Nostalgia
for Jane Freilicher (1924 – 2014)

To you, muse who
rocked the brains of
so many of my heroes
You a hero too
for wise quip bon mot and
panoramic eye
And stand up all around beauty
enters the room
our own Barbara Stanwyck
glamorous, slender, assured,
Always gracious if not a bit impatient
Why aren’t these people wittier?
Perky word monger wonder
Figure of a liberated tongue
Not miss a beat
Voice distinct in the ear
It was your classy parties,
with drink and din
Kinetics of best talk in town
Morris, Barbara, John,
Yvonne
Alex, Joe le Sueur, Kynaston
Rudy, Red, Ada, Ned,
Larry, Harry, Mimi, Maxine
Kenneth’s smile,
hubby Joe’s hospitality
But always a bit of intimidation
‘round you
with your aura,
Those staggeringly great poems
writ in your honor
bunkering the head
You turn crazy Jane of poetic trope into
upscale glowing modish madcap Jane
Legendary gossip’s elegance
mounting around you, star,
La Freilicher
formidable and by contrast
although you were never loud
the quietest paintings
as if  noise forever absent
or transmuted into
compressed tension
And arrangement-transfer
was perfectly natural
John Ashbery calls “tentative”?
Could we dare say “egoless”
in this tribute?
Spaces between objects
come onto this window ledge
this table, center of the world,
a hearth to mute a button on the roar
Hush here before your
stroke and palette
Can’t thank you enough
ingenious painter
for these and continuity
But back back come back again
Can’t get enough of the parties
of yesteryear
Terrific 5th Ave apartment’s readiness,
gleam, of us shining too
Happy to be in your realm
a moment and
Jimmy showing up in what
Kenward called
his Lub period
with bikerchains around his neck
and Joe Brainard lanky
innocently louche
and people still smoked
I remember being haunted indelibly:
how get so lucky to be here?
High tone and that inimitable
talk again
will never be the same
in purgatorial New York
Caught on time spiral, Jane
helping many of us late arrivistes enter
the Academy of the New York School future
which opened its doors to us

—Anne Waldman