Welcome to this page dedicated to the memory of a wonderful poet, Ray Pospisil ..........Updated 3/8/08
Ray Pospisil, a Brooklyn poet and journalist, died January 28 at his home after a fall. Pospisil, 54, was born in Bogota, Colombia, and early in his life moved with his parents to Union, New Jersey. He spent most of his life in New York City. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Rutgers University in 1975, Pospisil began his career in energy and environmental journalism in 1981 working for Fairchild Publications. In 1984 he joined McGraw-Hill and later became a freelance journalist, working for two years in the early 1990s in San Francisco before returning to New York. Until his death, he worked chiefly for McGraw-Hill's stable of energy publications, although throughout his career he worked for other publishers in the United States and the United Kingdom. It was poetry, though, that was his passion. Pospisil's poems, which he often read for audiences in the East Village and elsewhere in Manhattan, were intensely personal, filled with vivid imagery and ranging from the humorous to the harrowing. His work has been published by Lyric, Iambs & Trochees, The Newport Review, Rogue Scholars and others. In 2006, his chapbook of poems, Some Time Before the Bell, was published by Modern Metrics Press. A collection of his work is scheduled to be published in Ireland by Seven Towers Publishing in 2009. In recent years, Pospisil enjoyed tutoring immigrants in how to read and write English at the Brooklyn Public Library. He is survived by a brother, Carl, sister-in-law Mary, niece Brook and nephew Bryan, all of Daytona Beach, Florida. Other survivors include cousins Scott Fisher, of Hollywood, Florida; Joe and Irene Pospisil of New Jersey; and Sue Arave, of Columbia, South Carolina. The date for a memorial service has not been set.

Ray's guest book...NYTimes.
Please visit the Guest Book for Ray Pospisil.
Ray's obituary is in the Sunday Times Feb 3, 2008 in the small-type "notices' Ray's guest book link NYTimes.
Please click on this link to visit the Guest Book for Ray Pospisil. read or add entries
Back to Saturn Poetry...
Back to supolo.com . . .
This page will be updated again soon. Please come to the memorial on March 26 for poets, family and friends on Ray's behalf. Please Scroll Down for more info and video links...

 

 

Memorial Gathering on March 26 @ Nighingale Lounge 213 2nd Ave. @13th Street, NYC 7:30pm

If you have an idea of involvelment, question or suggestion
please email Su Polo

Below are 4 video links to Ray's performances at Saturn Series Poetry Reading available for view on the BamBamSlam.com web site.

1. Ray Pospisil, Amber Light 2. Ray Pospisil, Empire's End

Ray Pospisil, The Ten Commandments

http://beta.bambamslam.com/index.php?a=login

A Poem By Steve Bloom:

Ray is a character in the following poem which I wrote in 2006. He's not the first poet I mention (the featured reader on the evening in question) but the second one, my "fellow reader on the open mike." I thought it would be nice to share this with Ray's family and friends.

ONE STEP FORWARD

It is a night the featured poet
shows us how to put the super
back into superficial,
and nobody seems to notice my verses
especially not the new one I am trying out
for the first time.

One fellow reader on the open mike, however,
offers me words I expect to remember
forever.
And so I decide
that on this particular evening
poetry has taken another giant step forward.

Steve Bloom (Brooklyn, NY)

link to Michelle reading her poem
link to Michelle reading her poem
Back to main page . . .
Poem For Ray Pospisil By David Elsasser:

CHIAROSCURO
"Do your best, my nightmare snickers. What the hell, You've got some time before the bell.", Ray Pospisil, EXAM DAY

Your bell resounds, echoing
on though our nights-
the toll you thought would wait
a long day dreaming yet
tumbling us down into that blackness
you struggled to chart, lost and found
your way through time and again
by feel and tenacity.
But peeling for joy too
brilliance punching through
confounding gloom.
Black square after white, you
strove to game the whole board.
As quickly as light pierced dark
you smack into eclipse from sunlight.
Living in this chiaroscuro
hodge-podge of laughter and loneliness
insight and despondency
you watched illuminated angels
square-dance demon partners,
studying their steps, barking
the tune in peerless couplets
or eloquent blank verse.
Thinking there was time yet
you danced to get the steps down pat
relishing every do-si-do
time before the bell
a chance to tell it all,
you who told so well.

David Elsasser Manhattan, NY
Poem By Leigh Harrison:

WHEN POET'S DIE

When time has caught us
with our boots off
and the slow, steady reign of years
into eternity begins,
even poets pause

Uncertainty lies in the space
between life, and all else
that has been conjured,
between paths we walk
and the unknowable darkness.
Hesitant or canny, the poet digests
mood and moment, crochets ideas,
defines the unthinkable...
Sometimes we weep....

But when Death makes others
kneel and pray, the poet
sharpens tongue and writes --
And though galaxies will swallow
us whole into the memories
of those who loved us or feared
us, those who bestowed praise
or blame, who recall us with
anger or delight or desire,
who whisper our names
on moonless nights --
we will be enveloped in pillows
of infinite stars, take clouds
for beds in that seamless night...

Then let death come!
Not as the thunder of hoofbeats
under ochre desert skies,
but soft as butterfly wings
upon your cheek,
sweet as dew-drizzled lilacs,
light as winged hope ascending...
O let it be a rolling dreamless
iambic sleep....

(c.) 1993
www.leighharrison.com

Leigh Harrison (Rego Park, NY)