MARTIN TUCKER
ROMAN VILLA: A Young Poet Visits His Patron
How clear the picture: she in her pink slip against the shaded palm window looks up at me as I step into the dining room. I have entered the space to avoid meeting her before I meet her announced. The polished checkerboard marble floor winks as I tiptoe out of the room. In a minute she will be told I am a surprise visitor, and she will ask, who, plaintively Tell me who, and I will not know if she saw me in that moment I entered before I entered announced. She keeps so much hidden in that core she no longer explores. I will begin to wonder if I saw her in her negligee or was it a vision of her steely frame uncluttered with age. A vision I never summoned till I saw her for what she could be, riding, riding with a crop of poems in her hands, seeding them into pots of indifferent lands. That is the vision I saw of her in that room where she would not admit we had met by early chance. Now she waves me a stately hand into a Roman garden where we will plough the afternoon in a conversation I will not know if she hears the whole of/ I will not know what she is thinking though I keep believing the visit is worth more than the afternoon. --Martin Tucker
BOOKS (Poetry):
HOMES OF LOCKS AND MYSTERIES. New York: Dovetail Press, 1982; winner of Books Across the Seas program, English-Speaking Union.
ATTENTION SPANS. Kansas City: Potpouri Press, 1997. Reprinted by Confrontation Press of Long Island University.
WHILE THERE IS TIME. Greenvale, NY: Confrontation Press of Long Island University, 2005.
PLENTY OF EXITS: COLLECTED POEMS. Greenvale, NY: Confrontation Press of Long Island University, 2008.
BOUNDARIES OF EXITS/ CONDITIONS OF HOPE, with Albert Russo.
His poems, stories and essay included in this bi-author publication. New York: Confrontation Press of Long Island, University, 2009
RE: VALUATIONS. New York: Confrontation Press of Long Island University, 2019
POEMS in: Confrontation Magazine, The Monk’s Pond, ed. Thomas Merton; Boulevard Magazine; Brooklyn Heights Press; New York Times (editorial page); New Letters; West Hills Review; American PEN Quarterly; 2009: Anthology, ed. Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan; Soundings/ Long Island; Fathers, ed. Judy and David Ray; Stark Magazine (Denmark); Prosopeia (Calcutta); LIPS; The Spirit That Moves Us magazine; College English’ The White Dove Review; North Atlantic Review; Thorny Locust; Gold Dust; and elsewhere READINGS, from 1968: Poetry Society of America; The National Arts Club; PEN INTERNATIONAL Congress, Berlin (German), with Margaret Atwood; Cairo American College, Cairo, Egypt; Cody’s Bookstore, San Francisco; Brooklyn Center of Long Island University, Café San Remo; Minetta’s (both on Bleeker Street, NYC—he hosted a series of poetry readings as well as read my own poems); Brooklyn Public Library Main Branch, Eastern Parkway); Confrontation Magazine Readings; Ossabaw Island Writers Colony, S. Carolina; MacDowell Colony, Peterboro, N.H.; Dixie Council of Writers, St. Simons Island, Georgia; The Kitchen, NYC; Barnes and Noble Bookstore, 87th Street, NYC; Montclair State University, N.J.; Virginia Center of Creative Art , Amherst, Virginia; State University of New York, Binghamton NY; Huntington Barn, Huntington, Long Island; C.W. Post of L.I.U., Greenvale, N.Y.; Florida International University, Miami, FL; State University of New York/ New Paltz; University of Southwestern Louisiana; Kansas City Community College; The Heckssher Museum, Huntington, NY; Canio’s Bookstore, Southampton, NY; KGB Bar, NYC; Education Center, Longboat Key, FL ; Sarasota Public Library, Sarasota, FL; Bookstore 1, Sarasota, F:. and elsewhere.
Served on: Executive Board of PEN American Center for 23 years. Governing Board of Poetry Society of America, for two terms. EDITOR-in Chief, and co-founder, CONFRONTATION Magazine, 1968-2007 Professor Emeritus, Long Island University,
Adjunct 1956-58;
Instructor-Professor, l958-1996
Wrote the PEN Newsletter for PEN American Center, 1972-
Before Joining L.I.U., I worked at Associated Press, New Mexico Newspapers; Transradio Press; Quick Frozen Foods Magazine.
To Find his Books:
https://www.amazon.com/RE-VALUATIONS-Poems-Martin-Tucker/dp/0578599104
https://www.amazon.com/While-There-Time-Penultimate-Poems/dp/0913057452