At a Tribeca Workshop, Knowing Their Neighbors, Deeply, Through Poetry

During a poetry workshop last month at the Independence Plaza Older Adult Center, Susan Horowitz reads to her fellow poets. Writing a poem, Horowitz said, "is a way of saying I matter, I exist, my feelings, whatever it is, matter." At right are Virginia G. Clammer and Joe Grancio. Photo: Carl Glassman/Tribeca Trib

They were once just neighbors. Now they’re a community of poets. 

That’s the creative journey of 10 long-time residents of Tribeca’s Independence Plaza and their teacher, Lee Briccetti, the former executive director of Poets House and a fellow Independence Plaza tenant. 

Most of the students have lived in the Tribeca complex (many in the same 310 Greenwich Street tower), since the 1970s. At best, they were nodding acquaintances. But after three rounds of workshops over the past year at IPN’s Older Adults Center, these students, 70-somethings to 93, are discovering a deep familiarity through their poetry.

“They’re getting to know each other, but in a different way,” Briccetti said in an interview. “It’s an artful knowing, knowing through some community endeavor, and they’re helping each other get better at this artistic expression, which is exciting to see.”

“Joe’s been my neighbor for, I don’t know, how many years? I never knew he was a poet,” said Merri Milwe, speaking of fellow student Joe Grancio. “Knowing him here, I see him very differently because he expresses himself so eloquently and his poetry is just really deep.” 

“And I just knew him as a guy next door,” she added. “Now he’s the poet next door.”

For his part, Grancio, a former lawyer, said he had been “sort of a hermit” socially since retiring from the stresses of his practice. But as a former English major who only on occasion wrote poetry, the class has changed that.

“It’s the first time for me in a long time, aside from my wife and maybe one or two friends, that I’ve related to people,” Grancio said. “For somebody to recite a poem and put themselves out there like that is really something. I’m very moved by it.”

On this November afternoon, during the last meeting of the most recent workshop series, the students sat around a table in a small second-floor community room at 310 Greenwich Street in Independence Plaza. Each stood to read a work; reflections on a pond, a rose, a memory, making coffee, and more.

“People being very accepting of everybody else has been fantastic,” said Frank Samberg. “And also gaining some insight into myself, like the [assigned] poem about my name, thinking about what it really meant to me.” (“Frank,” did not suit him, he expressed rhymingly. “So for Pete’s sake,” he wrote, “why not Ezra or Jake, Leo or Nate?) 

“In my poem [see below], I talked about that I matter, and that’s kind of the theme behind writing, creative writing,” said Susan Horowitz. “Why do you write a poem? It’s a way of saying I matter, I exist, my feelings, my thoughts, whatever it is, matter.”

“They’re so open,” Briccetti said. “They’re not getting MFA’s, right? They’re not competing with each other, like, ‘I know more about Wallace Stevens than you.’ Instead, it’s ‘Oh, this poem really moved me.”

Briccetti, a poet and teacher, was executive director of Poets House for more than 30 years before retiring in 2022.  She led the institution’s transition from a Soho loft to its permanent home in Battery Park City, a 70,000-volume poetry library, workspace and literary center on River Terrace. Though most of her students are new to the form, she doesn’t teach them like beginners but more like the seminars she has led at New York University.

“This is the first time I’ve taught this age group,” she said, “and it’s so much fun to treat it like a real workshop.”

That means, along with writing in and outside of class, there is the study structure, looking at the work of established poets, and listening to the critiques of fellow students. To help get them started on their next poem, Briccetti offers thematic “prompts.” That’s provided inspiration for many of the students.

“We may not be creative enough to come up with something to write about on our own,” said one, “but once I get a prompt, I start to observe things when I’m walking down the street. I don’t always write it down, but I start to think about things differently.”

For Briccetti, whose life is devoted to poetry, these neighbors-turned-poets bring a new kind of excitement to the art, “like being present when poetry was born.” 

“It has helped them know themselves and the range and power of their voices,” she said. “I think it gave them access to something beautiful.”

Another free workshop is expected to begin in the spring. If you are interested in attending, write to: leebriccetti@gmail.com. Participants do not have to reside in Independence Plaza. The most recent workshop was made possible through a grant from Poets & Writers, Inc.

From “How to Bake a Poem” by Susan Horowitz

like challah dough yearning for the sabbath feast 

from eggy starch and eager yeast

secretly effervescing

leavened bread and braided blessing

waiting to be uttered

and spread with butter

toasted fried or served with jam

bread that always said i am

From “White Rose” by Joe Grancio

the perfect fall of snow,

white beauty,

from nowhere in the dark grey,

barren sky

upturned face

searching eye

the white rose strewing,

drifting infinitely, petals of white rose

From “I Wish Someone Had Told Me,”  by Virginia G. Clammer

I wish someone had told me 

What growing old would be.

You’d think I might have inferred

From aunts or uncles, father, mother:

The one with failing vision, who couldn’t see

The one who couldn’t hear…

“What’s that you said, my dear.”

The one who lost all means to say Anything at all.

From “Clef Notes” by Amy Seidman

He was her music man

She was his muse.

She tossed the last shovelful of earth into his wooden casket.

A stone within the pile of dirt struck with a thud.

She later swore she heard him say, in his S.J. Perelmanesque way,

“It’s only a flesh wound, if even that,

And Sweetie, it sounded like B flat.”

The headstone is carved with a lyric she chose:

“The song is ended but the melody lingers on”

“The Mop” by Beth Rosaler

Long yellow hair stretched out

sweeping the floor..

Her head tilts far back

As she holds her breath

To hear those footsteps in the hall.