While at my home office near Sacramento, I did an on line search for a publishing house called Spuyten Duyvil in New York City. S-D, as it is known, is the publisher for my friend and colleague, Peter Grandbois’, newest work: a memoir titled The Arsenic Lobster: An hybrid memoir. I wanted to see what else they have done.

What I learned is that Spuyten Duyvil is Dutch, also the name of a neighborhood in the Bronx, a small river connecting the East and Hudson Rivers, and a fab Belgian beer bar in Brooklyn. So, of course, being here in the New York area for several weeks this summer, I had to plan a trip out over the Williamsburg Bridge and to Spuyten Duyvil the beer bar. It is a very cool place, resembling more a thrift shop from the outside, bearing no signage at all, filled with thrift store furniture and an incredible selection of unique and obscure Belgian style beverages. I won’t bore you with the details of the Jenlain St. Sruon, the Columbia Biere Blanche, the T’Smisje Dubbel, (I’ll stop), because none of that is really relevant to this blog.

However, I do want to share with you some lines from a book of poetry I found in their dusty old bookshelves next to the circa-1979 couch. I pulled the book, Track by Norman Finkelstein, because I noticed the publisher: Spuyten Duyvil, of course.

~

Drunk tonight

in the House of Being

Laughter tonight

in the House of Language

So many

Turned away at the door. ~p. 17

 

Room made of books

Made of empty space

Lamp teacup easy chair

Narrative insists on beginning

Insists on ending ~ p. 34

 

Seven

at rest

a chance

at rest

to accept

how it is

to be    ~p.86

~

Though the bar has no connection with the publisher in reality, they always will now in my memory.