Straight Up | Jan Herman

There are many kinds of poets. Among them are the voyaging / visionary poets, like Allen Ginsberg and Ira Cohen, both of whom were mentors to as well as models for Louise Landes Levi, who has not only traveled widely, as they did, but has turned her voyaging — that is what her kind of travels must be called — into a life of poetry and music and, not least, who has created an extraordinary literary chronicle of her experience.

One pleasure of walking the streets of St. Gallen, a town near the foothills of the Swiss Alps, was climbing its steep alleys and staircases through winding passages, and then, surprisingly, coming upon a kiosk that advertised the Wortlaut literary festival, where I would be reading alongside the American poet Jan Heller Levi.

The indie filmmaker was one of many notable speakers at “Kenneth Koch at 100: A Celebration,” held last month at The New School’s Auditorium in Greenwich Village. Kenneth Koch was Jarmusch’s teacher at Columbia, “a kind of godfather to me, aesthetically,” he said, noting further that the “so-called New York School of poets in general remain as my godparents in almost anything I create.” Among the more interesting tributes were Maxine Groffsky’s and, via video, Alex Katz’s. I found Jarmusch’s the most amusing.