Parties pay the poet’s bills
The Harlem Line leads straight from here to Bronxville.
While I wait, I buy a can of beer.
      ÂÂ- “Grand Central,” from “A Boilermaker for the Lady,” by Yannantuono
That”™s Fred Yannantuono, the late-blooming bard and co-owner of County Chair Party Rentals in Mount Vernon. The beer will wait for tonight”™s commute home ”“ O to such a pleasant little world! ”“ from Grand Central. This early evening hour calls for a gin martini ”“ just one, ritually nursed with a chaser of water, to lubricate the red-scarfed poet”™s tongue for his Greenwich Village reading.
“Terrible, absolutely dead,” he says glumly as the happy-hour crowd gathers at the Cornelia Street Café. He is speaking of business at his family”™s 78-year-old rental service for party hosts in the affluent suburbs, not of the reviews and readers”™ reception for “A Boilermaker for the Lady,” his debut book of poetry that the New York Quarterly, sponsor of tonight”™s poetry reading, published in 2009. More light than lugubrious, though it has moving meditations on death and dying, it is a book “affectionately dedicated to everyone in the world except for my immediate family.”
“People aren”™t in a party mood,” he says, having greeted a pair of old Fordham Prep friends from Westchester who”™ve come into the city on a raw, damp night ”“ Bless the city, though it”™s bitter here! –  to applaud Fred”™s performance on the café”™s tiny cellar stage. “I don”™t know when they”™re going to come out of it. Or maybe the computer culture is going to quash it.”
He is speaking again of his business, though he sees the same digitally fixated, plugs-in-both-ears culture as a threat too to the ancient art and craft of poetry. On this night, though, the 63-year-old poet arrives early with his laptop and sets up a workstation below the café stage, enlisting Power Point to display his palindromes and limericks on a screen as background accompaniment to his reading.
To Idi Amin I”™m a idiot.
Try reading it backward. That”™s the title poem of an illustrated collection of palindromes by Yannantuono that New York Quarterly will publish this year. Fred, who reckons his poetry earnings at about $200 in the decade since he was first published, spent $10,000 out of his own pocket ”“ not the stuffed jeans pocket that daily harbors a folded sheaf of his typed and scribbled poems ”“ for the pen-and-ink illustrations. By way of consolation, his accountant advises it”™ll make a nice tax write-off on his 2012 return.
“I had two more acceptances the other day, bringing it to 272 all together,” says the bard who writes over dinner at his Bronxville home. Light Quarterly in Chicago has anointed the lingually adroit palindromist as featured poet in its next issue.
“It”™s the highest honor of my life,” he says, as Village poets and poetry lovers straggle into the cafe, having scratched up the $7 price of admission to the reading. For an honoree who claims in his author”™s bio to have been “fired from Hallmark for writing meaningful greeting-card verse” and to have “won a yodeling contest in a German restaurant,” it”™s hard to tell if he”™s serious.
“I keep about 40 submissions out there” circulating in search of a discerning poetry editor ”“ or one who “must”™ve been drunk,” as he suspected when his first acceptance arrived in the mail. Since his debut in 2001, “I”™ve had probably over 2,000 rejections ”“ 2,000 times people telling you to screw off.”
He has armed himself against rejection this evening.
“I numbered these poems in reverse so you know when this is going to end,” he tells his wine-sipping listeners, who have politely applauded two poets preceding him onstage. “I started with 15.” Fifteen and I promise we”™re out of here, he leaves unsaid.
Tennis. A lob? A rap? O, no. Parabolas in net.
That”™s “Palindrome for an Average Player.” The crowd follows the back-and-forth volley of words on the screen behind the poet.   Â
God tackles ibis, elk, cat, dog.
“People ask me how I do this stuff,” says the author of “On the Sixth Day Palindrome.” “You”™ve got to like words to do this”¦And you”™ve got to be crazy.”
“Are there any atheists in the audience?”
“Oh my God. There are lots of you. This must be New York City!”
Even an atheist might find amusement in Yannantuono”™s “Jewish Christmas Palindrome”:
Yo Ho Ho! Oh Oh Oy!
Fifteen and out. The audience rises, though not to clamor for an encore. Friends and admirers surround the gracious, flannel-shirted poet.
Start me chuffing northward through the station.
Get me whistling through the Bronx from here.
Get me headed straight back home to Bronxville.Â