And I said, “Really? You mean you like my drawings?”
She said, “Oh, no. You’re the worst artist I’ve ever seen, but you have a natural gift here for writing rhyme and verse.”
I said, “But Miss Hirschman, I worked for six months on these drawings and two hours on these poems.”
She says, “Well, that doesn’t matter. You’re no good at this. You’re very good at that.”
And I said, “You really like my poems?”
She said, “Yes.”
I said, “That’s wonderful. Pay me.”
She said, “Well, no. It doesn’t work that way. This book is a little far-out. Do you think you could write about real animals?”
Well, it happens that I grew up in the Bronx, and I spent a lot of time when I was a kid going to the Bronx Zoo. Yes, I thought, I could write about real animals. She had me coming in about once a week. I was about 23 years old, and I’d bring her whatever animal poems I’d written. She had a little drawer just for me in her desk. Maybe I’d give her seven poems. She’d keep one, throw the other six out, put that one in her drawer, and then she’d take me to lunch. It would be the only decent meal I’d have in that week.
Well, after months and months of this, we were close to a book, and she took me to a really wonderful lunch and said, “Jack, I think we need five more poems to do a book.”
I was in despair. I didn’t think I had another poem in me. But I went back down to my illegal living situation - I was living in a commercial loft illegally - and there was a notice on the door - big red letters on white. It said essentially, “PAY UP OR GET OUT - 24 HOURS. THIS MEANS YOU.” It might have been 48 hours. It was from the U.S. marshal.
Well, sometimes people ask me what motivates me. That was a motivator! I went to my friend Harry’s house and got about two quarts of black coffee, went back to the loft, and I started writing. I stayed up all night, and didn’t sleep at all. By morning, I had written six poems.
It was a Friday. I had no money. I had to walk to the publisher. I didn’t make an appointment, because I couldn’t call the publisher. My phone had been disconnected. So, I walked into the publisher, stormed in, and said, “Susan, here are six poems. Take ‘em or leave ‘em.”
She looked at them and said, “Wow. This one, this one, this one, this one, and this one. This one’s not so good. We have a book!”
“We have a book? That’s wonderful. Pay me.”
