or her devotion to her children.

How can we, as writers and journalists, begin to rewrite the false myths and false analogies we have been pummeled with in this election? Because it isn’t only Trump supporters who believe that they are true; I know Democrats who would never vote for Hillary. These educated “liberals,” believe everything they have heard or read about her. She is a lesbian, surely, one male friend said to me without blinking the other day, which, he implied, is much worse than being black. He is either going to abstain, or write-in a candidate, or vote for a third party candidate. I have tried to persuade him that he is deeply mistaken but I haven’t, as yet, been able to find the right words.  Read More 

Alexis Manzano has no internet footprint, no day job he’ll admit to, and no ambition other than writing poetry and living and working in the presence of poets and travelers. A traveler is anyone who passes his makeshift office at the edge of the park between 84th and 85th and Fifth Avenue on the sunny autumn day I found him. The location may change, but Alexis’ vocation does not. He works intently. He does not ask for money, only donation. Money and donation are not the same. Poetry is free, as the sign says.

A small young man with a cherubic face, Alexis composes his poems on a brown Olympia typewriter set gingerly on a folding table. A sign “Free Poetry” is propped in front of the typewriter; he sits with his back to the playground facing the cobbled sidewalk. He has a gossamer shawl regally tosssed around his shoulders to protect him from the light wind. He resembles a scribe or seer from antiquity.

I watched with curiosity as Ana Pearson settled into the visitor’s chair. Ana, from Argentina, is studying to be a translator so, by definition, she is interested in words. She presented her prompt: home. Alexis got to work. When he was finished, the poem covered two very small pieces of paper which Alexis clipped together. Here is his free mattress poem:

number of sidewalks/i’ve strolled past/exceeds all my gloved fingers
all the still trees/overarching silence/and what daydreams/have dissolved or popped over time
and judging by the life/span of this purple land
many thousands of brains/have explored these sidewalks
and surprised/that I haven’t collapsed/upon the concreted covered/by jagged shadows
i further the soft soles/up down/until
i forget what a mattress under ceilings felt like.

“Alexis, why haven’t you signed the poem?” I asked.

“Because I want the person to forget all this,” he said gesturing to the table, to the typewriter, to the air. “All that matters is the poem. Here is the poem.”

He handed it to Ana who seemed pleased to have such a personalized poem written to her prompt. It would be a souvenir of her sojourn in New York.

I have had some email exchange with Alexis since that day. When I mentioned that I taught at NYU he asked if there was any chance he could audit a poetry class. He’d been a student in the Creative Writing Program at Hunter, his father had gone to NYU, he had grown up in Harlem. Had he completed the program at Hunter, I wondered. He wouldn’t say. So many young people have to drop out of school for economic reasons these days. An NYU audit does not seem likely though he could attend readings, I told him. I then steered him to City Lore on the Lower East Side. Its founder, Steve Zeitlin, a reknowned folklorist and daily early morning poet, has just written a book called “The Poetry of Everyday Life,” which I know Alexis would enjoy.  Read More 

I was on the radio last night with my student, Valerie Pepe. Her book, “Deformed; My Remarkable Life,” has just been published by our family-owned company—Mediacs.com—so this blog post is by way of celebration and thank you to Bill Russo of City World Radio for inviting us onto his show.

I hadn’t been on the radio since I was interviewed by Leonard Lopate when “Another Day in Paradise” was published. There were four of us in the studio that day: Iain Levine and MacKay Wolff, contributors to the book, yours truly, and Leonard Lopate. Four chairs and microphones in close proximity, headsets on, voices clear, deep concentration as questions are asked and answered. Pauses are not acceptable on the radio, they are called “dead air,” so one must be alert and swing right in. Listening is as important as speaking in a radio studio.

Leonard Lopate is an exceptional person and interviewer; he’s always well prepared. Of course, he has an excellent staff as back-up; he doesn’t work alone. Bill Russo does. He’s retired from the New York City Housing Authority and radio is his avocation, among many other pursuits. His program is scheduled once every-other-week so he has time to read-up on his studio guests and generate an interesting conversation interspersed with music. He relies on the engineer—Jade Zabric—to get the timing right and Aimee Duggar, who sat to his left last night, to provide a light touch.

Russo was impressive. He’d read Valerie’s book and quoted a passage or two, he’d read my resume and was interested in the writing process, how Valerie and I worked together over a period of more than two years, meeting for our discussions at the Hollywood Diner on 16th and Sixth Avenue where Valerie, who is on crutches, found respite as she walked from her downtown office on 9/11 with her co-workers. We joked that the diner should put up a plaque and so should all the other diners where Valerie writes. Because she now writes all the time and everywhere.

I began my connection to radio as an occasional reporter for the BBC in London and then went on to study radio production in grad school. But I’d forgotten how much I love the intimacy of the radio studio. Just the sound of well-chosen words and the resonance of the human voice.

Scroll down to Bill Russo 10/17/2016 to hear the show:

http://lightningstream.surfernetwork.com/Media/player/view/CWRN_gsl.asp?StreamingServerName=nick11&OnDemandServerName=nick10&targetWidth=1000&targetHeight=800&call=CWRN&od=0

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I went to see the Diane Arbus exhibition—her early work—at the Met Breuer last week. The arrangement made me dizzy—free standing syncopated columns. But walking through them, around them and, sometimes, into them, I began to experience the photographs in a new way. Many of the images have become iconic so the unusual curation was necessary to witness anew the work of a controversial photographer. She was a “super recognizer” of what used to be called freaks, people living on the edges of life, who may or may not have had mental or physical deformities. Arbus asks us to know and accept them, as she has done, and to reflect on our own afflictions. She grew up in a privileged world where suffering was kept at arms length and rarely acknowledged. What was her quest? I believe she wanted to find an affinity with the suffering of others so that she could feel her own—and to acknowledge it with her camera. Sadly, she took her own life in 1971 at the age of 48.

Not every artist or writer lives as intensely, of course. At the very least, we observe differently—with a heightened sensibility like the marginalized freaks in the Arbus portraits, like Arbus herself. And what we produce is far from perfect. Maybe the rendering isn’t clear enough, or we’ve faltered in our understanding, or we’ve made errors of judgment, or gotten a chronology wrong, or our readers/viewers take offense. They may even assert that we have no right to tell their story in concert with our own. And though our eye penetrates and the heart is full, a negative response is always startling.

Years ago, when I began “Searching for Fritzi,” the memoir about my Viennese family and the genocide that had killed nearly all of them, my mother did not want me to write the story. Our famous cousin, an Oluympic ice skating champion, had disappeared during the war. What had happened to her? It didn’t take long for me to find out. Fritzi had married a Japanese national and spent the war years in Japan. Worse, she had entertained German officers when they visited the Japanese High Command; she was a collaborator. My mother feared that Fritzi would sue if we exposed her even though the facts had been corroborated multiple times. Nonetheless, my mother’s intuition was correct because she had grown up with Fritzi Burger, watched her become a celebrity, and knew that she would not tolerate a tarnished image.

Fritzi had died before the book was published but her son and grandson were still alive. Both of them threatened to sue. The threat itself—like terrorism—was enough to scare me, of course. What writer has the money to go to court to defend a libel suit? None that I know. But I checked and double-checked what I had written and I still stand by it. The book has had legs—it found it’s way not so long ago to a library in Berlin and was taken up by a scholar there who has lived in Japan and speaks and reads Japanese. He’s dug even deeper, pulled articles from contemporary newspapers, and continued the examination of Fritzi Burger’s war years in Japan. I’m gratified by his attention to this piece of history.

Like Diane Arbus, who also was a writer, I write to see, to understand, and to share whatever insight I’ve managed to attain about subjects that others cannot or will not write about. If I allow any kind of prior restraint—whether it is a wish that I not write about a certain subject, or a warning that if I do I might be sued, or a request to read the copy before it is submitted, I could not continue being a writer. Of course, there are extenuating circumstances—when we write about loved ones, for instance—but they are few and far between. And, even then, we should pause before we hand over copy.  Read More 

A respite today from the election and international bad news as I prepare for two writing workshops this week. I love teaching and meeting my new students. So here's a post I wrote before the Chelsea bomb blast and the first presidential debate. I hope that my readers who are not writers will find metaphors--boundaries, for example-- buried herein:

Palimpsest: A manuscript or piece of writing material on which the original writing has been effaced to make room for later writing but of which traces remain.

I worked hard on a blurb for the jacket of a book. It was a commissoined writing job from a publishing house and there was no reason for me to take ownership, to feel pride, or to demand anything. So when the editor completely rewrote the blurb and said, “pretty good, huh?” I could and should have felt nothing. It wasn’t my book, it wasn’t my publishing company, it was just a job. But I couldn’t let it go. I felt resentful. He’d used my flair and expertise and made it his own just enough to claim it as his work. Traces of my work were there. They had provided inspiration and I could still see my well-wrought phrases inside the editor’s sentences.

I’d been working with the editor for a while and knew that he was a frustrated writer. I might have had compassion, but I didn’t. I said something mean and then regretted it. Not only on a personal level, but professionally. This guy was not going to hire me again.

Then there’s the story of one of my writer’s groups many years ago, or a writer’s group that failed instantly, I should say. I’d gathered some colleagues I didn’t know well for an introductory evening of discussion. Everyone brought two pages of a work-in-progress, any genre. I had been writing poetry and printed out a still raw long poem, just a first draft, I said when it was my turn to present to the group. I skipped out to the bathroom as everyone was reading it silently to themselves and by the time I returned, they were all abuzz with comments. Except for one person. She remained silent. When everyone else was done, she handed me my manuscript which she’d scratched over with multiple suggestions, corrections and rewritings. “It would work better this way,” she said. My words were visible under her words but my connection to the poem was damaged. When everyone left, I tore it up, and even though it was still in a file on the computer, I never could go back to it.

It was my first experience of a writer/editor who thinks she’s being helpful by overwriting my work with her words.

Kingsley Amis talked about a bad editor as someone who “prowls through your copy like an overzealous gardener with a pruning hook, on the watch for any phrase he senses you were rather pleased with, preferably one that also clinches your argument and if possible is essential to the general drift of the surrounding passage.”

Most editors don’t want to make the copy their own, nor is every editor a frustrated writer. They are another breed altogether, as are fellow writers who think they know better than you do how to revise your work by stealing it from you.  Read More