{"id":50276,"date":"2022-03-20T11:13:14","date_gmt":"2022-03-20T15:13:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/?p=50276"},"modified":"2024-10-13T13:58:53","modified_gmt":"2024-10-13T17:58:53","slug":"thats-the-way-to-travel-jan-heller-levi-marlies-pekarek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2022\/03\/thats-the-way-to-travel-jan-heller-levi-marlies-pekarek.html","title":{"rendered":"That’s the Way to Travel<\/em>
Jan Heller Levi & Marlies Pekarek<\/strong>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Thinking of rasPutin<\/a>, I laughed when a friend joked about the availability of refurbished geiger counters on Amazon. Gallows humor helps to ease the anxiety of current conditions<\/a>.<\/em><\/em> Here\u2019s a serious kind of distraction: Moloko Print’s bilingual volume of selected poems, “That’s the Way to Travel”<\/a> in English and German, by Jan Heller Levi, with illustrations by Marlies Pekarek.<\/em> (Levi’s first book, “Once I Gazed at You in Wonder,”<\/a> which earned the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets, is also available on Amazon. No joke.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a>
That’s the Way to Travel: Selected Poems<\/a><\/em>
Poetry by Jan Heller Levi
Collages by Marlies Pekarek
(175 pages; trim size 18.5 x 22.5 cm.)
Moloko Print (2019) <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
EVE SPEAKS<\/strong>

Once I was in Eden and walked, blithely, out.
How was I to know?
There seemed another Eden,
just next door. It looked familiar,
and I was tired of the new.
All day I strolled around with his name-tags.
Glitter turned specific, but I craved
the blobbiness of things,
the inexact borders,
the possibility that this could also be
that. Of course I was an idiot. I'd run back
now, if I could, hear his painless
children, even call the girl If Only,<\/em>
the boy, I Told You So.<\/em>
Instead of living in this okay crowded world,
I'd make all my mistakes in Paradise.
Is that possible?
Is it?
I didn't even see the gate. 
Then the gate closed.
(page 10)<\/em>
<\/pre>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
(pages 92 and 93)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
(pages 70 and 71)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
BECAUSE WE LIKE THE MAPS<\/strong>\n\nwe take the trips. The car is ready,\npacked. The adventurer waits patiently.\nWe hug each other, count to 3.\n\nI lift. It's got to be one uninterrupted\nlift from the wheelchair to his feet.\nBut there's an instant,\n\nmidway, when the adventurer\nhangs in my arms between rising\nand falling \u2014 his chest tilts forward,\n\nhis butt juts back, his jeans\nride down, his shirt rides up,\nhis belly dangles in the gap \u2014\n\nit isn't dignified.<\/em> And then we find\nthe click. It's like we're both holding on\nand both letting go \u2014 hallelujah \u2014 he's\n\nup. On his own two feet. Don't\nmarry him, some good friends said, \nyour life will be so circumscribed.<\/em>\n\nAt the top of the lift, we've added a kiss.\nWe'd take the kiss without the lift, but that's\nnot possible. Maybe our kiss is a gentle\n\nfuck you to anyone who's watching\nwho thinks our life is less than theirs.\nBecause we like the maps, we take the trips.\n(page 86)<\/em>\n<\/pre>\n\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
(pages 124 and 125)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>
(pages 44 and 45)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
ANATOMY LESSON<\/strong>\n\nIf you could have things just the way you wanted,\nevery part of you would be detachable.\nYour heart, which doctors call a muscle\n& they might be right, plops out of your chest,\nrolls its way across the floor with a funny plud plud\nto the typewriter, heaves itself up on the keys.\nIt flops & writhes & the words come up\nlike punches on the page. Meanwhile,\nyou have to pee. Your bladder\ngrows tiny legs, scampers to the bathroom,\nhovers over the toilet seat. Your hands\nsprout little wings, go flying after it, clutch it, lift\nsqueeze. Out comes the piss, like water\nfrom a soapy sponge. Oh that's \ndelightful. Meantime, remember, your heart \nis still writing, Now you'd like a suntan. Your\nbare arms & legs take the elevator down\nto the park, lay themselves out across\na bench, rotate every fifteen minutes\nbetween the prime tanning hours of 11 & 2.\nYour right breast takes the subway\ndowntown to you husband's studio, your left\nbreast hops the shuttle to Boston to be\ncupped in the hand of a former lover. Your\nclit is checking into a hotel room in Cannes\nwith the tongue of the very young Paul Newman.\nMeantime, remember, your heart is still writing.\nYour hands are now free to join a phone tree\n& stuff envelopes for Greenpeace. Your feet\nare dancing to the Marvin Gaye version of\nHeard It Through the Grapevine,<\/em> your chest is\nslipping on a tee-shirt that says No Justice, \nNo Peace & heading for the street. Meantime, \nyour heart, your fabulous, brilliant, uncomplicated,\nundistracted heart is writing, writing, writing.\n(page 122)<\/em>\n<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a>
(pages 43 and 44)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
THAT'S THE WAY TO TRAVEL<\/strong>\n\nHe was in deep shit is the first line.\nThe adventurer is writing his 7th novel.\nThere's a protagonist who uses a wheelchair,\n\nand a murder, and flights of stairs that the protagonist\ncan't get up or down. Or does he get up and down?\nDoes he have mysterious powers\n\nthat will eventually be revealed?\nFew murders have been solved\nby a person in a wheelchair.\n\nThere was a detective on an old TV series,\nbut you never saw Ironside stopped outside a door\nbecause his wheelchair was too wide.\n\nIt would be good for the reading public\nto get to know a character who frequently\ncan't get into a room, or a store,\n\nor his or her doctor's office. The adventurer's novel\ncould help change laws, or, at least, attitudes, especially\nin the adventurer's native land, where they treat cows\n\nbetter than cripples. Rimbaud called the bourgeoisie\n\"the seated.\" The adventurer is always seated. And like\nthe bourgeoisie he acquires lots of possessions. His include:\n\nmotorized wheelchair, 30-pound battery, battery re-charger,\nadapter plug, surge protector, inflatable cushion,\nair pump, spare footrests, spare tires, portable\n\ncommode chair, and transfer board. There's also a small,\nflexible, plastic-mouthed balloon-like device called a uri-bag.\nLately, the adventurer has been scooting around town,\n\nthinking up ideas for his novel. He gets whomped by sidewalk\npotholes, stranded on corners where there isn't a curb-cut,\nleapt over and leapt around by pedestrians\n\nwho think he's a car. He keeps smiling, so he doesn't \nlook like one of those bitter cripples. Invariably,\nsomeone passing will nod at him \u2014 well, not really at him \u2014\n\nbut at his wheelchair, grin and say That's the way to travel.<\/em>\nLast night the adventurer and I were talking some non-\nbourgeois talk about nomads and gypsies. When\n\nthe Europeans tried to destroy Romani culture, they burned\nthe wheels of the gypsies' wagons. They moved them into concrete\nhousing projects \u2014 running water, electricity. But the gypsies\n\ncouldn't stand it. They chopped holes in the roofs so they could\nstill sleep under the sky. They can cut off our wheels, they said,\nbut they can't make us choose ceilings over stars.\n(pages 94 and 96)<\/em><\/pre>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Thinking of rasPutin, we laughed when a friend joked about the availability of refurbished Geiger counters on Amazon. Gallows humor helps to ease the anxiety of current conditions. Here\u2019s a serious kind of distraction: Moloko Print’s volume of selected poems, ‘That’s the Way to Travel,” by Jan Heller Levi, with illustrations by Marlies Pekarek. (Levi’s first book, “Once I Gazed at You in Wonder,”  earned the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets.) <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":50279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[19,26,18,4,23,17],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50276","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-art","8":"category-books","9":"category-literature","10":"category-main","11":"category-news","12":"category-political-culture","13":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/03\/THATS-THE-WAY-TO-TRAVEL-cover-365.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-d4U","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50276"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62871,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50276\/revisions\/62871"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}