Rooting around in an old file folder I came upon this note from a quarter-century ago. I don’t know how it has followed me for so long, but it was a pleasant little surprise to rediscover this quick handwritten note to myself about a poetry reading of Samuel’s I attended at the Harvard Club, which later inspired a poem. Dear Samuel is no longer with us, but he continues to haunt us in the gentlest of ways.
Read “Samuel Menashe Reads at the Harvard Club” (from Still Life with City, 2022)
Marc Di Martino 
I love the exclamation mark after Harvard Club. You were clearly impressed either by the poet or the venue.
Well, Samuel was a friend of mine and so I was excited that he got to read at the ‘old boys’ club’, and that I was going to be allowed in as well, I suppose. The poem details my sense of uncomfortableness within those hallowed halls.
Yup. I get shy in those spaces too. Not my posse.
Not like we’re getting invited!
There was a time… Thank god, no more.